Beamish, the Living Museum of the North, Open-air museum in County Durham, England
Beamish, the Living Museum of the North is an open-air museum in County Durham, England, displaying buildings from different decades and offering visitors a view of life over a hundred years ago. The site spans a wide area with reconstructed communities, a railway station, a farm, and a mine, all of which can be walked through.
Frank Atkinson founded the site in 1970 to preserve workplaces and neighborhoods from the industrial northeast of England as many of these structures were disappearing. Over the following decades, more historical buildings were moved here and reconstructed to represent different eras.
The name comes from the nearby village of Beamish and includes buildings from different decades such as shops, a schoolhouse, and workers' cottages. Throughout the streets, costumed staff speak and demonstrate old crafts, so you can watch directly and sometimes help with tasks.
The site is large, so comfortable shoes and enough time to visit the different areas are recommended. Historical trams and buses run between the communities and make it easier to cover longer distances.
You can touch and hold many objects, which is not allowed in most historical sites. In addition, old machines run and show industrial processes from past times that you usually only see in books.
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