Beaney House of Art and Knowledge

The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge sits halfway along Canterbury High Street, its black-and-white Tudor Revival façade hard to miss between the chain shops and cathedral-bound foot traffic. Behind that 1899 frontage is one of the most generously stocked free attractions in Kent: a museum, art gallery, public library and visitor information centre, all under one Grade II listed roof, and all free to enter. Most visitors come for one of those four things and leave having dipped into at least two.

The building owes its existence to Dr James George Beaney, a Canterbury-born surgeon who emigrated to Melbourne, made his fortune, and left £10,000 to his home city for an "Institute for Working Men". Canterbury City Council added £5,000 to the pot, the architect A.H. Campbell drew up plans in Tudor Revival style, and the doors opened on 11 September 1899 as the Beaney Institute. After more than a century of layered use - including a memorable cameo as the inspiration for the Colpeper Institute in Powell and Pressburger's 1944 film A Canterbury Tale - the building closed for a major refurbishment in 2009 and reopened in 2012 as The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, the name it carries today.

The galleries are arranged thematically across the upper floors. People and Places focuses on Canterbury's social and cultural history, with portraits, costume, photography and personal stories tracing the city from medieval pilgrimage to the present day. Materials and Masters is the fine-art room, home to the De Zoete collection of Dutch and English oils, paintings by Thomas Sidney Cooper and his relatives, two Jacob Epstein bronze busts, and the Beaney's Van Dyck portrait of Sir Basil Dixwell - bought for £1 million in 2004 and one of the most valuable artworks in any council-run museum in the south-east. Explorers and Collectors holds the more eclectic objects: ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman pieces, Anglo-Saxon grave goods from Kent, ethnographic items from across the former British Empire, and natural history specimens including taxidermy birds and Victorian curios. Animals is exactly that - a smaller gallery of stuffed and mounted creatures aimed largely at younger visitors, who tend to find it gripping in equal measure with the adults pretending not to.

The temporary exhibition spaces - the Front Room, Sidney Cooper Gallery and Mezzanine Gallery - change every few weeks, and the programme is unusually broad for a small-city museum. Recent years have included contemporary photography, comic-book art, fashion, ceramics, community-curated shows from local schools, and touring exhibitions from national institutions. The much-loved Smallfilms display, featuring the original Bagpuss, Clangers and Ivor the Engine puppets created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, runs as a long-term highlight and pulls in visitors who remember the shows from the 1970s as well as the children they bring with them.

The ground floor is given over to the Canterbury Library - a working public lending library run by Kent County Council, with adult, children's and teen sections, computer terminals, study spaces and an active programme of reading groups, author talks and Baby Bounce sessions. The library doors stay open later than the museum on Thursdays, with a 6pm closing time rather than 5pm. The Visitor Information Centre is also on the ground floor and is the official place to pick up Canterbury maps, attraction tickets and city walking tour bookings.

Practical notes: entry is free, though a small charge sometimes applies to special exhibitions. The building is fully step-free via the Best Lane accessible entrance and a glass lift connects all floors. There's a small café on site, baby-changing facilities, accessible toilets on every floor, and a free water bottle refill point. The closest car parks are Watling Street and Pound Lane, both a short walk away; the nearest train stations, Canterbury East and Canterbury West, are each about ten minutes on foot.

The Beaney is closed on Mondays. For visitors arriving on a Monday it's worth knowing the library is also closed; the Visitor Information Centre's printed maps and leaflet rack remain accessible during library opening hours. For everyone else, allow at least an hour for a quick visit, half a day if you want to do the building justice - and do come back for the temporary exhibitions, which are very often the best reason to return.

(Library has different hours from the museum/galleries)