Located in Skipton Town Hall, the museum has impressive displays of social history, archaeology, costume and art.
The exhibition gallery on the ground floor shows a changing programme of exhibitions related to heritage and the arts.
Visitors can discover more about the area’s past by exploring the small but varied collections on display.
Entrance to the Museum & Gallery is free and there are dozens of activities for children, such as dressing up as cave people and Victorian servants, digging in the archaeology pit, grinding corn into flour on the quern and quizzes, puzzles and colouring.
The museum’s most recent and exciting addition to the permanent display is a rare Shakespeare First Folio.
In 1623, seven years after William Shakespeare’s death, a compilation of 36 of his plays were published together in one volume.
No more than 750 copies of this ‘First Folio’ were printed and today only about 230 survive, with less than 50 in the British Isles.
At the time of Shakespeare’s death, in 1616, 18 of his plays had not reached print.
Included in these unpublished works were some of his most popular plays such as Macbeth, Twelfth Night and The Tempest.
It is unlikely that any of these plays would have survived without the Folio. It is for reasons like this that it is thought of as the most important book in English literature.
Craven Museum is one of only four venues in the world to have a First Folio on permanent display; the others are in London, Stratford upon Avon and Washington DC. The Skipton First Folio display includes an audio-visual presentation narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart, and the pages are turned regularly.