The original Sheringham Museum was a charming muddle, spread across converted fishermen's cottages and washhouses behind the main street, the kind of small-town volunteer institution that wears its years lightly. As collections grew, particularly after the town acquired its third restored lifeboat, the cottages could no longer cope. The breakthrough came in 1996 when Anglian Water bought the cleared site of The Mo from North Norfolk District Council. The amenity building they constructed on the storm tank was leased to the council and stood empty until 2009, when council and water company agreed to hand the keys to the museum trust. The Mo opened in its new home in April 2010, with light-filled galleries, room for the lifeboats, and a sweeping view of the sea.

The Mo took its name from a house that took its name from a girl. Morag Pigott, daughter of Sir Thomas Digby Pigott, was born in 1881 into the extended Upcher family whose estates dotted this stretch of coast. The house called The Mo eventually passed to Richard Frederick Hayward, a maritime lawyer and farmer awarded the Military Cross. He was the last owner. The army requisitioned it in 1940 for what was initially planned as defence against invasion but became, in practice, urban warfare training: troops smashing through walls and clearing rooms with bayonets. By 1946 the house was beyond repair and was pulled down. The site became a bandstand and a children's playground before it became a sewer tank. The name persisted through every transformation.

Sheringham itself reaches back at least a thousand years and probably much further. There is evidence of Roman occupation and Viking settlement around the town. The name itself is thought to be Norse: Scira's home, a personal name from the Danelaw period when much of eastern England was governed under Scandinavian law and language. By the 18th century Sheringham was a fishing village. By the late 19th century, with the railway arriving and a new fashion for sea bathing, it began turning into a holiday resort. The two identities, fishing and tourism, never quite separated. The museum traces both: the gansey jumpers that fishermen and their wives knitted in distinctive Sheringham patterns, the holiday postcards, the lifeboats that bridged the two worlds.

The collection of restored Sheringham lifeboats is what The Mo is best known for. There are four boats in the building and a fifth nearby, drawn from a town that lived and died by the sea for centuries. JC Madge, on display inside the museum, served Sheringham from 1904. Forester's Centenary worked the same coast from the 1930s. The Manchester Unity of Oddfellows came later, the kind of vessel paid for by friendly society subscriptions and named accordingly. Standing beside them, you can read the entire 20th-century evolution of British inshore lifeboat design, from heavy oar-and-sail self-righting pulling boats to motorised craft with diesel engines. Each boat saved lives. Several lost crew along the way. The Mo is now the lead body for the Gansey Heritage Network and a coordination point for Maritime Heritage East.

Built into the museum is the visitor centre for the Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm, switched on in 2012 some twenty kilometres offshore. From the museum's seaward windows the turbines are visible on a clear day, white masts on the horizon turning steadily in the same North Sea winds that drove the old herring drifters home in autumn and took some of them down in storms. The juxtaposition is hard to miss. The fishing fleet that built this town has dwindled to a handful of crab boats. The lifeboats have been retired into the building. The wind farm out beyond the breakwater represents a new way of working the sea, its visitor centre tucked among the gansey jumpers and the lifeboat brass.