The Museum of Wigan Life tells the town's story from inside its former public library, a handsome Alfred Waterhouse building on Library Street. Its collections lean into the things that shaped Wigan: coal, mills, sport, music, family history, and the practical lives of a northern industrial town.
It is a modest museum, but a useful one if you want context before walking the canal and Wigan Pier Quarter. George Orwell researched parts of The Road to Wigan Pier in this building, which gives the place a literary charge beyond its display cases.