Meet the ancestors
Alex Middleton explores the nation’s living history attractions, where your group can see, touch and hear the past brought back to life.
Groups looking to explore the history of the British Isles will find that ‘living history’ attractions offer them an entertaining way to experience the world of the past first-hand. From seeing and smelling a viking city to drinking in a war-time pub, there are a broad range of destinations where recreationists and historians have worked together to produce a realistic picture of history for you to discover.
Manor and village
The institution of the manor and its attached villages once dominated many people’s way of life. Based on what we know of these times, this lost world has been brought back to life at sites across the UK, where your group can experience it for themselves.
In East Sussex, groups can learn more about life in Britain’s large houses at Michelham Priory. Groups are offered a discount on entry and can see recreationists living and working in the pre-Roman chieftain’s round-house, the forerunner of the manor.
In West Sussex, your group can explore village life as it was between 1300 and 1900 at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. The Museum houses over 40 reconstructed historic buildings, including medieval cottages and a watermill. Groups receive a discount on entry and can pre-book a guided tour.
To meet recreationists in period costume and learn from them as they act out historic characters, groups can visit the 1642 Living History Museum in Gosport. The Museum encompasses a small village perpetually set in the 17th century. Walking tours are available at a discount to groups.
To further explore the history of British village life, groups can head to the Chiltern Open Air Museum in Buckinghamshire, where over 30 historic buildings, ranging from an Iron Age House to a Victorian Farm, have been recreated. Groups are offered a discount on entrance and can pre-book guided tours, as well as cream teas and lunches.
Groups who want to step even further back in time to learn about life between the 5th and 7th centuries can visit West Stow Country Park and Anglo Saxon Village in Suffolk. The Village, which offers discounts and guided tours to pre-booked groups, has been constructed on the site of an original Anglo Saxon village and features six houses, a weaving house and lord’s hall.
Farm to factory
With the coming of the industrial revolution in the 19th century British life changed irreversibly. From life on 18th century farms to living in the towns of Britain’s industrial heyday, your group can see this change at living history attractions across the country.
Heading to the Channel Islands, groups can discover what rural life used to be like on Jersey at Hamptonne, a restored 18th century farm. Visiting groups are offered discounts on entry as well as pre-booked guided tours.
Moving to England, the open air Museum of Kent Life in Maidstone explores the history of everyday rural life in the south east. Housing several historic buildings and a heritage farm, it also offers groups discounts on entry.
Also in the west country, your group can experience the sights and sounds of port life in the 1860s at Devon’s Morwellham Heritage Centre. Groups receive discounts on entry and can pre-book a tour with a guide in Victorian costume. To discover more about the history of mining in the west country, your group can also head to Cornwall’s Geevor Tin Mine near Penzance. Groups, who are offered a discount on entrance, can go underground with a guide to tour the mine’s 18th century tunnels.
Wales was also a major centre for mining during the 19th and 20th centuries. Your group can learn more about the area’s mining heritage at three Welsh attractions. At the Big Pit: National Coal Museum in Torfaen you can take a guided tour of the old mine workings and tunnels for free.
Not far from here your group can also go underground to experience life as a miner at the Rhondda Heritage Park, which offers groups discounts on entry.
Meanwhile, in Ceredigion, your group can uncover more about the nation’s mining history at the Llywernog Silver-Lead Mine, where groups receive a discount on entrance, as well as guided tours of the tunnels and the surface workings.
In Shropshire, groups can experience 20th century nostalgia at the Land of Lost Content, which features a collection relating to British home-life and popular culture over the last century with items ranging from 20s wireless sets to ration cards and 70s clothing.
Further north, in West Yorkshire, ‘king coal’, as it was called, was at the centre of the regional economy throughout the industrial revolution. At the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield, which is free to enter, your group can also tour the colliery buildings and tunnels with an ex-miner.
To learn more about life in the north east during the industrial age, your group can head to Woodhorn – Northumberland Museum and Archives, north of Newcastle. The Museum, which is free to enter, recreates 20th century colliery life in its permanent Coal Town Exhibition and offers groups guided tours of the site’s former pit buildings and workings.
To learn about Scottish rural life, meanwhile, groups can visit the Highland Folk Museum in Newton Moor. The open air Museum looks at highland life over the last 300 years. Entrance is free and tours with a curator can be pre-booked.
On the city streets
Despite the changes in the world over the centuries, the practicalities of city life often remain the same. From transport in the early 19th century to shopping during the war, your group can see how our forebears dealt with city life at historic attractions across the UK.
With three sites in the south and east at Battle, in East Sussex, and at Sutton and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, the Yesterday’s World living history museums focus on life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At its sites, your group can walk down recreated Victorian streets or take tea in a 1930s Lyons Corner House. Visiting groups are offered discounts on entry at all three of the sites.
Similarly, at Milestones – Hampshire’s Living History Museum, groups can walk down recreated Victorian streets with characters in 19th century costume. Groups are offered a discount on entrance to the attraction, where, amongst other things, you can visit an inter-war records shop and drink in a recreated Edwardian pub.
Moving to Devon, at Bygones near Torquay, groups can learn more about city life in Victorian England on its recreated 19th century streets. Groups are also offered discounts on entry.
For more on life in Britain’s towns and cities during the last war, groups can head to the Flambards Experience near Helston in Cornwall. Here you can walk down the recreation of a recently blitzed wartime street and visit a 1940s pub. Groups are offered a discount on entry.
With buildings such as a pub and a cinema from the 1920s, re-erected in its 1900s village, the open-air Black Country Living Museum in Dudley recreates life in a Midlands town at the beginning of the 20th century. Your group can eat in a 1930s ‘fried fish shop’, see the trams and trolleybuses that would once have been a feature of most urban streets and meet characters such as a 1920s policeman and telegram delivery boy in period costume. Group rates on entrance are also available.
North of here, in York, groups can experience periods from the city’s past at two attractions, both of which offer groups discounts on entry. At York Castle Museum groups can see the recreated Victorian street, Kirkgate, which features period shops. Meanwhile, at the nearby JORVIK Viking Centre, groups can go even further back in time to explore a recreation of the city when it was one of the most important trading posts in the Viking empire.
Across the Pennines in Greater Manchester, the Portland Basin Museum explores everyday town life in the area at the beginning of the 20th century. The Museum, which is free to enter, offers pre-booked groups free guided tours.
Much of what we know of everyday life during this period comes to us from the work of early photgraphers such as Edward Chambré. In Liverpool your group can see his home and studio at 59 Rodney Street, which is now in the care of the National Trust, restored to its condition in the early 20th century. Groups receive discounts on entry and can pre-book a guided tour.
For more on life in 19th and 20th century Britain, your group can head further north to County Durham, where the open air museum Beamish features a reconstructed Edwardian town. Admission charges are discounted for groups.
All at sea
Throughout history, British communities have lived and worked side by side with the sea. At living history attractions, around the country your group can step back in time to explore and experience this maritime heritage.
For centuries Elizabeth Castle on the island of Jersey has defended the town of St Helier from seaborne attack. These days, groups can see the Castle’s history brought to life by the Jersey Militia, a recreation of the battalion formed to defend the island from the French in the 18th century, as well as the daily firing of the 18th century canon by a soldier in period costume. Groups are also offered discounts on entry.
Across the channel, meanwhile, groups can visit the 18th century village of Bucklers Hard, on the Beaulieu estate in Hampshire. The village was built in the 18th century for shipbuilders employed by the Royal Navy and has been restored to how it would have appeared in the Georgian period. Groups can book a guided tour and receive a discount on entrance.
Moving to Kent, groups can further explore Britain’s maritime history at the Historic Dockyard, Chatham, which was a Royal Naval base for over 400 years. Groups, who are offered a discount on admission, can book a tour of the dockyard with a guide in 19th century naval costume.
In London, meanwhile, your group can learn about life in the Tudor Royal Navy at the Golden Hinde Living History Museum. The Golden Hinde is a full-scale reconstruction of the ship in which Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, now moored on the Thames in Southwark.
In the north east, groups can also learn more about British naval history at the re-created 18th century dock, Hartlepool’s Maritime Experience. The attraction features a restored 18th century and the restored 200-year old naval frigate, HMS Trincomalee, which is moored alongside. Group discounts and guided tours are available.
Further north, in Edinburgh, groups can also tour the Royal Yacht Britannia, formerly the seaborne residence of the Queen. The ship, which was launched in 1953 and has since hosted international figures such as Sir Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela, offers pre-booked groups a discount on admission. Once on board you can take an audio tour around the decks, the former Royal cabins and the staterooms, which are kept much as they were when the Yacht was decommissioned in 1997 following her final voyage to Hong Kong for the hand-over of the colony to China. Groups can learn more about the traditions and precedents that grew up on the ship, where both naval and royal household protocol were the order of the day.