The workers’ stories of the North East brought to life at Beamish Museum, Stanley, County Durham DH9 0RG

 

HEARTWARMING DAY OUT

The workers’ stories of the North East brought to life

Beamish Museum, Stanley, County Durham DH9 0RG

 Beamish Museum is a unique place with its open-air mixture of town and country stretching across its 350-acre site.

Little wonder it’s enjoyed daily by thousands of visitors who can discover how previous generations worked the land, including in the bowels of it, before the vast majority of rural workers were swept into towns and cities to work in industry.

“Agriculture and pits are central to the North East’s history,” explains locally born Samantha Shotton, Beamish’s Chief Operating Officer, dressed as an appropriate well-to-do Victorian period dress. “Our founder Frank Atkinson in the 1960s could visual the loss of the traditional way of life for ordinary people,” and so he set out to preserve examples of everyday life in urban and rural life.

Just off the A1M and located outside Stanley, midway between Durham City and Newcastle, Beamish, opened in 1972, is a great day out for all ages.

Increasing numbers of Unite members who make an annual pilgrimage to the Durham Miners’ Gala on the second Saturday in July may want to consider taking time out to make the short trip.

The ticket price, which helps pay the wages of up 550 staff in the summer that are engaged on a range of jobs that includes working with animals and maintaining the historic moving trams and buses that younger children particularly love getting on and off, includes multiple visits.

For older visitors the Museum, open all year, also has regular health and wellbeing group sessions. These are located in Clover Cottage, which is packed with sights, sounds, smells and tastes that are familiar to dementia sufferers. This work is based in Beamish’s most recently recreated 1950s town, chosen after research amongst its visitors.

Close by resides both the 1940s and 1900s towns. The latter’s busy main street is packed with shops, including one advertising opportunities to escape poverty by emigrating to Canada and the US, that leads down to Rowley Station. It was the invention of the railways that transformed trade, thus enabling the growth of new industries regionally and worldwide.

One of the most hauled and valuable North East goods was coal, the mining of which in 1913 employed 165,246 men across Durham in 304 mines including the former Mahogany Drift Mine that Beamish visitors can access today before exploring a 1900s pit village.

Beamish’s oldest building, parts dating back to the 1440s, is Pockerley Old Hall, with its beautiful Georgian gardens and view. This was home to Mr. William Morgan, one of 13 local tenant farmers in 1825.

Engager Kevin Carroll explains Morgan “did very well such that we later find him living in Chester-Le-Street as a gentleman. It was a period when the rural landscape was changing dramatically away from strip farming to the larger fields combining agriculture and livestock.”

Those employed by Morgan did not do as well.

“You’d be taken on at a local hiring fair in the spring time, required to work extremely hard from the moment the sun came up till it went down and only get paid after the harvest. If you were not pulling your weight then you were gone as there was plenty of other people out there who needed work.”

Some workers who slept at the Hall would be forced to sleep up to six in a bed which they accessed through a roof top hole as they were not allowed to use the main stairs just in case they dirtied the carpets or disturbed their employer.

“Two apprentice farmers, the sons of nearby farmers, had a separate bedroom next door,” explains Kevin, who has worked at the Museum for 20 years and still really enjoys doing so by describing it “like a giant family.”

Fast forwarding to over a century later, stories of wartime life can be found on the 1940s farm where in front of a blazing hot coal fire, Pam Hudson, one of 300 volunteers, was clearly enjoying herself explaining to visitors about the importance of the Land Girls, reformed at the start of WWII to replace male workers sent off to fight

“Nationally in 1944 there were 80,000 and, despite having no previous agricultural experience, they helped increase food production from a low in 1943 by tackling a big rat problem, milking cows, planting vegetables, sugar beet and wheat for flour.

“We have lots to be thankful for and I like to tell, especially to the children, their stories as otherwise their achievements will be forgotten.”

Visitors can also access a 1950s farm to discover the story of how hard it was to make a living from upland farming and traditional rural skills in the North East just after the war.

Add in the sheer beauty of the location and its animals, wildlife and trees that mean visitors can just sit or stroll around doing little then it’s no wonder visitors enjoy their day out.

“We have been in the cafe” explains Janice, whose daughter Jessie, pushing her son Arthur in his wheelchair, said “she especially liked looking round the old houses and admiring the wallpaper.”

For Oliver, a regular visitor, his favourite parts of the museum are the “trams, park, picnic and pigs,” whilst according to his nan Alison the four-year old has also developed a “real love in the growth of the animals. He learns lots coming here.”

That’s heartwarming for Samantha Shotton to hear. “If children come with their families and they start a conversation with another generation that can be really important for both. Also because of our approach then learning can be fun as well. All of which combines to keep the history of the North East going.” Which was, of course, Frank Atkinson’s aim.