Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery (Rowley's House)

Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery is housed in Rowley's House, a large timber-framed warehouse and the adjoining brick mansion, built for the Rowley family: drapers, brewers and mayors of Shrewsbury; in the early seventeenth century.

The museum collections celebrate Shropshire's variety. There are 'hordes' of Bronze Age metalwork, primitive log boats, rock and fossil specimens. Displays from Viroconium (Wroxeter), the fourth largest city in Roman Britain, include a stunning silver mirror and the equally fine carved forum inscription.

The river Severn has shaped the history of Shrewsbury and Shropshire: waterlogged deposits from excavations at Shrewsbury Abbey help to tell the story of the mediaeval town and there are wonderful ceramics from the industrial heyday of the Ironbridge Gorge.

New displays of social and natural history give a flavour of life in the 19th century, when Charles Darwin was growing up in Shrewsbury.

The museum has a regular programme of special exhibitions, frequently linking the historic and the contemporary and including the innovative mediamaker programme.