With the school summer holidays just around the corner, you might be wondering how on earth you’re going to keep the kids entertained for six whole weeks without completely blowing your budget.
The country’s leading consumer group, Which?, has just unveiled its ranking of the UK’s finest free days out – and you might be nearer one than you think. Based on a survey of 7,000 people, the top ten includes attractions from a pretty diverse range of locations, with only one London attraction featured and Wales and Scotland appearing five times between them.
Taking first place in the ‘museums and galleries’ category was St Fagans National Museum of History, an open-air attraction in Cardiff. The museum offers 40 reconstructed buildings from various time periods, a castle and demonstrations of traditional crafts including clog-making, blacksmithing, pottery and weaving. It had an overall visitor score of 94 percent.
Scores were based on factors including the range of facilities, crowd levels and entertainment. Completing the top three were the National Railway Museum in York and the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford in Shropshire, which both scored 91 percent. London’s most popular free sites, including the British Museum and the Tate Modern, surprisingly did not make the cut.
The survey also looked at all of the free historic attractions on offer in the UK and found that Durham Cathedral – once described by Bill Bryson as ‘the best cathedral on planet Earth’ – to be the highest rated. The cathedral belonging to Britain’s smallest city, St David’s, came second on the list.
These are the top ten free museums and galleries in the UK, according to Which?:
- St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff
- National Railway Museum, York
- Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, Shropshire
- National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
- Cardiff National Museum
- Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
- Royal Air Force Museum, London
- Oxford University Museum of Natural History
- Scottish National Galleries, Edinburgh
And the seven best historical attractions you can visit for free:
- Durham Cathedral, Durham
- St David’s Cathedral, Pembrokeshire
- Chichester Cathedral, Chicester
- Houses of Parliament, London
- Bury St Edmunds Abbey, West Suffolk
- Somerset House, London
- Bristol Cathedral, Bristol
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