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The beauty of museums is that you can find one about just about anything. Want to know about old video games? The UK has a museum for that. Interested in the history of medicine? There are plenty for that. Fascinated by railways? Yep, we have several venues for that too. That’s not the mention all the institutions with an eclectic collection of artefacts from all over the world, from dozens of different time periods and with countless specialisms.
But which ones delight and educate us the most? To answer that question, Time Out’s writers and editors have put together a ranking of the UK’s 20 greatest museums right now. And our pick for the best museum in the UK is also undoubtedly one of the nation’s most bizarre institutions. In first place, it’s the Crab Museum in Margate.
If you’re not familiar with the Crab Museum, let us introduce you. Compared to many museums, it’s not been around for long. It was founded in 2021 by brothers Bertie and Ned Suesat-Williams and their friend Chase Coley. It’s billed as ‘Europe’s first and only museum dedicated to the decapod’.
The small space is crammed with crab trivia as well as a lot of hilarious tongue-in-cheek information panels. Did you know that hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs are ‘milked’ for their bright blue blood each year to be used to test human vaccines? Or that they poo out of their chest?
But it’s not just somewhere to learn all the ins and outs of the crustaceans. Here, crabs are also used as a vehicle to discuss important socio-political themes and human decency in the most irreverent way. For instance, there’s a slipper lobster dressed as a suffragette, a moon crab playing a British fascist and a spotted reef crab dressed as a trade unionist in a diorama depicting the 1926 General Strike.
Time Out contributor Daniela Toporek, who nominated the Crab Museum for the list, adds that you can’t go without making a pitstop to the loo, where there’s a bonus mini-exhibit. And the best thing is that the museum is entirely free to visit (though donations are encouraged). The merch is brilliant, too.
🏛️ Check out Time Out’s full guide to Britain’s best museums in 2026 here.
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