Rotunda Museum

The Rotunda Museum, the Museum of Coastal Heritage and Geology, is located right on the wonderful Yorkshire coast with a great view of the sea!

Opened in 1829, it is one of the world’s first purpose-built museums and was built to a design suggested by William Smith. The interior, with its fascinating Georgian gallery, features a frieze showing the geology of the local coastline designed by Smith’s nephew, John Phillips. The original cases tell the history of the museum and they explore the stories of the nineteenth century Scarborough Philosophical Society which brought the collections together.

When you visit you can also learn about dinosaur footprints, fossils, the remarkable 11,000-year-old artefacts from the Star Carr Collection, as well as coming face to face with the wonderful creatures which once called Yorkshire home in the Ancient Seas Gallery. Discover Star Carr Exhibition See remarkable 11,000-year-old artefacts as we exhibit some very special items from our Star Carr Collection, including an antler headdress, barbed points, birch bark rolls, flint tools and animal remains.

Star Carr is just south of Scarborough and dates to around 9,000 BCE. It’s world famous due to the preservation of rare artefacts buried deep in the peat. The objects on show cast light on the lives of our ancestors. The antler headdress, or frontlet, is thought to be made from the skull and antlers of red deer, and was probably used for ceremonial purposes.The barbed points, also made from red deer antlers, were probably used in hunting and fishing. They are a rare find – 227 have been found at Star Carr, accounting for around 92% of all barbed points known in England.

The exhibition also includes two films, one film featuring animation by illustrator Savannah Storm, introducing each object, the other filmed by artist Annabel McCourt and including schoolchildren from Hertford Vale C of E Primary School interviewing Nicky Milner, Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, former director of excavations at Star Carr.