The museum is located on the campus of Newcastle University, next to the Great North Road, and close to Barras Bridge.

One of the Second World War air raid shelter openings into the Victoria Tunnel is beneath the grounds of the museum.

[2] The collection of the Hancock Museum can be traced to about 1780 when Marmaduke Tunstall started accumulating ethnographic and natural history material from around the world.

The Hatton Gallery is also a part of the Great North Museum Project, but is not relocating to the Hancock, and is remaining in Newcastle University's Fine Art Building.

[14] Among the museum's permanent residents are a life-size cast of an African elephant; the Egyptian mummy Bakt-en-Hor (previously known as Bakt-hor-Nekht); a full size replica of a T-Rex skeleton; and Sparkie, Newcastle's famous talking budgie, who was stuffed after his death in 1962 and is now the subject of a new opera by Michael Nyman.

The model was crafted by Zephyr Wildlife, who took a cast from an actual stuffed elephant at a museum in Bonn in Germany.

[17] The full size model of a T-Rex dinosaur has been shipped from Canada, where it was built by a company called Research Casting International.

[19] Other exhibitions include 'Hadrian's Wall' looking at Roman life in the north of England, 'Natural Northumbria' focusing on the wildlife found in the northeast, 'Ancient Egypt' looking at the Ancient Egyptians and featuring the museum's two mummies, 'Ice Age to Iron Age' detailing the history of the British Isles over the past 12,000 years, 'World Cultures' featuring artifacts and displays from cultures across the globe, 'The Shefton Collection' with one of the most detailed collections of Greek artifacts in the UK and 'Explore' which is a more hands-on area of the museum and features regular interactive sessions.

[20] There were live animals on display but these have now been withdrawn, as well as a conference area for corporate events and a fully provisioned learning suite for school visits.

[21] The interactive Bio-Wall features hundreds of creatures, that visitors will be able to investigate and find out where they live and how they survive in such extreme places as the Arctic and Desert.

There is also a great white shark display, polar bear and giraffe specimens from the historic Hancock collections and a moa skeleton.

Within the museum's archives are the nineteenth century botanical paintings by Margaret Rebecca Dickinson of plants from the Newcastle and Scottish Borders region.