The year is 1739 and we are face-to-face with Dick Turpin in the prison cell where he’s awaiting his fate.

Like a cocky Essex boy, he’s boasting of his plan to escape the hangman. Six months later he would be dead.

York Castle Museum stands within 18th century prison buildings, and the old cells are brought to life with eerie talking holograms of ex-prisoners, appearing like ghosts.

Among them is notorious highwayman Dick Turpin, incarcerated in the prison before he was hanged for horse stealing. There’s also a Luddite, a young tearaway and Elizabeth Boardington, the last woman burned at the stake in Yorkshire, who told us why she murdered her husband in 1776.

Between 1705 and 1835 around 15,000 men and women awaited their fate in these cells. For those who survived the cold, hunger and disease, there were just three ways out. More than half were found not guilty, 4,000 were transported to Australia and later America, and the remaining prisoners were executed in York.

Conditions were brutal, and the story of nine men who suffocated to death awaiting trial in 1737 unfolded in gruesome detail, with the chilling sound of wheezing in the small cell where they perished.

The museum, which opened in 1938 on the site of York’s former castle, offers a taste of how people used to live and work. There are thousands of household items, and period room settings include a Victorian parlour, an 1850s moorland cottage, Jacobean and Georgian dining-rooms and a 1950s living-room.

The museum’s founder was Dr John L Kirk, a North Yorkshire doctor who collected everyday objects to preserve for future generations.

The ‘Cradle to the Grave’ gallery featured Christening robes, wedding dresses and coffins through the ages, and ‘Chinese Reflections’ – the first temporary exhibition in a new space focusing on the people of York – explored the city’s Chinese community with photographs and objects, from fans and teapots to an ornate 18th century automation clock.

Walking through the museum is like taking a journey through social history. In the ‘Hearth and Home’ section my dad recognised a 1940s kitchen from his youth, while the 1980s kitchen had an early microwave and tall milk bottles - remember those?

A highlight of our visit was a stroll along the Victorian cobbled street, Kirkgate, named after Dr Kirk. Rows of lovely old shops include a grocer’s with a big ham, tins of salmon and huge block of butter in the window, a pretty milliners, with bonnets, hairpins, cotton rolls and silk flowers, and a chemist’s with shelves filled with bottles of pills and potions.

The street was expanded this year, with new backstreets to explore. Ducking beneath a washing line, we peered inside the clockmaker’s shop, with its delicate tools and lovely sound of ticking clocks.

W Kendricks’ Toy Dealer and Fancy Repository was home to antique toys including a wooden Noah’s Ark set, and further along we called into Terrys sweet shop, where endless jars were filled with sweets made to Victorian recipes originally sold by the York confectioners. Among them were butter drops, sugar mice and ‘conversation lozenges’.

My nephews, Sam and Jack, had fun in the schoolroom, where Queen Victoria glared from her portrait at rows of wooden benches. Jack liked the music shop, too, with its array of instruments including a banjo and zither.

The museum is split into two halves, either side of the cafe and shop. The second half explores York’s bloody past, with an impressive assortment of swords and guns.

Shuffling past spooky figures of Elizabethan soldiers in armour, brandishing bayonets on pikes, we moved onto First World War weaponry. The boys looked through a periscope from the trenches and held a grenade, which the guide explained would be thrown 50 metres by a soldier, exploding five seconds after it was lit. My dad recognised the same rifles he used in National Service in the 1950s!

In the Second World War section, shop windows displayed rationed food, wartime fashions and uniforms worn by the Home Guard and Land Army girls.

Further on was Toy Stories, a delightful exhibition of toys from the past century. Among them were lead soldiers, a Meccano set, a Sindy doll and Action Man, a train set, a Sooty puppet and an E.T. doll. Lovely old footage from the Yorkshire Film Archive showed little girls playing with a dolls’ tea set, and children opening presents on Christmas morning.

I loved the 1715 Heslington Baby House, one of the country’s earliest dolls’ houses.

The Sixties gallery explores the music, fashion, pop art and daily life of the swinging decade, from Beatlemania to Mary Quant mini dresses. “That’s like the one I had,” said my dad, making a beeline for the Lambretta scooter.

On the way out, we put a coin in an old penny slot machine called ‘An English Execution’. A fitting nod to the centuries of justice and incarceration carried out at the ancient castle site.

FACTFILE:

  • York Castle Museum is at the Eye of York.
     
  • lIt is open daily from 9.30am to 5pm.
     
  • Admission prices are: Adults £8.50, concessions £7.50, children under 16 free. Tickets are valid for 12 months.
     
  • For more information, ring (01904) 687687 or visit yorkcastlemuseum.org.uk