The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum
Museums & Science Centres · Exeter, Devon
No reviews yet
Closed — opens tomorrow at 10am
🏠 Indoor🆓 Free entryEducational
What’s there
- Limited parking
Pay and display parking along Prince of Wales Road, with limited spaces during term time. Blue Badge holders can park outside the Old Library on weekdays. Cobbled road access from Prince of Wales Road.
Only facilities we’ve confirmed are listed — anything missing here we simply haven’t checked, rather than know to be absent.
The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum sits in the Old Library on the University of Exeter's Streatham Campus and is open to the public for free. Its galleries display more than a thousand objects drawn from a collection built by the filmmaker Bill Douglas and his friend Peter Jewell. The lower gallery covers the development of pre-cinema visual culture up to 1910, with optical toys, magic lanterns and early viewing devices, while the upper gallery follows cinema from 1910 to the present day. Interactive displays and audio guide points help make the exhibits accessible for older children as well as film fans. Families with an interest in how moving pictures began will find plenty to look at, and a visit can be combined with a walk around the university campus. Staff are not on duty at weekends, but the galleries stay open and are monitored by security.
Closed between Christmas and New Year. The home page gives an early 5pm close on 22 December and a reopening at 10am on 4 January 2027.
Stuff to take with you
The things people wish they’d packed for a day out like this one.
Refillable water bottleMost places will fill it for free.
Snacks that survive a rucksackCheaper than the café, and buys you twenty minutes.
Wet wipes
Small first aid kitPlasters solve more days out than anything else here.- Backseat organiser
Portable phone charger
Toilet rollAssume the worst about the facilities and you'll never be wrong.
Travel pillow- Hand sanitiser
- Travel games
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Links open Amazon in a new tab and never change what you pay. How this works
Photos: 維基小霸王, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Renée Kools, CC BY 4.0 · Rolf Dietrich Brecher, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Takahiro Yamagiwa, CC BY 2.0
Reviews
No reviews yet — been here with your little ones? Be the first to share.
Something not right? Tell us — opening hours and prices change, and we’d rather hear it from you.
Do you run The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum? Claim this listing to keep it up to date and add your own photos.
More museums & science centres nearby
