A visit to Beamish, near the former colliery town of Stanley in
County Durham, north east England, quickly confirms that this is a
museum unlike any other.
Opened in 1972, and occupying three hundred acres of Durham's
countryside, Beamish was England's first open-air museum. In the
last four decades, this authentic recreation of everyday life in a
north-eastern industrial community during the Victorian/Edwardian
era has won a host of awards and become famous worldwide.
The Beamish Museum is dedicated to the preservation of regional
customs, traditions and ways of life that would otherwise have been
lost in the march of modernisation. Beamish successfully achieves
this thanks to its life-sized replicas of period locations which
are accurate to the finest detail. Beamish's Edwardian Town, for
example, contains many authentic structures reclaimed from towns
and villages throughout north-east England, and features
recreations of a typical inn, Co-operative store, sweet shop, bank,
dentist and other businesses as they were at the beginning of the
twentieth century.
Superbly entertaining and enjoyable for every visitor, Beamish
also features a recreated mining village and colliery, an Edwardian
railway station and steam railway, a Victorian farm, and Pockerley
Old Hall; a luxurious manor house. Historic transport, including a
tramway, vintage-style bus and, during the summer, a steam
locomotive carry visitors between the various attractions at this
unforgettable museum.
The Beamish open-air museum accurately recreates every aspect of
life in the Victorian and Edwardian period. Despite this the museum
is fully accessible and as such is suitable for everyone to
enjoy.
Staff in authentic period costume act out their roles with
enthusiasm and add to the general feeling that visitors have
'stepped back in time'. They're also on hand to answer any
questions and to demonstrate the various trades and skills that
people of the time would have had. In the Edwardian sweet shop, for
example, visitors can watch toffee and other confectionery being
made by hand.
The scale and diversity of the Beamish museum and the attractions
it offers - from descending into the colliery village's mine to
trying out traditional recipes at Old Pockerley Hall - ensures that
there are no dull moments - in fact, there probably isn't enough
time to experience everything that Beamish offers in a single
day.
Luckily, there are several places within the museum at which to
relax and take a bite to eat, from traditional fish and chips
cooked the old-fashioned way on a coal-fired range to a host of
goodies including freshly-made bread, pies, biscuits and cakes from
Beamish's most-recent addition, 'Joseph Herron's': an Edwardian
baker's shop.
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