The people of the Chester-le-Street Amateur Cine Society document one day in the early years of Beamish Open Air Museum in rich 8mm Kodachrome. Compared to present day Beamish, the attractions and exhibitions are incredibly sparse, giving the impression this is very much still a work-in-progress museum. An open air museum is a museum that displays objects, artefacts and buildings outdoors and is traditionally associated with folk museums. Open air museums aim to bring history to life through...

The people of the Chester-le-Street Amateur Cine Society document one day in the early years of Beamish Open Air Museum in rich 8mm Kodachrome. Compared to present day Beamish, the attractions and exhibitions are incredibly sparse, giving the impression this is very much still a work-in-progress museum.

An open air museum is a museum that displays objects, artefacts and buildings outdoors and is traditionally associated with folk museums. Open air museums aim to bring history to life through careful preservation, restoration or reconstruction of entire towns, home, villages and workplaces. The concept originated in Scandinavia in the late 19th century to document the folk traditions of rural areas. Also known as living-history museums, they included working farm museums where actors in full costume reflected historical life.

The concept of an open air museum in the north east was the brain child of then-director of the Bowes Museum Frank Atkinson. Inspired by these Scandinavian folk museums, Atkinson aimed to preserve the history of everyday life in the north east including, artefacts, buildings, customs and regional dialects. By presenting history in a ‘living’ way, visitors could walk around recreated towns and industrial sites and workshops and interact with actors playing out the roles of typical working life, Beamish would provide a participatory and more meaningful experience of local history.

In 1958 Atkinson proposed the idea to Durham County Council, advising the urgent collection of everyday objects to be stored in buildings on the Bowes estate. In 1966 when the collection became substantial, Atkinson set up a working party to create a museum for, what he described as, “the purpose of studying, collecting, preserving and exhibiting buildings, machinery, objects and information illustrating the development of industry and the way of life of the north of England."

Beamish Museum as it would be called was selected to sit on a 200 acre estate in the grounds of Beamish Hall near Stanley, County Durham, a mid-18th-century country house, now converted to a hotel. We see Beamish Hall in this film, which held the first ‘Museum in the Making’ exhibition in 1971 and included objects moved from the holding area at Bowes. The museum officially opened to the public in 1972, but it was in 1973, the year in which this filmed was made, that the first buildings were erected and the Beamish Tramway was installed. The following years would see the building of the Town station and the reconstruction of a colliery in 1976, followed by the opening of a drift mine in 1979. Beamish has a main focus on the Victorian and Edwardian era however current plans include the development of a 1950s town to ensure the museum also has a ‘living memory’ section.

Highlights of the museum in this film include the coal mine steam excavator, a gin gang and the aforementioned Tramway. The steam excavator is a Ruston Bucyrus 25-RB, built in 1931, and is one of the last steam shovels built. The excavator’s last place of work was a chalk quarry at Hessle in Yorkshire and it was transported to Beamish by the British Army on a tank transporter.

A gin gang, also known as a wheelhouse or roundhouse, is a circular, square or octagonal structure used to house a horse engine, with most British gin gangs being built in late 18th and early 19th centuries. The gin gang at Beamish dates from the early 19th century and its accompanying horse mill have been unused since the 1830s after portable engines superseded them. The mill was transported to the museum from Berwick Mills Low Farm in Northumberland.

The Beamish Tramway runs for 1.5 miles in a circuit of the museum and is a significant attraction for visitors. The Tramway, partially opened in 1973 and completed in 1993, is the longest preserved tramway in the country. This attraction reflects the history of electric powered trams in the area, which were introduced to replace horse drawn vehicles to meet the needs of swelling populations in towns across the North East from the late 1890s. In the film we see the Gateshead 10 tram, one of a batch of single-deck cars built during 1920-1928 by the Gateshead and District Tramways Co. at its Sunderland Road works. This particular car was built in 1925 and was in use until 1951 when the Gateshead system was discontinued. The cars were bought by the Eastern Region of British Railways to work on their electric railway between Grimsby and Immingham which ran until 1961, then they were retained by the British Transport Commission for preservation. In 1968 the Gateshead 10 car was selected and restored for inclusion in the anticipated Beamish Museum, where it still transports visitors around the museum today. (1)

References:

(1) Gateshead 10 http://beamishtransportonline.co.uk/transport-stocklist/tramway/gateshead-tram-10/