Great North Museum: Hancock

About Great North Museum: Hancock

The Great North Museum: Hancock brings together several of the North East's oldest collections in one building beside Newcastle University's Haymarket campus. Its holdings reach back to the natural history cabinet assembled by Marmaduke Tunstall from around 1780; the purpose-built Hancock Museum, named after the naturalist brothers John and Albany Hancock, opened on the present site in 1884 when earlier premises proved too small. In 2006 the museum merged with the university's archaeology, Greek, Egyptian and ethnographic collections, and after a £26 million rebuilding scheme it reopened in May 2009 under its current name with far more gallery space and a new entrance.

Permanent displays cover the natural world, Hadrian's Wall and Roman Northumberland, ancient Egypt and Greece, and world cultures, with a large interactive model of the Wall as one of the best introductions to the frontier anywhere in the region. Star objects include Egyptian mummies, a full-size cast of an African elephant and a replica Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, and there is a digital planetarium plus hands-on areas for younger visitors. The museum is owned largely by the Natural History Society of Northumbria and managed by North East Museums under agreement with the university. Entry is free, it recorded 228,024 visits in 2025, and Haymarket Metro station is five minutes' walk away.

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