Parking and Accessibility
Parking and Accessibility
The Museum
The Museum is housed in a Grade 1 listed building, built in 1688 on four floors with lots of small rooms. In consultation with English Heritage and Whitby Disability Action Group, we have made it as accessible as we can within these limitations.
As well as the historic room on the ground floor, wheelchair users access the first floor via a specially installed lift. A DVD of the upper floors and the attic is available to view at the Museum.
This is updated every year to show the year's special exhibition.
Arrival and Car Parking Facilities
• Use the Park & Ride on A171. This deposits you in the town centre near the railway station, 10 minutes walk from the Museum.
• Use the Council pay and display car parks. Parking on the West Cliff is limited currently to 3 hours.
• Disabled parking spaces in the nearest car park, Church Street, 100 yards from the Museum.
• It is acceptable to use the loading bay in the turning circle at the entrance to Grape Lane from Church Street to set down a wheelchair. Our entrance is a few yards up the lane.
• Grape Lane is a narrow one-way street, used mainly by traders. We don't advise its use. You could get blocked in!
• We are 10 minutes walk from Whitby's rail and bus stations.
Main Entrance, Reception and Shop
• Short ramps connect the differing levels of the street entrance, the courtyard and the ground floor rooms of the Museum.
• Wheelchair users are able to negotiate them.
• There are handrails where appropriate.
• The reception area doubles as a shop. Staff are happy to assist if requested.
• Stair access to the first floor is supplemented by a lift from reception which takes one wheelchair and carer at a time.
• There are two WCs in the museum, one of which is accessible.
The Displays
There is a wealth of material and interpretation boards which can be viewed from any angle. However, manuscripts and smaller artifacts are displayed flat in cases about one metre off the floor.
Large print guides are available, as are detailed room by room guides in small print. We have translations of the latter in French, Dutch and Norwegian.
DVD
The DVD for the second floor and attic is on the ground floor through the Blue Room.
Dogs
Guide Dogs and other registered assistance dogs may come in, provided they have the correct identification, are wearing the appropriate jacket, and are 'on duty'. Other dogs should remain outside in the courtyard on a leash.
Catering
We do not provide refreshments, being in the middle of town where there is varied and ample provision.
Access Statement
We will use our best endeavours to enable access and make improvements to the Museum, both in terms of physical barriers and participation in all its services and activities, within the constraints of a Grade I listed building on four floors, and the financial resources available to a small independent Museum.
To this end we will continue to make incremental improvements and adaptations, conduct regular audits, monitor and review our policy, consulting with Whitby DAG and other groups as appropriate.
Website features and standards used
We are keen to have our site available to as many users as possible. If you use our site with a particular piece of software or technology and are experiencing problems please contact us and we'll see if we can help rectify any problems.
Site Standards
Our site complies wherever possible with the W3C guidelines for these standards and closely follows the recommendations of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines