[2] In this context, the burgh council decided to commission a town hall: the new building was designed in the neoclassical style, built in ashlar stone and was completed in 1858.

The expanded museum was re-opened on the site by Lord Lieutenant of Orkney and Shetland, Alfred Baikie, in February 1931.

[5] The museum's Orkney naval history collections include artefacts recovered from the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow and sunken Royal Navy ships, including a dumaresq from the Dreadnought battleship, HMS Vanguard.

[8] The museum's natural history collection includes displays of taxidermied birds, fossils, and molluscs, including items collected by Charles Clouston and Robert Rendall, and the Homosteus milleri fossil discovered by Hugh Miller.

[9] In 2016, the museum discovered a 5,000-year-old neolithic whalebone figurine in its Skara Brae collection that had long been considered lost.