It is a unique collection of buildings, including the Grade II* listed 13th-century Vaughan's Mansion, one of only a handful of early medieval defensive hall houses remaining in the UK.

Occupying the main part of the site is the 19th-century Music Hall and Assembly Rooms, designed by Edward Haycock Snr in 1835 and listed as Grade II.

[4] The complex also includes a medieval shut (a passageway between buildings typical of Shrewsbury), 19th-century police holding cells (which were used to house defendants due to appear at trial in the Old Market Hall opposite) and a 20th-century civil defence bunker.

The new museum development made use of many of the old theatre's performance and dressing spaces whilst retaining the cafe and town's visitor information centre.

[5] In August 2019 the museum unveiled a new stained glass window created by local artist Nathalie Hildegarde Liege for permanent display.

[6] At a meeting held by the Shropshire and North Wales Natural History Society at Shrewsbury on 26 June 1835, it was resolved to establish a museum and scientific library:[7] ...principally designed to illustrate the natural history of the district, in its various branches of Geology, Mineralogy, Zoology, and Botany, by the gradual formation of complete and systematic arrangements of its productions, in each of these departments.

The museum also had close links to, and received donations from, eminent scientists of the time including Charles Darwin, Henry Blunt and Sir Roderick Impey Murchison.