Remaking Beamish

Beamish, The Living Museum of the North, is celebrating the largest single investment ever seen with a £10.9m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the Remaking Beamish project.

Remaking Beamish is the biggest development in Beamish’s history, with over 25 new exhibits and attractions bringing a new era to the museum in the form of a 1950s Town and 1950s farm.

Visitors will be able to go back to a time in living memory, the 1950s, and share memories of what life was like. The award-winning museum will also be able to tell a more complete story of the 1820s, the foundation period of the industrial era.

Front Street Terrace in The 1950s Town opened in spring 2022. Visitors are now able to pop into John’s Café, the hairdresser’s, fish and chip shop and No. 2 Front Street, the recreated home of artist Norman Cornish.

In 2022 the museum also opened Spain’s Field Farm. The farm has been moved stone by stone from Weardale and rebuilt at Beamish, to show what farming life was like in the 1950s.

The 1950s town continued to grow in 2023 with the addition of Aged Miners Homes, which will host sessions for old people living with dementia and a bowling green. Plus replicas of semi-detached council houses and a pair of police houses, where visitors can learn about the expansion of housing in the 1950s and what life was like on a new housing estate.

The first of the Remaking Beamish developments opened in 2018, where visitors can now visit Joe the Quilters Cottage – a recreation of the ‘lost’ home of the renowned Georgian quilter. Summer 2019 saw the opening of the 1950s Welfare Hall, the first exhibit to open in the 1950s Town. The hall hosts 1950s activities for visitors to enjoy, including music, dancing, crafts, keep fit and amateur dramatics, and also features an NHS clinic.

Among the new Remaking Beamish exhibits which opened in 2024 was the Drovers Tavern and Georgian pottery, where you can get a real taste of the past and get hands on making your own pottery. Plus at the 1950s Town you can now visit the 1950s cinema, and 1950s shops, including a toy shop, electrical store and record shop.

Still to come Beamish will open their Georgian accommodation, which will allow people to spend the night at the museum for the first time!