John Goodall: Every attraction has a visitor threshold and pushing beyond it is destructive
The Natural History Museum is officially the most visited UK museum but, this week's Athena asks, how much do visitor numbers matter?
This week saw the release by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) of its annual listing of visitor figures for 2025. Every year, Athena examines these statistics with mixed feelings. It’s fantastic that the Natural History Museum set a new record and became the most visited UK museum or gallery ever with 7,116,929 attendees. What an astonishing achievement.
Added to which, she is fascinated to try and discern in the figures the state of the sector ALVA represents. There were, for example, 165 million visits in 2025 to the attractions listed here, a 7% decline on the 170 million visits in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. In other words, it’s still a struggle.
The Bachelors Club, a National Trust for Scotland museum in Tarbolton, Ayrshire, made famous by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, was ranked number 409 on the list.
The Tate Modern, however, was ranked the fourth most visited attraction in the UK.
No less intriguing are the implied fortunes of the 409 individual venues surveyed. It’s heartening, for example, to see the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery return to life last year with 672,391 visitors (a 305% increase on the previous year). Athena’s most recent visit to this outstanding collection in 2022 — when most of the building was closed and the accessible rooms colonised with temporary exhibitions — ranks among the most depressing she has ever made to a great museum. Clearly, she needs to go back.
Tate Modern, meanwhile, has had a fractional decline in visitors from 2024, which, in turn, marked a 25% decline on the figure for 2019. Last year, Athena speculated on whether the popularity of this institution might be waning. Possibly, but, with 4,514,266 visitors and ranked the fourth most visited attraction in the UK, it can’t be described as failing.
Top small museums worth visiting
- The Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Merseyside An outstanding collection of art, furniture and period rooms assembled by Lord Leverhulme in memory of his wife on the outskirts of the industrial town he created to manufacture soap. The museum was built in 1914-22. The town and its church is well worth a visit as well.
- Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle The party piece of this museum is a mechanical swan that was first displayed in 1773 at the Mechanical Museum in London. There is much beside, however, to enjoy. The mid 19th-century taste for French art reflected in the collection is echoed in another remarkable museum of the period, Cliffe Castle, Keighley, West Yorkshire
- Watts Gallery and Chapel, Compton This combines a galley of George Watt's work, the house he occupied — Limnerslease — and the superb cemetery chapel created by his wife Mary with the help of a local workforce 1895 and 1904
- Temple Newsam House, Leeds A spectacular collection of the decorative arts presented in the rooms of a great country house on the edge of Leeds.
- Russell-Cotes Museum, Bournemouth The creation of a hotelier and his wife, this opulent building and its fine collections offer a fascinating insight into the eclectic tastes — shaped by global travel — of the late Victorian period.
Then there is the recovery in the numbers going to the National Gallery. The 2025 figure of 4,147,544 visitors is still nearly one-third down on that for 2019, but the whole gallery only reopened for its 250th anniversary in May 2025, five months into the year. In the circumstances, that seems healthy. Why, then, Athena’s ambivalence about the figures?
Well, partly because the list implicitly equates success with numbers of visitors. Yet Tate Britain is not a quarter of Tate Modern because it attracts a comparatively modest 1,149,325 visitors. Added to which, the list focuses attention on the big players, which are predominantly in London (with all the advantages that brings). Finally, Athena’s experience of going to major attractions makes her wonder what we are celebrating at the head of the list.
In her mind, every attraction has a visitor threshold and pushing beyond it is destructive. Last weekend, for example, she dropped into the British Museum — number two with 6,440,120 attendees in 2025 — and the crowds were more than oppressive. Frankly, for all the riches on display, she wished herself miles away. Actually, she wanted to be at number 409 on the list, the Bachelors’ Club, Tarbolton, South Ayrshire, founded by the poet Robert Burns, run by the National Trust of Scotland and with a humane visitor count of 461 in 2025 (up from 350 in 2024).
This feature originally appeared in the March 25, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
