Weekend Fun With Glasgow Museums

Spring finally seems to be making an appearance and, with the improved weather, we have been hoping to get out and about more with the kids. When I was little, my grandparents would take me to all the local museums and fill my head with fun facts about historical events, so I wanted to do the same for our children. Our wedding has taken up most of our money over the past few years, so ideally we were looking for something cheap or free that would also be entertaining for young children (our youngest is 3). With Glasgow just a short journey away and bursting with interesting museums and galleries, we couldn’t think of anywhere better for our fun family day out – check out the Glasgow Museums website for more information!

Utilising Glasgow’s simple subway system, our first stop was the Scotland Street School Museum. I’d been before on a day out with work, so I knew my eldest would love it! The building was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and opened as a school in 1906. Due to the huge boom in the shipbuilding business, the school was very popular and could accommodate numbers of up to 1250 pupils. Unfortunately, the modernisation the surrounding area after the Second World War, and the building of the inner-city ring road, meant that the families moved away from the city centre and the population gradually declined. The school was eventually closed in 1979 and subsequently reopened to the public in the form of a museum.
 

 

There are plenty of interesting exhibits to wander round and the whole top floor has been preserved in the original classroom designs from different eras. My kids particularly loved the Victorian and War Time classrooms, with my daughter being declared the ‘dunce’ by our friends! There was even a dress-up room where my daughter could pretend she was a pupil from the past – my son didn’t care much for this area though!

A short hop further round on the subway took us to Glasgow’s Riverside Museum (formerly Glasgow Museum of Transport), and parked outside was a large ice-cream van – perfect! We all enjoyed a cone with a flake, and jumped about on the massive Astro Turf chairs near the entrance, before exploring the various collections at this venue. Again, I’d been before with a group from my work, but there were still plenty of things I’d missed on my last visit. The museum is home to over 3,000 objects and gives an idea of what life was like for Glaswegians in the early/mid-20th century. The walls are stacked high with long forgotten models of cars and we even found a four-man tandem bicycle!

 

My daughter LOVED it! She had also been before, but I couldn’t tear her away from the place. She’d picked up a fun family quiz at the door, so was racing around the building trying to find clues and answer the questions. On our way round, we discovered that some of the vehicles are partially open to allow visitors a seat in a tram or subway carriage from yesteryear – this was my son’s favourite part. Being three, he didn’t care about learning ‘fun facts’ and was only interested in pretending to drive around on a train or bus.

These are not the only two museums in Glasgow, but they are the only ones we had time to visit on our day out. We could have probably made it round a few more if we’d started out earlier, but that would have also depended on our ability to tolerate tired, cranky children. Our friends also struggled with getting their baby buggy on the subway - as it has no disabled access – and carrying a baby around in a carrier all day can put a huge strain on your back! After posing for a quick family picture on the banks of the River Clyde, we called it a day and headed home.

 

Have any of you tried out Glasgow’s other museums? We will probably venture round a few others in the future, or perhaps see what Edinburgh has to offer.
 

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