Museum Redevelopment

Peterborough Museum reopened in March 2012, after a £3.2 million redevelopment project funded by Peterborough City Council, Heritage Lottery Fund and Vivacity.

The Museum is one of the city’s most popular attractions – drawing in tens of thousands of visitors each year. It is also one of the city’s most historic buildings, dating back to Georgian times. In order to improve our service, and provide visitors with an even better experience, we have carried out some essential restoration work.

We’ve also redesigned some of the Museum’s exhibition galleries to display more of the 227,000 items we have in our collections and offer a more hands-on and interactive experience. The improvements include the following:

• Restoration of the historic building’s period features with appropriate décor
• Undertaken a first stage restoration of the historic operating theatre, open to the public for the first time
• Refurbishment of the Geology gallery, highlighting the internationally important collection of Jurassic marine reptiles
• Refurbishment of the Norman Cross gallery, to tell the story and show the collections from the Napoleonic Prisoner of War camp
• Refurbishment of the Wildlife gallery to include displays on Ice Age creatures, as well as other modern habitats and wildlife
• Refurbishment of the Changing Lives gallery, telling the story of the changing city of Peterborough and its people over the last 200 years
• Created a new gallery, trails and interpretation telling the story of the Museum building from the Tudor mansion on the site to the modern museum
• Refurbished and relocated the conservation laboratory to continue our fossil conservation work
• Improved visitor facilities including a new look Museum shop, new toilets, café, community gallery space and refurbished public areas
• Upgraded the central heating system for the building, and installed air conditioning systems in selected areas
• Restored the Victorian kitchen as an education space
• Improved our education and meeting areas