Craven Museum

Craven Museum & Gallery sits in Skipton Town Hall, a stone building in the market town of Skipton in North Yorkshire. It holds local finds that trace life in Craven from prehistoric times to today. After a £2.1 million redevelopment funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the museum reopened in June 2021. The museum began in 1928 when local groups brought together collections such as Elbolton Cave finds and Richard Tiddeman’s reef knoll rocks. In 1973 it moved across the road into Skipton Town Hall, where it still stands. Volunteers restored a Derbyshire ore crusher and funded excavations like the Rylstone tilery kiln. The Friends of the Craven Museum grew to hundreds of members within months of its 1969 launch. Arthur Raistrick, a well-known local geologist, chaired the group for many years. Inside, visitors find biology displays that include Colonel Tottie’s 19th-century bird eggs and an entomology collection. The geology room shows limestone, ammonites and the vertebrae of an Ichthyosaurus. Archaeology cases hold cave tools, Roman coins from Kirk Sink Villa and an Elizabethan hoard. Costumes range from 18th-century dresses to 1940s evening wear and Home Guard uniforms. The art gallery displays local scenes by Reginald Arthur Smith and Kenneth Holmes alongside the Roebuck collection. A highlight is the incomplete Shakespeare First Folio, one of only four on public display worldwide.