Beamish Museum

Beamish is an astonishing open air museum, telling the story of life in North East England during the 1820s, 1900s, 1940s and 1950s. It was the vision of Dr Frank Atkinson, the museum’s founder and first director, who could see the industrial heritage of the north east fading away and set out to preserve it. So, in 300 acres on the site of a Durham coalfield, you will find a town from the 1900s, a pit village, colliery, Edwardian railway, 1940s farm – and more. Many of the buildings have been painstakingly relocated from their original sites and rebuilt; others are faithful replicas. There are thousands of exhibits, many of them working, and the museum is further brought to life with the help of costumed re-enactors.