Wakefield Museums and Castles

Pontefract Museum is in its own dedicated building. There is level access into the building and throughout.

The main entrance is through a pair of non-automatic doors. There is a bell by the main entrance on the right-hand side if you need help opening the doors.

Pontefract Museum is level access throughout. The foyer floor is from 1904 and made of small smooth mosaic tiles. The main gallery floors are made out of parquet flooring (smooth wooden tiles).

There is an initial entrance foyer to the museum. The main gallery is through a set of double doors on your left. These are a little heavy. There will be a member of staff in the welcome space to help you open the doors if you need it.

You can reach the temporary exhibition gallery from two places. One is the single door at the back of the main gallery. The second is directly from the foyer.

If you turn right from the foyer and go down the corridor, you will find the accessible toilet on your left and the Reference Room on your right. At the end of the corridor is the Glass Room. The doors to the Reference Room and the Glass Room are usually kept propped open.

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.

The Picturing Pontefract exhibition is fully level access. It is wheelchair and pushchair accessible.

The exhibition is in the special exhibition gallery. This space can be accessed by a door from the entrance foyer and a door at the back of the main gallery. These are both single manual doors. They are wide enough to fit wheelchairs through. Please ask a member of staff if you need help opening the doors.

The exhibition space is a rectangular room with smooth parquet flooring. Most of the artworks are fixed to the walls at varying heights. Most of the artworks are framed with matte glass to reduce reflections. A couple of artworks are in their original frames with slightly reflective glass.

There is a large structure in the centre resembling a church building made out of building blocks. It is in an L shape, and is around 2m tall (near 3m at the top of the ‘spire’). It is fixed to the ground. There is frosted glass in some of the building blocks. 3D models of places in Pontefract are fixed onto some of the sides of the central structure. They are beneath panes of perspex.

There is a smaller, waist-height structure towards the door leading to the main gallery. This has a large collection of magna-tiles to recreate your own mini buildings with. There is also a waist-height, narrow, wheeled trolley next to this structure containing more magna-tiles. The brakes should be kept on this trolley, but visitors may move it occasionally.

There is ample wheelchair access around each of these central structures.

Along the main walls at ankle height are some 0.5 metre cardboard silhouettes of buildings. These are fixed to the walls and protrude a couple of cm from the walls.

Video projection

There is a silent video projection above the main artworks, on the wall that connects to the main gallery. This is around 3m off the ground. It is a series of slowly panning images showing different maps and manuscripts from the wider collection.

Audio elements

There are no audio elements in the Picturing Pontefract exhibition. Some audio may bleed into the special exhibition gallery if a visitor has pressed play on a video in the main gallery.

Audio description

There is an audio description guide to accompany the Picturing Pontefract exhibition. It gives creative descriptions of some of the key artworks on display. It can be accessed by scanning the QR code with the audio description symbol by the door to the entrance foyer. You can also pre-load the audio description guide or listen to it from home.

If you do not have a smartphone or tablet that can scan QR codes, we have a version of the audio description guide on a tablet at Pontefract Museum. Please ask a member of staff to borrow this tablet to use when you are in the gallery.

Braille

There is a Braille transcription booklet of the Picturing Pontefract exhibition. The transcription contains the gallery information panels and the creative audio descriptions. The booklet is kept in a free-standing holder on a ledge just inside the main door to the exhibition gallery (by the large painting of Pontefract Castle). It has Braille on the front cover to help you identify it.

Hands-on elements

In the Picturing Pontefract gallery there is a structure by the door to the main gallery with a large selection of magna-tiles. These are colourful, magnetic tiles in simple shapes to build your own structures.

We have an audio description guide for the main gallery. The audio descriptions are accessed using one of our PenFriend devices. You tap the coloured stickers in a handheld booklet. The PenFriend then reads the description aloud. You can also plug headphones into the PenFriend device. You can use our headphones or bring your own.

The audio description guide describes and provides more information about a range of star objects on display. It also guides you around the main gallery space.

Ask our friendly Visitor Experience Assistants at the entrance for a PenFriend audio description guide. They can show you how to use it if you need help.

There are lots of hands-on elements in Pontefract Museum.

There is a dressing up box near the Civil Wars display.

There is a raised impression of a Civil War coin from the Ackworth Hoard that you can touch and make a rubbing of.

There is a rocking horse that you can touch and ride if you are able.

There is also a toy market stall.

Some of our exhibition spaces have low light levels to protect the delicate objects on display. This includes the Picturing Pontefract exhibition.

There are audio elements in parts of the exhibition spaces. 

Main gallery: There is a film about the Hermitage in the medieval display. There is a screen with 5 short films in the ‘No place like home’ section. 

Glass room: There is an AV screen with 3 films. All of these films are operated by push buttons. There are no headphones and audio plays out into the gallery.

The fire alarm at Pontefract Museum is tested at 10:30am on Tuesdays.