William Robinson was a wealthy London merchant who never forgot Penrith. In 1670 he endowed a school for girls in Middlegate, teaching reading and what the regulations quaintly called seamstry work. The original 29 pupils were drawn largely from the poor and illegitimate children of the parish, supervised by the local overseers of the poor. The school had an Anglican character that made it part of the town's effort to instil Protestant values and useful skills in the next generation of working women. Above the door, in Latin, the inscription still reads: from the resources of William Robinson, citizen of London, in the year 1670. The building outlasted its purpose. It was a school for almost 300 years before becoming the town museum, the original schoolroom now a gallery, the spirit of practical philanthropy now expressed through display cases.

The collection follows the contours of local life. From the deep past come the dinosaur footprint and Stone Age tools. From the Roman period come over 600 bronze coins hoarded at Newby near Shap around AD 320-340, alongside Roman jewellery found locally. Medieval Penrith appears as the town's official seal and old market toll measures, and as the gold posy ring with its arresting inscription Kepe Faith Till Death, a phrase that has outlasted whoever first read it on a finger or in a hand. There are pottery sherds, household tools, and the elephant's tooth, which was dredged out of the moat at Penrith Castle and is exactly the sort of object that makes a small museum more interesting than a large one. Nobody is quite sure how it got there. It is enough that it did.

The mementoes of local personalities turn the museum into a sort of three-dimensional family album of the town. Trooper William Pearson, a cavalryman whose name is remembered though not nationally famous. William Jameson (1837-1888), the Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling champion, whose belts and trophies fill a substantial corner. Wrestling here is not WWE theatre but a traditional grappling style with distinct holds and clothing, still practised at Lake District shows. And Percy Toplis, the Monocled Mutineer, a Penrith-born soldier who became a notorious fugitive after the First World War and was finally shot dead by police in 1920. His story spawned a controversial 1986 BBC drama. The museum holds him here without too much commentary, a complicated local son among the wrestling belts and Roman coins.

Modern Eden has not stopped producing finds. The 1996 Treasure Act, which requires metal detectorists to declare significant discoveries, has steadily added new objects to the case displays. A Charles I medallion from Kirkby Stephen. A medieval coin hoard from Crosby Ravensworth. A gold and amethyst gemstone ring from Waitby. In February 2020 the museum acquired a clutch of items through the Portable Antiquities Scheme: a medieval silver finger ring from Kirkby Thore dating from around 1150-1250, a 13th-century gold stirrup-shaped finger ring from Waitby near Kirkby Stephen, a medieval silver teardrop brooch made between 1200 and 1400. The fine art collection includes Dutch and Flemish landscapes alongside paintings by 19th-century Penrith artist Jacob Thompson, including his The Druids Cutting Down the Mistletoe. In 2018 BBC's Antiques Road Trip featured the wrestling memorabilia. The museum has been accredited number 153 by Arts Council England. It is small. It is specific. It is exactly what a town museum should be.