The Museum of London Docklands' new walking tour takes visitors across the roof of the O2 arena in Greenwich to an observation platform high above the city, where a talk about the skyline and the docks takes place. And Merseyside Maritime Museum has regular walks to the remnants of Liverpool's Old Dock, the first enclosed wet dock system in the world. The walk only became possible when the city's newest shopping area, Liverpool One, allowed excavation.
Whether scaling the rooftops of east London or descending into the bowels of Liverpool, walking tours are a perfect fit for museums. They help visitors investigate the local area, encourage engagement with collections and provide income.
"Lyme Regis is the home of the science of palaeontology," says the museum's director, David Tucker. "The walks are popular because people are learning about the creatures that lived here 200 million years ago, in the footsteps of our most important fossil collector."
A ticket gives free admission to the Lyme Regis Museum, which recently opened a Mary Anning wing and reconfigured geology gallery.
Meanwhile, Amersham Museum in Buckinghamshire runs Tudor walks about the town and the 16th-century Amersham Martyrs, who were executed for their faith of Lollardy. "They enable us to tell the story of the Lollard martyrs, who were persecuted for reading the Bible in English and burned at the stake in 1521," says Emily Toettcher, the curator of the museum.
"There are several ways in which the walks benefit the museum. They have a strong appeal for groups and we created an app on the martyrs walk with Langley Academy in Slough, the only school whose expertise is museum learning. The volunteers who run the walks have created a fantastic bank of knowledge."
Larger museums often devise walks to tie in with exhibitions. For instance, Birmingham Museums ran An Intimate Tour of Breasts with the writer Claire Collison and a breast cancer charity to link with its Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity exhibition last year. And the Jewish Museum in London commissioned artwork through the Art Happens crowdfunding platform for a self-guided art trail in Camden around its Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait show in 2017. Both of these proved popular.
The Postal Museum, London, runs bimonthly GPO (general post office) walking tours that were developed by its curators, but are now run by Camden Walking Tours. "The walks explain why pillar boxes are red, why the post is called post and why the floors of telephone boxes slope," says Andy Richmond, the head of exhibitions, access and learning at the Postal Museum.
"We benefit from the income from walking tour guests going on to buy tickets to visit the museum. There is huge interest for in-depth learning experiences geared towards adults at the museum, and the walks offer this opportunity."
Richmond adds: "The tour guides act as advocates for the Postal Museum even when they run non-postal-themed walking tours. Other non-affiliated tours also stop at the museum. They are a great way of getting more people to visit."
Whether scaling the rooftops of east London or descending into the bowels of Liverpool, walking tours are a perfect fit for museums. They help visitors investigate the local area, encourage engagement with collections and provide income.
Up to 6,000 people a year book the monthly fossil walks run by Lyme Regis Museum on the Jurassic coast in Dorset. These take participants on a three-hour ramble along a historic stretch of the beach, where Mary Anning, the early 19th-century fossil collector and paleontologist, found ichthyosaurus and pterodactyl skeletons, and other marine fossils.
Anning lived on the site of the present-day museum and the walks begin and end there. They are led by local geologists and zoologists, some of whom work at the museum, and bring visitors and tourists into direct contact with the venue's rich geology collections.
"Lyme Regis is the home of the science of palaeontology," says the museum's director, David Tucker. "The walks are popular because people are learning about the creatures that lived here 200 million years ago, in the footsteps of our most important fossil collector."
A ticket gives free admission to the Lyme Regis Museum, which recently opened a Mary Anning wing and reconfigured geology gallery.
Meanwhile, Amersham Museum in Buckinghamshire runs Tudor walks about the town and the 16th-century Amersham Martyrs, who were executed for their faith of Lollardy. "They enable us to tell the story of the Lollard martyrs, who were persecuted for reading the Bible in English and burned at the stake in 1521," says Emily Toettcher, the curator of the museum.
"There are several ways in which the walks benefit the museum. They have a strong appeal for groups and we created an app on the martyrs walk with Langley Academy in Slough, the only school whose expertise is museum learning. The volunteers who run the walks have created a fantastic bank of knowledge."
Larger museums often devise walks to tie in with exhibitions. For instance, Birmingham Museums ran An Intimate Tour of Breasts with the writer Claire Collison and a breast cancer charity to link with its Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity exhibition last year. And the Jewish Museum in London commissioned artwork through the Art Happens crowdfunding platform for a self-guided art trail in Camden around its Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait show in 2017. Both of these proved popular.
The Postal Museum, London, runs bimonthly GPO (general post office) walking tours that were developed by its curators, but are now run by Camden Walking Tours. "The walks explain why pillar boxes are red, why the post is called post and why the floors of telephone boxes slope," says Andy Richmond, the head of exhibitions, access and learning at the Postal Museum.
"We benefit from the income from walking tour guests going on to buy tickets to visit the museum. There is huge interest for in-depth learning experiences geared towards adults at the museum, and the walks offer this opportunity."
Richmond adds: "The tour guides act as advocates for the Postal Museum even when they run non-postal-themed walking tours. Other non-affiliated tours also stop at the museum. They are a great way of getting more people to visit."
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance writer