With the summer holidays starting, like many parents I’m trying to mix in more expensive days out with the four of us and free or low cost days out as fillers in between! One of my favourite no/low cost days out is Stockport Hat Museum!
Stockport Hat Museum also known as the hat works is completely free entry, you can donate if you want though this is optional. My favourite thing about this place it’s very accessible, on the ground floor they have the shop, a large cafe (where food was incredibly reasonably priced and toilets.
We then took the lift up to the museum, whilst the museum attracted all different ages and a coach trip of pensioners at the time we were there it’s also perfectly geared towards children. In entry there is a complimentary children’s station, where children can borrow and collect a clip board with different activity sheets, magnifying glasses, different Perspex colour sheets and even bags for them to wear whilst looking around!
My little girl loved completing the activity sheet as she tried to spot all the different items from the activity sheet! She loved looking at all the hats on display though her favourite bit was a great area where she could try the hats on! Towards the back of this floor there was also a little role play area for children too. This featured a role play till, computer, multiple hats and shopping baskets and even some clips and feathers and ribbons for children to personalise a hat.
Once we had finished playing here we took the lift down to the lower ground floor to the hat works itself where we got to see some of the machinery! I have to say my little girl at only 3 wasn’t too interested in this part so our time here was quite limited but we did see some slightly older children (who could read the signs) there who seemed to enjoy it!
Stockport Hat Works museum is easily accessible, we caught the train into Stockport train station and had a short 5 minute walk down to the museum. You can also get the bus into the new Stockport interchange which is very close too, we tied our visit to the hat museum in with a trip to the new Stockport Viaduct Park.
Overall we had a lovely morning and this coupled with a trip to the Viaduct Park made for an extremely affordable day out!
