DATE: 4 July 2024

Time-travelling Summer Fun at York Castle Museum 2024

27 July- 1 September 2024

Roll up to York Castle Museum this summer holidays to enjoy lots of entertaining activities for all ages. There will be daily traditional games outside in the Exercise Yard, including favourites such as a ‘Ring Toss’ and ‘Plinko’, along with live performances three times a week with Phineas FickleTickle’s Totally Tremendous Time-Travel Tincture, as well as Victorian Stilt Walkers and an itinerant band on Sundays! 

York Castle Museum will play host to time travelling characters who are lost in different centuries. Visitors will be able to join Phineas FickleTickle with his imaginary enchanted hot air balloon, as he travels round the museum to help his friends get back to their own time using magical tinctures. They will visit Medieval, Georgian and Edwardian periods, as well as the 1960s, so there’s plenty to discover and learn. Visitors can follow these promenade performances which will run for 30 minutes at 11 am, 1 pm and 2.30 pm on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 3 to 31 August.

Continue to be transported through the rest of the galleries including Kirkgate, the famous Victorian street, with places named after local shops and businesses of the time. Visitors will be able to meet people in costume to find out about life in Victorian York or dress up in Victorian hats. The Period Rooms, World War One, 1960s Gallery and the prison cells, where the infamous highwayman Dick Turpin was held, will also be open to explore, welcoming back new and returning visitors.  A family friendly Time-Traveller’s Trail will help families explore different spaces.

There will be even more to explore as the ‘Shaping the Body’ galleries with its fashion displays have now reopened. Here visitors can discover many different outfits through the ages, from a dress worn by Queen Victoria to a Vivienne Westwood designer outfit.

On Sunday 18 August and 1 September, visitors can enjoy unique entertainment from The Ran Tanners; a pair of roving miscreants who (when not doing hard labour in chokey or dodging the press gang), will be playing some traditional music from Georgian and Victorian England using fiddles, bagpipes and squeezeboxes.

Victorian-style Stilt Walkers will perform in the museum on select Sundays in August (4, 11 and 25 August). These charismatic stilt walkers will be here to celebrate their idol, ‘Queen Victoria’. They are full of facts about their ‘best friend’ and will quiz the audience to test their knowledge. They will perform twice a day between 11am and 3pm in the Exercise Yard.

Participation Manager at York Museums Trust, Fiona Burton, said;

“We’re really excited to share our fun-packed programme of activities with everyone at the Castle Museum this summer.  We’re sure everyone will enjoy playing traditional games together, singing or dancing along to the Ran Tanners or perhaps even helping Phineas FickleTickle return his friends to their own time.  There’s certainly something for everyone!”

Visitors can continue to get their summer fix by enjoying the early twentieth century carousel, run by Warringtons, outside the front of the museum (please note that this is run separately and involves an additional charge to museum entry). The carousel originally powered by steam, was built in 1923 by Walkers of Tewksbury with the horses carved by Andersons of Bristol. The carousel was restored in 2009.

York Castle Museum is open daily, Mondays 11am-5pm and Tuesday to Sunday 10am-5pm. Tickets are available to pre-book online now. Head to www.yorkcastlemuseum.org.uk to find out more and book now.