Football Museum of Wales and Wrexham Museum

The Football Museum of Wales and Wrexham Museum occupy County Buildings, a Grade II listed former militia barracks in Wrexham city centre. The stone building with Tudor Gothic details stands between Saint Mark’s Road and Regent Street, its chamfered buttressed tower rising above the cathedral on the western corner. Built in 1857–58 by Thomas Penson, it once housed the Royal Denbighshire Militia’s armoury and later became a police station and magistrates’ court. After police left in the late 1970s, parts served an art college and Citizens’ Advice Bureau before becoming Wrexham County Borough Museum in 1996. A £398,500 wing added in 1998 now holds the Collections Centre and study room. The redevelopment will unite a new national football museum with the existing local history galleries. Backed by Wrexham County Borough Council and the Welsh Government, the project has received £5 million in development funding. It will occupy the entire upper floor, currently partly vacant, and collaborate with England’s National Football Museum and the Scottish Football Museum. The combined galleries will celebrate Welsh football and Wrexham’s heritage, aiming to lift annual footfall in the city centre by 80,000 once open. The opening, now planned for 2026, follows earlier forecasts of 2024. Inside, visitors will find enlarged galleries, a new circulation space and an enclosed courtyard. The refurbished rooms include the former armoury now called Court Room 1, complete with metal-shuttered windows never used. Upstairs cells from the magistrates’ court era remain, and the wartime air-raid siren on the roof still sounds each Remembrance Day. The glass extension added in 2011 once housed the Courtyard Café, and the Satellite wing stores collections behind the scenes. Outside, the cathedral’s west front and the high-walled exercise yard frame the building’s stone façade.