Two Kendal museums are closed and a third opens on Wednesdays only. Verified August 2026 prices and opening hours for everything that is actually open.

Kendal has more museums than a town this size has any right to, and right now two of them are shut. That is the first thing to know before you plan a day here, because several listings sites have not caught up.

Everything below was checked against the venue’s own website in August 2026. Where something is closed, on reduced hours or partly unavailable, we say so rather than quietly leaving it out.

Adult admission prices at Kendal area attractions, August 2026 Bar chart of adult admission prices. Levens Hall house and gardens is £15.12, Sizergh house and garden is £15.00 without Gift Aid, Abbot Hall, Blackwell and Windermere Jetty Museum are £12 each, Levens gardens only is £11.36, Sizergh garden only is £11.00 and Kendal Museum is £5.00. Kendal Castle and the Quaker Tapestry on Wednesdays are free. Nothing in Kendal costs more than about £15 to get into Adult admission, checked against each venue's own site in August 2026. National Trust and Lakeland Arts members go free at their own sites. Levens Hall, house and gardens£15.12 Sizergh, house and garden£15.00 Abbot Hall, Kendal£12.00 Blackwell, Bowness£12.00 Windermere Jetty Museum£12.00 Levens Hall, gardens only£11.36 Sizergh, garden only£11.00 Kendal Museum£5.00 Free Kendal Castle · the Quaker Tapestry on Wednesdays to the end of August · Abbot Hall's coffee bar and shop · Levens Kitchen and gift shop Sizergh and Levens prices are the pay-on-arrival rate. Both flag a temporary VAT reduction from 25 June to 1 September 2026, so the till price may be lower again.
Under-5s go free everywhere on this list. Children are £6 at the three Lakeland Arts sites, £7.50 at Sizergh, £5.03 at Levens and £2 at Kendal Museum.

Kendal Castle

Kendal, LA9 7DJ. Free, open at any time.

The ruin sits on a drumlin east of the town centre, about ten minutes’ walk from the shops. It has been a ruin since Tudor times, but enough imposing stonework survives to give you a real sense of the thing, and the view back over Kendal to the fells is the best free thing in the town. Information panels around the site cover the Lancaster and Parr families, the latter of whom produced Katherine Parr. There is no ticket, no gate and no opening time. It is managed by Westmorland and Furness Council, which took the site on when South Lakeland District Council was abolished in April 2023.

Wear something with grip. The approach is grass and the top is exposed.

Abbot Hall

Kendal, on the banks of the River Kent by the parish church. Open Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm, all year.

  • Adult £12, student £9, child 15 and under £6, under 5 free.
  • Family £20 for one adult and up to three children, £30 for two adults and up to three children.
  • Free for Lakeland Arts members and Art Fund National Art Pass holders.
  • Groups of 12 or more pay £8 an adult and £4 a child.

A Grade I listed Georgian building holding an 18th to 21st century fine art collection with Auerbach, Hepworth, Piper, Ruskin, Turner and Frink in it, plus changing exhibitions. Two run through this autumn: Joshua Donkor and Lela Harris, Familial Traces, to 3 October, and an exhibition on fragility and survival to 19 September.

The coffee bar (Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 3pm) and the gift shop need no ticket. There is a small pay and display car park on site, £2.00 for up to an hour and £7.50 to the end of the day.

Kendal Museum

Kendal, 01539 815597. Temporary opening hours: Fridays and Saturdays only, 9am to 5pm.

  • Adult £5, 5 to 18 year olds £2, under 5s free.
  • Managed by Kendal College. Founded in 1796, which makes it one of the oldest museums in the country.

Read the hours carefully: two days a week is the current position, not the usual one. The World Wildlife Gallery is closed for conservation work with no reopening date announced, so a good part of what the museum is known for is not currently on view. The Kendal and Westmorland Gallery, the geology and fossil collection and the People’s Gallery are open.

Coming up: Folklore and Memory on 21, 22, 28 and 29 August, and Holy Creatures from 3 September to 10 October.

Quaker Tapestry Museum: open Wednesdays only

Kendal.

The museum is closed. The winner of Small Visitor Attraction of the Year 2025 has shut its regular operation while plans are developed for future displays of the Tapestry and collection. What remains, for now, is this: the Quaker Tapestry panels can be seen every Wednesday until the end of August, 10am to 4pm, and admission is free. There is no admission on any other day. Room hire continues.

If you have been meaning to see the embroidered panels, the window is small and closing.

Lakeland Museum: closed for redevelopment

Formerly the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry, next to Abbot Hall. Closed.

The museum is shut for a multi-phase redevelopment. In October 2025 Lakeland Arts was awarded £244,000 by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to work up plans for the site. No reopening date has been given. Several guidebooks and listings still show it as open, so do not build a day around it.

Sizergh

Sizergh, near Kendal, LA8 8DZ. National Trust.

  • House and garden: £15.00 paying on the day, or £16.50 with Gift Aid. Child 5 to 17 £7.50, under 5 free. Family £37.50.
  • Garden only, March to November: £11.00, or £12.10 with Gift Aid. In winter it drops to £6.50.
  • National Trust members free.
  • Car park is pay and display and not free for non-members: £3.50 an hour, £6.50 for two, £8.00 for four and £9.50 all day until 1 November. The machine takes coins only, though you can pay by card at reception. Members park free but must scan their card at the machine.

A medieval house with a limestone rock garden and a large estate to walk. During the summer holidays, house entry between 12pm and 12.30pm is on timed tickets because of visitor numbers, then free flow from 12.30pm to 3.15pm. Groups of over 15 get 5% off.

Levens Hall and Gardens

Levens, LA8 0PD, five miles south of Kendal. Open seven days a week, 27 March to 8 November 2026. House 11am to 3.30pm, last entry 3pm. Gardens 10am to 5pm, last entry 4pm.

  • House and gardens: adult £15.12, child (5 to 16) £5.03, family £37.36.
  • Gardens only: adult £11.36, child £4.14, family £28.27.
  • Season tickets: £35 single, £65 double, £70 family.
  • Reduced admission prices apply when paying on arrival between 25 June and 1 September.

The gardens hold the world’s oldest topiary garden, laid out from the 1690s and still in its original design, around an Elizabethan house grown out of a pele tower of about 1250. Levens Kitchen, the gift shop and the plant centre need no ticket, so you can go for lunch without paying to get in.

Brewery Arts

122a Highgate, Kendal, LA9 4HE.

Kendal’s arts centre, a registered charity, running cinema, live music, comedy and spoken word, theatre and dance, family shows, exhibitions and creative learning across the year. It is the town’s default wet-afternoon answer and its evening one. Members get discounts on tickets, food and drink. Programme and prices vary by event, so check the calendar rather than assuming.

Over the hill: Blackwell and Windermere Jetty

Both are Lakeland Arts sites, both open daily 10am to 5pm, and both charge the same as Abbot Hall: adult £12, student £9, child 15 and under £6, under 5 free, family £20 or £30, members free.

  • Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts House, Bowness-on-Windermere, LA23 3JT. An introduction tour is included with admission; a combined Broad Leys and Blackwell tour is £25.
  • Windermere Jetty Museum, Windermere, LA23 1BN. Boats and steam. Daily 30-minute heritage boat trips run from 28 March to October, weather and availability permitting: adult £16.50, child 5 to 15 £8, under 5 free, family £35. Exclusive 75-minute trips for up to 12 people run year round, from £250.

A combined group ticket for 12 or more covers Windermere Jetty and Blackwell for £12 a head, or all three sites including Abbot Hall for £16.

A note on prices this summer

Both Sizergh and Levens Hall flag a temporary reduction in VAT running from 25 June to 1 September 2026, which means the price you pay at the till may be less than the advertised rate. It is worth asking. It also means any price you see quoted for these places in September onwards may be higher than what you paid in August.

Getting here

Kendal is reachable without a car: see our page on trains to London and the branch line, which covers Kendal and Oxenholme stations. If you are driving, the roadworks and travel page has town car park charges and the current A590 and A591 works.

More Kendal local information: house prices and planning news.