Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery

Tullie House is Carlisle’s premier museum and art gallery and home to many discoveries made in the Solway Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It hosts both permanent and temporary exhibitions with loads of family-friendly attractions – make sure you find the giant badgers’ sett! It’s also a great place to go to put the Solway Coast in to context.

The museum’s exhibitions take visitors on a journey through the ages, back to before the Romans arrived on our shores and influenced this landscape. The Roman Frontier Gallery features significant local history combined with other exhibits on loan from the British Museum.

Tullie’s exhibitions are also packed with nature and local history. Visit the Wildlife Gallery to see some of the highlights of the Solway Coast, including animals and plantlife, as well as geological discoveries. The bogs which preserved Roman artefacts also saved Medieval finds so there is plenty to explore.

Tullie House is also where the recordings from the Remembering the Solway oral history project are stored. This fascinating step-back-in-time heard the memories of dozens of people who grew up along the Solway Plain in a project supported by the Heritage Lottery-funded Solway Wetlands Landscape Partnership. It focuses on the farming, peat cutting and childhood histories. Hear a few of them here.

Tullie House is the winter meeting place for Carlisle Natural History Society which regularly takes trips out into the field, with the Solway Coast inevitably being one of its destinations.