Everyone should be beaming about Beamish Museum
Beamish Museum in the North East of England is an absolutely fantastic day out for all the family. It’s an outdoor museum set in the 1800s/early 1900s and, as you arrive at the site, an old-fashioned tram system allows you to hop on and hop off to visit all the different places in the grounds. There’s a town, railway station, manor house, farm, colliery and miners cottages - but it’s the fantastic attention to detail that makes it all such fun ………
The town was our first port of call because we guessed it would get busy later on. There are lots of old fashioned shops and houses that are inhabited by characters such as a dentist, a solicitor, a spinster, etc. But these are not just staff dressed in period costume - they are the characters themselves who tell you how people lived in those times, explaining the livelihoods of the people they represent - and they are all brilliant storytellers. It really is like walking into a living, breathing history book - with some stuff you can actually remember from your granny’s knee!
All the characters enjoyed being asked about ‘their lives’ and went to great pains to explain things. At the farm, two farm working wenches were making fresh bread and butter exactly as they would have done in those times. Despite the heat, the fire was roaring because, we were told, bread needs a hot oven. I was fascinated by the tales of the miners wives, making rag rugs, patchwork, sleeping 14 people to a house because that was the only way ‘dad’ could stay in the house once he was too old for mining work. Chris most enjoyed seeing how the colliery itself worked. In fact, all the men paid rapt attention to the engineering explanations - real ‘Boys Own’ stuff.
It cost us £16 each to get in (that includes an annual pass these days) but it really was good value for money. The trams are great fun because you can sit uptop in the fresh air, even though the grounds are very walkable. There are lots of eating places (the tea room in town is huge and served a delicious cream scone), lots of clean and tidy loos (with baby changing areas), and lots of welcome benches so you can have a 5 minute breather when needed. We spent a full day there, walked our socks off and came out beaming about Beamish.