It is one of two museums operated by the local borough council, along with the Captain Cook birthplace in Stewart Park.

Since then, galleries of the local Linthorpe Art Pottery, work by Victorian industrial designer Christopher Dresser, and Middlesbrough's history have eclipsed this early theme.

The Dorman Museum has eight permanent display galleries and a changing temporary exhibition spaces on the ground floor.

[4] The museum also has a Victorian style tearoom on the ground floor, named Dresser's Tea Room.

[5] The original collection included items such as a stuffed and mounted eagle owl in the act of taking a hare; a stuffed lion in a "rampant" pose; and many birds' eggs, butterflies, and insects preserved under glass and in drawers, with covers over the glass to avoid the effects of light on the specimens.

Principally at the Bronze Age hillfort at Eston Nab and burial grounds at Loose Howe, also, a dug-out canoe recovered from the Tees 8-foot (2.4 m)deep in 1926 is on view.

The museum started to collect everyday objects in the 1930s, recognising that society was rapidly changing and old ways of life disappearing.

Sir Alfred Pease, in addition to his hunting trophies, also gave a collection of beadwork from North-East Africa.

George Lockwood Dorman within his brief life had managed to collect ethnographical items from abroad, including Australia, New Zealand, Oceania – and South Africa when he was stationed there during the Boer War.

[17] A popular seasonal item was a beehive in an acrylic glass case with an exit through a side window, allowing to seeing the bees at work.

Measuring around 13 feet square this plan, painted on sailcloth, shows the extent and detail of the Lordship of Acklam Estates.