B

eamish Outdoor Museum

 

August 27, 2002






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Dave, Jhap, & Jan Bates with Dave's New Car

The impetus for our trip to Beamish Open-air Museum was the fact that Jan's brother Dave had not only just bought a car but had a week's vacation to boot. After several years working abroad he had come back to England for Chris and Sam's wedding, then found a job, and finally bought a car to make his commute a little easier. So another fine day (confounding weather predictions) we set off. Beamish is only some nine miles to the southwest of Newcastle upon Tyne; for us, coming from Darlington, it was a bit farther, about 35 miles to the northwest. (In fact, dreamer Gerry thought maybe oneday we could bicycle there.)

On a visit to England around 1990, Dave and Jan had tried to take Gerry to Beamish but the museum had been closed, so Gerry was the only one of the party that had not seen the museum before.  But we were all pleased to go again because the museum is a living organism and is constantly growing. 

Originally Beamish museum consisted of little more than a small farm and manor house from the eighteenth century set on over three hundred acres of pleasantly rolling wooded land, crossed by the Beamish Burn. The founder saw the old ways and old countryside disappearing before his eyes. We are lucky that he found sympathetic local officals to support him in his dreams. After getting its first legs there was little change for some years. But eventually (and happily) the original features were augmented by a cluster of miner's cottages from the early twentieth century and a pit head with some workings left over from the days when mining was the major occupation in this part of Durham county. 

Today, the mining village has been much expanded to include, among other things, a school and a Methodist chapel, and additional sections have been added to include a railway station and an early nineteenth century main street complete with Co-op store, bank, and pub (no self-respecting English town is complete without it's public house!). But Jan and Dave were very suprised to see how much was new to them. Gerry and Jhap just enjoyed it all.

Black leaded fireplace in a miner's cottage
Fireplace in a miner's cottage
Replica of the Stephenson locomotive "Locomotion"
Replica of the Stephenson locomotive "Locomotion"

For Jan and Dave lots of things brought back memories of childhood, particularly the Methodist chapel, as we were brought up as Methodists, and the miner's cottages with their old-fashioned fireplaces, mangles, and portable tin baths. The house we were born in had just such a fireplace, just such a mangle, and on a wall of our back yard hung two such tin baths.

The rich or rich at heart can get about the extensive grounds of Beamish by private horse drawn carriage or a small early automobile. We, true to our working class roots, took the open-topped tram to town, where we had our working class lunch. Funds exhausted, we walked from town to the other farm, where we saw game drying (and smelled it too) and dreamed of such a cozy stone house (all with mod-cons, of course).

A special treat that ended our day was a short ride on a replica of Locomotion, the locomotive designed and built by George Stephenson for the Stockton-to-Darlington railway. That for you not from England, opened in 1826, and was the first passenger railway in the world.

We covered only three-quarters of the place even though we arrived before opening and left at closing. If you are in the northeast of England, you should go out of your way to visit. 



-- A lot of money is tainted — It taint yours and it taint mine. -- A boiled! egg in the morning is hard to beat. -- He had a photographic memory that was never developed.



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Updated December 14, 2002