Wakefield Museums and Castles

Wakefield Museum is on the lower ground floor of the Wakefield One building. The main entrance to the building on Cliff Lane is fully level access.

You can also access the building from Burton Street. From here you enter on the upper ground floor. You can go down in a lift or use the stairs to reach the lower ground floor Wakefield Museum entrance.

Both the Cliff Lane and Burton Street building entrances have automatic sliding doors.

The door to enter Wakefield Museum inside has an accessible entry button on a handrail on the right-hand side. It is wide enough to allow access for wheelchairs. This door opens outwards.

There are three exhibition areas within Wakefield Museum. They are level access and fully wheelchair accessible throughout. 

The floor is made of marmoleum (similar to lino). This is a matte and non-reflective surface.

When a special exhibition is running, the double doors to that gallery will be propped open. Please note that the door between the Front Room and the special exhibition gallery is currently closed. This is to protect the artworks on display in the Cynthia Kenny exhibition from light over-exposure.

Most of our Visitor Experience Assistants have attended Visual Impairment Training and Sighted Guided Training. All of our staff will be happy to help you get the most from your visit.

Some of our exhibition spaces have low light levels to protect the delicate objects on display. There are low lighting levels in the Cynthia Kenny exhibition gallery. This is to protect the artworks on display from light over-exposure. There is an additional lighting strip in the display case. This is at waist height, or around face height if you are in a wheelchair or short-statured.

There are magnifying glasses available in our Pick and Mix station in the Welcome Space. You can take objects from the Pick and Mix station with you around the galleries.

There are hands-on elements around the galleries.

In the Welcome Space, there is a Stone Age hand axe and polished axe head below the display case that you can touch. There is also a quern stone interactive that you can touch.

In the main gallery, the wooden Victorian Wakefield Prison door is on open display. You can touch this. There is also a working clocking-in machine that you can put a timecard into and get it punched.

In the Front Room there is a child-sized 1950s toy kitchen. It is full of toy food and kitchen utensils.   

In the Cynthia Kenny exhibition gallery there is an interactive ‘build your own cityscape’ feature. This includes building blocks and an open frame to create your own scene. There are also sketching tools and clipboards.

There are mirrors next to the dressing up areas in the main gallery and the Front Room. These are fixed to the corresponding walls or units.

There are audio elements in parts of the exhibition spaces. In the main gallery, most of these are connected to headphones.

There is one audio element in the main gallery which is triggered by someone moving into the space by the Wakefield Prison door. This plays audio of children singing ‘Here we go round the Mulberry Bush’.

In the Front Room, there is a 1940s wireless radio interactive which plays audio from Second World War oral history interviews when the tactile buttons are pressed.

The Cynthia Kenny exhibition includes a soundscape inspired by the paintings on display. It lasts for around 15 minutes. The soundscape plays on the hour and half past the hour. After it finishes there is around 15 minutes before it starts again. The soundscape never gets overly loud but the volume does differ throughout. At one point a couple of minutes in there is construction drilling and high-pitched noises. There is occasionally the sound of people speaking and general hubbub (but you can’t make out any of the words). There is also traffic noise, buzzing, birds tweeting, cathedral bells ringing and music. The sounds often overlap each other.

There is also a large audio-visual screen in the Cynthia Kenny exhibition. This will play a video featuring people talking about Cynthia when the raised button is pressed. The button is on the bottom left of the outer frame of the screen. The audio plays through headphones, which are attached to the screen. For the first 20 seconds of the video there is ambient music overlaying footage of Cynthia’s paintings. The speaking starts with Mabel’s (Cynthia’s friend) interview. It lasts around 6 minutes. A faint bit of the audio bleeds into the main gallery from the headphones when it is playing.

There is another smaller digital screen in the far corner of the Cynthia Kenny exhibition. This plays a slideshow with no audio. It is not touch-screen and plays automatically.

The fire alarms in the Wakefield One building are tested every Thursday around 11am. They will sound from one to three times. There will be a tannoy announcement shortly before the alarms are tested.

There is an audio description guide to accompany the Cynthia Kenny exhibition. The guide is accessed using one of the two RNIB PenFriend devices, headphones and booklet packs at the entrance to the exhibition. The guide features creative audio description of some of the paintings.

You can access each clip by tapping your PenFriend on the orange stickers on the raised RNIB PenFriend small square panels. These panels are at the bottom right below the related artwork or information panel.

There is a braille transcription booklet of the Cynthia Kenny exhibition. This is kept on a hook on the open door to the exhibition space. The hook is about waist-height (or face-height if you are in a wheelchair or short-statured). It is kept with three other booklets (audio description transcription, Urdu and Polish transcriptions). It has braille on the front cover to help you identify it.

Some of our bookable activities and workshops are in the Museum Learning Zone. This room is at the back of Wakefield Library. Wakefield Library is on the floor above Wakefield Museum within the Wakefield One building. You can reach this by using lifts or the stairs.

To reach the Learning Zone, turn right inside the Library and go through the Children’s section. The Learning Zone is in the top left corner. It has windows along the wall and a door. The doorway is wide enough to fit most wheelchairs and pushchairs and can be widened if needed.