Bolton Priory was founded by the Augustinians in around 1154 in a setting of great beauty on a bend in the River Wharfe. On the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1534, the lead was stripped from all the roofs except for the nave of the church and the gatehouse; the nave is still intact. The front of the church is an outstanding example of Early English architecture.

A Citadel in grey brick and marble built on the riverbank dominated by the hall of steel a glass keep 30 metres high, the museum has housed since 1996 on six floors, a part of the armorial collection formerly in the Tower of London. The vast galleries are devoted to War, hunting, tournaments, Defence and to the weapons of Asia.

On the outskirts of the town, in three galleries, many objects from the life of the British in India, from the time of the India Company in the 17C to Indian Independence in 1947. The collection includes medals, drawings, models and letters as well as a mosque window, tiger skin and Indian clothes worn by EM Foster, author of A Passage to India.

Built in the 12C by a small band of Benedictines, in revolt against the slack discipline at their abbey in York, Fountains Abbey, a "place remote from all the world" became in less than a century the centre of an enormous enterprise, the profits from which paid for an ambitious construction programme. The complex fell into ruin after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 but was bought in 1768 by the Aislabie family, the owners of the adjacent Studley Royal estate.