Every fourth Sunday of the month between 10-11am is Quiet Hour, when there are fewer visitors in the museum and we turn down the sound in our exhibitions and displays. 

We also have ear defenders available for you to borrow, as some of the experiences around the museum can be quite noisy. 

On the first Wednesday of every month, there is live music in the Winding House Café. 

Dave and Ray from 'Three's a Crowd' will be performing a mix of easy listening songs from the 60s and 70s. 

Come and show your support.

The North East of England Classic and Pre War Automobiles club (NECPWA) will be back at Woodhorn with their amazing array of classic cars. 

Get an up close look and meet the owners of the vintage vehicles. 

Woodhorn is a host venue for this event. If you'd like to find out more about your car, please visit NECPWA's website for more information.

Every Wednesday of the Northumberland school holidays, join our Learning Team and take part in these free, family activities throughout the day. 

Come and explore Woodhorn's Wild Wood, have a go at craft activities and pick up a map for the Wild Trail, where you can create a unique piece of art as you find brass rubbing posts around the grounds. 

Every fourth Sunday of the month between 10-11am is Quiet Hour, when there are fewer visitors in the museum and we turn down the sound in our exhibitions and displays. 

We also have ear defenders available for you to borrow, as some of the experiences around the museum can be quite noisy. 

The Pop Up Ashington Group Hut, designed by artist Imogen Cloët, is inspired by the hut in which the Ashington Group met to make and talk about their artworks. 

Over the six weeks of summer holidays, there will be a changing programme of activities: 

Saturday 19 July - Sunday 3 August: 

Create your own football pennant 

The North East's passion for football stretches across the whole of the region, whether you support Newcastle United or Sunderland AFC, or a local team like Ashington AFC, Bedlington Terriers or Blyth Spartans. 

Inspired by the painting 'Half Time at the Rec (Welfare)' by Oliver Kilbourn (1937), come and have a go at creating your own football pennant. 

Monday 4 August - Saturday 17 August: 

Home is where the hearth is 

At the centre of every miner's home was the kitchen and at the heart would have been the range. It would provide warmth and comfort on the coldest of days, as well as generating heat to cook meals, hot water for a cup of tea or to fill a tin bath to bathe in. 

Inspired by the paintings of the Ashington Group who captured these scenes of domestic life in their paintings, have a go at creating your own Victorian cooking range out of collage materials. 

Monday 18 August - Sunday 31 August:

What's in your bait box?

Dinnertime below ground was always something to look forward to. Having a break from the hard graft of digging for coal was always welcome. 

Every miner had his bait box which contained treats like door stopper jam sandwiches or bread and dripping to keep them going. 

What can you create to go inside your miner's bait box? Using the materials provided, collage over the drawing over the miner - don't forget a little charcoal for the face. Then decide what food your miner will eat for dinner and create it. 

These activities have been devised by artist Paul Merrick and inspired by art on display in the Ashington Group Gallery. 

A friendly member of staff will be on hand to help, but we ask that children are not left unattended and are supervised by an accompanying adult at all times. Grown-ups are encourage to have a go and get creative too. 

Supported by Arts Council England and Northumberland County Council.

This event is part of our Ways to Play programme of free and low-cost family-friendly activities.

Ways to Play is sponsored by Tyne and Wear Metro

On the first Wednesday of every month, there is live music in the Winding House Café. 

Dave and Ray from 'Three's a Crowd' will be performing a mix of easy listening songs from the 60s and 70s. 

Come and show your support.

Every Wednesday of the Northumberland school holidays, join our Learning Team and take part in these free, family activities throughout the day. 

Come and explore Woodhorn's Wild Wood, have a go at craft activities and pick up a map for the Wild Trail, where you can create a unique piece of art as you find brass rubbing posts around the grounds. 

The Pop Up Ashington Group Hut, designed by artist Imogen Cloët, is inspired by the hut in which the Ashington Group met to make and talk about their artworks. 

Over the six weeks of summer holidays, there will be a changing programme of activities: 

Saturday 19 July - Sunday 3 August: 

Create your own football pennant 

The North East's passion for football stretches across the whole of the region, whether you support Newcastle United or Sunderland AFC, or a local team like Ashington AFC, Bedlington Terriers or Blyth Spartans. 

Inspired by the painting 'Half Time at the Rec (Welfare)' by Oliver Kilbourn (1937), come and have a go at creating your own football pennant. 

Monday 4 August - Saturday 17 August: 

Home is where the hearth is 

At the centre of every miner's home was the kitchen and at the heart would have been the range. It would provide warmth and comfort on the coldest of days, as well as generating heat to cook meals, hot water for a cup of tea or to fill a tin bath to bathe in. 

Inspired by the paintings of the Ashington Group who captured these scenes of domestic life in their paintings, have a go at creating your own Victorian cooking range out of collage materials. 

Monday 18 August - Sunday 31 August:

What's in your bait box?

Dinnertime below ground was always something to look forward to. Having a break from the hard graft of digging for coal was always welcome. 

Every miner had his bait box which contained treats like door stopper jam sandwiches or bread and dripping to keep them going. 

What can you create to go inside your miner's bait box? Using the materials provided, collage over the drawing over the miner - don't forget a little charcoal for the face. Then decide what food your miner will eat for dinner and create it. 

These activities have been devised by artist Paul Merrick and inspired by art on display in the Ashington Group Gallery. 

A friendly member of staff will be on hand to help, but we ask that children are not left unattended and are supervised by an accompanying adult at all times. Grown-ups are encourage to have a go and get creative too. 

Supported by Arts Council England and Northumberland County Council.

This event is part of our Ways to Play programme of free and low-cost family-friendly activities.

Ways to Play is sponsored by Tyne and Wear Metro

Enjoy a bitesize tour to introduce you to the inspirational story of the Ashington Group, also known as the Pitmen Painters. 

The tour will also showcase a few highlights from this incredible collection. 

Explore the colliery buildings, learn more about how the site operated and find out more about the daily dangers miners faced. 

We're always interested in hearing your stories too, so come along and share your own knowledge about our coalmining past. 

Although not all of the heritage buildings included in this tour are fully accessible, our staff will adapt the tour so that everyone taking part can discover more about our industrial heritage. Please let the staff leading the tour know how they can help. 

This tour takes place in heritage colliery buildings and although it is suitable for children and adults, we do ask that visitors take care and that children are supervised at all times. 

Access to the winding gear demonstration part of this tour involves climbing steep stairs. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes, and those unable to climb the stairs are welcome to observe the winding gear from the lower level of the winding house. 

If you would like to have a chat about whether this tour is suitable for you or your family/group members, please ask a member of staff, or contact us by telephoning 01670 624455. 

Come and play with our activity trollies. 

You'll find two trollies based upstairs in the Cutter building. 

Each one has drawers containing activities for Little Explorers, Story Tellers, and Curious Curators. Inside these you can find games to play, story prompts and puppets, or curious objects to investigate. 

We have spaces to explore our trollies easily, just take the drawer to a table. What will you find and what stories will you tell?

The trollies are suitable from ages three and up, and are available to play with throughout our opening hours. 

We ask that families sanitise their hands before and after using the trollies, objects or colouring materials. 

You can also find a bookcase of stories available to read while having lunch in the Winding House Café. Look out for the Mini Museum Lunchtime Library at the Cutter building entrance to the Café. 

We are working towards making our Café even better for children, and have been awarded Kids in Museums Family Café Standard. 

The Pit Yard Play Area features a range of accessible play equipment to encourage children of all abilities to interact and learn through movement, sound, vision and memory. The equipment includes: 

• A Pairs Game to build memory skills, themed around Woodhorn's Museum's mining heritage
• A Ferraphone to introduce music and sound
• A Cradle Nest Swing that can accommodate more than one child
• Conference Stations to enable children to communicate across the play site 
• A wheelchair accessible rotating plate 

The Pit Yard Play Area is accessible by a wheelchair and pushchair friendly accessible path, with a small slide linking the path with the lower level site. 

Seating is also available to allow parents and guardians to relax while being close by. 

The Coal Town presents photographs made by social documentary photographer Mik Critchlow (1955 - 2023). Mik documented his home town and community of Ashington over a 45-year period and personally selected these photographs for display at Woodhorn Museum. 

Mik began this extraordinary long term photography project in 1977, after seeing an exhibition by the Ashington Group of artists. 

"They recorded their lives with such honesty, painting the ordinary, the mundane, the everyday and put it all down on paper, on canvas, on hardboard. They showed me that ordinary people's lives could be important and could be seen as art." - Mik Critchlow. 

Mik's work captures the end of the coal mining industry in Ashington and the immediate and longer term impacts of the loss of industry on the town's people, places and community. Mik described making photographs as an 'act of remembrance' and his work provides a poignant record of ordinary people and places across a time of major, social, political, economic and environmental change. 

"After all these many years, I feel that I'm bringing these people back to life again, back home where they all belong." - Mik Critchlow, 2021. 

The Mik Critchlow Coal Town Collection has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Mik Critchlow's family, and through funding from Northumberland County Council and Arts Council England. 

This bite-sized tour will give an insight into Mik Critchlow's life, his links to Woodhorn and some highlights from the exhibition. 

The gallery celebrates the legacy of Critchlow and his work, and the hugely important role he played in documenting the end of Northumberland's mining history. 

Follow our family friendly wild trail around the museum grounds to discover the animals and the plants living at Woodhorn. 

See if you can hunt out the five outdoor wildlife posts on the map as you explore the museum. 

Choose your favourite animal, wildflower, insect, tree or bird from each post to create your own unique brass rubbing artwork. 

This trail has been designed and illustrated by Daniel J Weatheritt and developed by the Age UK Gardening Volunteers - the Woodhorn Weeders.