Museum and Heritage Website Design

Websites for museums, heritage, and cultural organisations

Castlegate IT provides museum and heritage website design for organisations that care for collections, historic sites, and cultural venues across the UK. Our websites present exhibitions, archives, and visitor information clearly, helping you reach new audiences online and encourage more people to visit in person.

Our heritage clients include the M&S Archive, York Museums Trust, the Laurence Sterne Trust, and the Humber Bridge. York Museums Trust and the Laurence Sterne Trust have both worked with us for more than a decade. We build every website in-house and support it for the long term, working as a partner rather than a supplier.

We know how difficult it can be to serve visitors, schools, researchers, and supporters with a single website when each audience expects something different. Built on WordPress, our heritage websites enable your team to keep exhibitions, events, and visitor information up to date without technical expertise.

Making collections and exhibitions accessible online

A well-structured heritage website enables people to explore your collection before, after, or instead of a visit. We create searchable online catalogues, digital archives, and interactive exhibitions for researchers, students, and the public, with clear navigation and signposting that make large collections straightforward to browse.

Every website is designed to be accessible to all. We take pride in reflecting what makes each collection distinctive, so your website matches the quality of the experience you offer in person.

Custom features that support visits and income

We build the features heritage organisations rely on, from event listings and venue hire enquiries to online shops, donation systems, and integrations with the payment and booking systems you already use. For organisations with several venues, a single content management system enables your team to publish news once and share it across every site.

Search engine optimisation is built into every website from the start, so people searching for your collection, events, or venue can find you. After launch, our team continues to support and develop your website as your organisation’s needs change.

M&S Archive

The M&S Archive is a collection of documents, images, and artefacts from the history of Marks & Spencer. More than 70,000 records are available online, alongside a physical exhibition in the Michael Marks Building in Leeds. The Archive needed a website that would encourage people to visit the collection in person and introduce its digital archive to a wider audience.

We designed online exhibitions that reflect the experience of exploring a museum, including interactive timelines that enable visitors to follow the M&S story at their own pace. We also implemented custom security measures to meet the cybersecurity policies of Marks and Spencer Group plc. The result is a secure, accessible website that supports both visits to the exhibition and use of the digital archive.

York Museums Trust

York Museums Trust is the charity responsible for some of York’s most important museums and galleries, including York Castle Museum, the Yorkshire Museum, and York Art Gallery. The Trust needed a website for each venue that would present it individually while maintaining a unified brand.

Working with Manchester-based design agency Bert, we built a network of websites for the Trust and its venues, all managed from a single content management system. The Trust’s team publishes news once on the main website and shares it with the relevant venue websites. This reduces duplication and keeps visitor information consistent across the network.

The Laurence Sterne Trust

The Laurence Sterne Trust is the charity dedicated to the life and works of 18th-century novelist Laurence Sterne. It runs Shandy Hall, Sterne’s former home in North Yorkshire, as a museum and education centre. The Trust needed a website that would engage people who are unable to visit in person.

We built the website around a searchable catalogue of the Trust’s collection, enabling visitors to browse items from Shandy Hall from anywhere in the world. An online shop for limited-run items and a prominent donation system support the Trust’s income. The team keeps exhibitions, events, and shop stock up to date through a straightforward content management system.

The Humber Bridge

The Humber Bridge is one of the UK’s most recognisable landmarks, connecting the East Riding of Yorkshire with North Lincolnshire. It was the world’s longest single-span suspension bridge when it opened in 1981, and it has been Grade I listed since 2017.

We created pages dedicated to the bridge’s history, wildlife, and visitor facilities, alongside a bespoke plugin that combines real-time weather data with live traffic information. As part of a wider digital transformation, we also integrated the website with a new toll payment system. We worked alongside other agencies to keep branding and accessibility consistent across every channel. The website reflects the Humber Bridge’s status as a national landmark, a critical transport link, and a destination for the local community.