Wakefield Museums and Castles

You can download a floor plan of Pontefract Museum.

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.

There are some plastic seats in the foyer space.

There are seats around the activity tables in the main gallery. 

There are some plastic seats in front of the AV screen in the temporary exhibition gallery.

There is seating around the main table in the Reference Room.

There is a seat by the light box in the Glass Room.

There are some collapsible, portable stools as you enter the exhibition from the entrance foyer. They are kept under the ledge containing the Braille transcription on the left hand side. There are also two more portable stools available in the main gallery.

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 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.