The museum features period business displays including the shops of a barber, blacksmith, chemist, cobbler, cooper, printer, gentleman's draper, dairy, and hardware store.

Its collection is housed in a fine regency period Grade II* listed mansion with farm outbuildings.

[3] Despite poor eyesight due to a childhood affliction with measles, Smith developed a love of photography, opening a photographic business in the 1900s and operating it with his wife, Maud, until World War I.

Most of the images date from the 1920s to the late 1940s and are of Pickering and the surrounding villages, events, and local people.

[4] Smith's collection was described in 2000 as presenting "a remarkable picture of the Rydale area as it was more than half a century ago.