Linlithgow Museum, West Lothian

Travelling by train to Linlithgow from Glasgow (30 minutes) or Edinburgh (20 minutes) you might shout, “Look at the ruined castle”, as you whizz by. What you’ve spotted is Linlithgow Palace, the residence of the Stewarts starting from King James I of Scotland and the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots. It is set beside its own loch and park just off the high street of this historic town. 

And now, on the high street a short walk from the railway station, is the town’s newest visitor attraction: Linlithgow Museum. It opened in April, after a two-year redevelopment, in the Linlithgow Partnership Centre, a community hub that comprises a library and daycare centre. 

Linlithgow Heritage Trust manages the museum, which from 1991 was based in the three-storey historic Annet House, further down the high street. Annet House offered plenty of space to interpret the history of the town and area, but over the years the displays had become dated, interactives and lighting often did not work, and there were access challenges, from the steps at street level to stairs and uneven floors.

The move to the Partnership Centre has given the trust an opportunity to rethink the displays, interpretation and layout. The museum is spread across three galleries on one floor, with lift access. The focus is still on telling the local story, but in a wider context, starting with, “Why Did People Settle Here?”, which examines Linlithgow’s location and the transport links that keep it a vibrant place today.

A statue of Mary Queen of Scots that previously stood in the Annet House garden is one of the first objects to greet visitors, but she stands with her back to the view of the palace. Given that the town of Linlithgow was Mary’s birthplace, more could have been made of this statue. But it is always challenging to tell a story effectively if there aren’t lots of objects to give the history enough context. 

The trust has chosen to focus on the strengths of the collection and the stories of other famous people associated with the town. Avoiding a chronological timeline, the museum tackles themes found in many local museums, such as civic duty, law and order, transport and the rise and demise of trades and industries in the town. 

Linlithgow, as well as being a royal burgh, can lay claim to an impressive output of manufactured goods: for example, glue, which sold for a higher price than any made in England, and leather, with 24,000 shoes produced in 1795. 

We also learn that Signetics, later Microwave & Electronic Systems, operated in Linlithgow and worked on the top-secret Claribel radar used by British troops in Northern Ireland to locate a sniper after just a single shot. The museum has an example of this together with a Checkpoint Radar, used to protect parked aircraft from hijack – this device was tested at the local Linlithgow Rose football ground.

The gallery makes use of some traditional low-tech interactives – lifting flaps to discover “What did Linlithgow’s industries smell like?”, or “Create your own banner” with wooden symbols to stick on a cloth background – which are fun but not challenging. 

“Make your own medicine” involves more thought as visitors are invited to create prescriptions, choosing plastic medicine bottles that, when placed in the correct combination and quantities, illuminate a panel confirming which illness would be cured. 

In the third gallery, the museum celebrates the local surgeon David Waldie, who suggested the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic to James Young Simpson, a Scottish obstetrician who became the first physician to demonstrate the anaesthetic properties of chloroform on humans. 

Waldie emigrated to Calcutta, India, and the museum was gifted the diary detailing his journey there. Waldie’s diary has been used to create a touchscreen audiovisual, but it is quite lengthy and placed in a busy corner that includes a description of how the museum collection was brought together (by a local schoolmaster, with contributions from locals). 

The lack of chronology is evident here, with the juxtaposition of “Domestic life”, “Looking after the poor”, “Defence” (covering 200 years) and “Politics”. The last of these crams in the fact that Emmanuel (Manny) Shinwell represented Linlithgowshire as one of the Independent Labour Party’s first MPs, together with a photograph of the then prime minister Winston Churchill in the town in 1945 to support the Unionist candidate. 

The highlights here are objects associated with the late Scottish Labour Party politician Tam Dalyell, who represented the region and town from 1962 to 2005 and lived at the nearby family seat, House of the Binns. 

His widow, Kathleen (who also officially opened the museum), has loaned the typewriter that Dalyell used to type constituency correspondence (it originally belonged to his mother) and it is displayed next to a campaign leaflet from 1966 that contains a message from Kathleen aimed at female voters – it would have been good to see a transcript of this.

Despite the national, sometimes international, context, the museum often takes a parochial view, and does not explain where local places are (more maps would be useful) or if buildings referenced are still standing and can be visited. 

For non-locals this could be frustrating. Similarly, there are missed opportunities to use the views from the windows overlooking the former courthouse and police station, the high street and Burgh Halls to explain what these are or where and how the town is changing.

The final room is used by school and community groups, with a small co-curated exhibition and film by local primary schools and oral history recordings about the Gala Day annual event and local industries. 

The new museum is much easier to navigate than its former home at Annet House. It takes no risks with interpretation and design, but is bright and welcoming. 

It brings the story of Linlithgow up to date, involving local people in telling their stories, and acknowledges the impact of tourism and popular culture – the palace was used in the television series Outlander as Wentworth Prison and in the Netflix movie Outlaw King. 

It might need to work a bit harder to attract visitors primarily heading to the palace, but should not be overlooked as an introduction to this fascinating town.