Ripon Museums

Ripon Museum Trust runs three museums in the old buildings of the city's poor law, prison and courts, all within about five minutes' walk of each other. Together they tell one story: how a small cathedral city dealt with the poor, the vagrant and the accused from Georgian times to the twentieth century.

The Workhouse Museum and Garden is the headline. The Ripon Union Workhouse was built in 1855 and is one of the most complete Victorian workhouses left in the country, and on 21 July 2026 it reopened after a 2.8 million pound redevelopment. You go round in the role of a vagrant or a pauper, through the cells, washroom, kitchen and dining hall, and down into a cellar that was sealed in the 1930s. The Prison and Police Museum fills the 1816 Liberty Prison, later the city's police station, with galleries in the original whitewashed cells. The Courthouse Museum is a Georgian courtroom of 1830, opposite the cathedral, kept much as it was.

All three are indoors, which makes this one of the better wet-day plans on the Ripon side of the A1.

From Tea Time Cafe at 87 Market Place, head south west out of Thirsk on the A61. Ripon is about 13 miles and 25 to 30 minutes away. Park at St Marygate car park, directly opposite the Prison and Police Museum (sat nav HG4 1LX), or the Cathedral car park near the Courthouse. Both are 3 for the day. The Workhouse has very little parking of its own, so leave the car in town and walk; the museums are about five minutes apart.

Without a car, the Hodgsons 70 and X70 buses run from Thirsk Market Place to Ripon Bus Station on Mondays to Saturdays, taking 25 to 45 minutes depending on the journey, and the museums are about five minutes on foot from the bus station. There is no Sunday service. In November 2026 the last bus back to Thirsk left Ripon at 16:45, three quarters of an hour after the museums close, so check the timetable before you rely on it.

Start at the Workhouse when it opens at 10am, which is what the trust itself suggests. You choose a role at the gatehouse and follow it through the vagrants' cells, where you can try picking oakum, then the washroom, kitchen and dining hall, with sound effects playing as you go. Children can dress in work clothes, help with the laundry and sewing, and taste gruel. Finish in the garden, which is reached by ramp.

Walk across to the Prison and Police Museum next. The ground floor covers Yorkshire policing, with uniforms, insignia and a police motorcycle to sit on. Upstairs, in the old cells, the theme is crime and punishment: sit in an empty cell, turn the crank, see the birching chair and read about transportation, then try the photo-fit challenge and fingerprinting. The pillory and whipping post stand out in the yard. Allow about an hour.

Have lunch in the city, then go to the Courthouse after it opens at 1pm. It is three rooms and an entrance hall: the Jury Room with its halberds, the Justices' Retiring Room with portraits of the magistrates, and the courtroom itself, where you can stand in the dock. Half an hour covers it, and Ripon Cathedral is directly across the road afterwards.

The Workhouse cellar is the newest thing to see in Ripon. It was sealed in the 1930s, and the 2026 works opened it to visitors for the first time. Upstairs, the wall panels on families split up at the door, and on the elderly and disabled people who ended up living there, give the building its weight.

At the Prison and Police Museum the cells themselves carry the visit. They are small, bare and barred, and sitting in one for a minute says more about the 1816 prison than any panel. The Courthouse has the best single object of the three: the roofed dock, built to protect prisoners from things thrown from the public gallery and reached by stairs from a cell below.

Buy the annual pass if you plan to see more than one museum. At 19 for an adult it costs less than the Workhouse and Prison tickets bought separately, the Courthouse comes free with it, and it lasts a year, so you can split the three across two trips. Plan the day around the Courthouse's 1pm opening: Workhouse at 10, Prison and Police Museum before lunch, Courthouse after. The Courthouse has no visitor toilets, so use the ones at the Prison and Police Museum or the Workhouse first; there are public toilets to the left of the Courthouse too. The Prison and Police Museum gets loud when busy, so go early in the day if you want it quieter. Baby changing is at the Workhouse only. With the season closing on 22 November 2026, this is a plan for the next fortnight or for next year, once the 2027 dates are published.