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The Beamish Museum – Frozen in timesBy D.K. Bhaskar
How to Reach Beamish?By Air: New Castle-Upon-Tyne is the nearest airport. By Rail: Durham station is the nearest railhead. >From here, it would take 25 minutes by a taxi to reach Beamish. By Bus: Go Northern operates an hourly service on weekdays from Durham Bus station and stops in front of the gates of Beamish. For more information on Beamish, check these two websites.
http://www.beamish.org.uk/visitor-contact.html |
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TM
The
eighteen hundreds was an era of British rule across the Asian and African
sub-continents. It was an era when the Queen ruled the world from her throne in
London. An age when there were only two kinds of people known- the royals and
the commons. To us Indians, it was a time when the European countries were
strengthening their grips on our homeland. An age of the sahibs and the memsahibs. When the British Raj meant mysterious authorities from Europe, dukes,
duchesses, princes, celebrities, doctors, engineers and architects of the
Industrial revolution and perhaps much more! Little do we understand how it was
back in England at that time! This account of how the common man lived in
England is based on a museum called Beamish museum located in the Northeast of
England in a little town called Stanley in the Durham County. The setting is
that of a typical coal-mining village during the 1800’s.
Stanley
is about a 30-minute drive from Durham city. The approach to this little town is
beautiful as one gets the flavor of the villages of the by-gone era. Large
expanses of undulating moors and dales take us through pretty little villages.
The landscape is painted with grazing sheep and rapeseed blooms during the
summer. One does spot quite a few farmhouses or countryside inns on the way,
which have a unique character of their own. The only thing one needs to look out
for to visit Beamish is good weather (Sunny!) as this is completely an open-air
museum. Once inside this fascinating museum, one is transported a few centuries
back into history.
Let’s
begin our journey into the open-air museum at the tram station, which is near
the car park. Every twenty minutes a tram service operates which takes all the
tourists around the museum. One can hear the tram from a distance as its
clanging bells inform us of its arrival. It would a great idea to sit on the top
as one can get a panoramic view of the landscape. The tram stops at Manor house
and Town center before it returns back to the car park.
The first stop at the Manor house takes you to the coal-mining pit at Beamish.
One can actually enter into the mysterious dungeons with safety helmets and get
a feel for the hard and dangerous lives of the poor coal miners of the past. One
can also visit a tower that was used for transporting coal from the pits, which
has huge and complicated machinery. Outside the coal pit is an old school with
pretty ladies dressed in old-fashioned clothes of stern teachers! There are
about 4-5 classrooms with little benches and an open play area. Interestingly,
one can see the flags of the world displayed on a chart where India and
Burmah are represented by the Union Jack.
People
still bring their children to this place to make them understand how different
their schools are from this old school. One can see blackboards with elementary
Maths and English grammar lessons on them. Outside the school are a small church
and a farmhouse. There is also an office of some sort with ancient tables and
typewriters. This place comes alive with music and fanfare on May 1st,
symbolizing the festive spirit of the coal-miners.
The
next interesting place to view is the Town centre. The tram takes you there in
about 5 minutes from the first stop. The centre is an interesting place to see
with lots of shops and old houses. The candy shop is the star attraction of the
place where people get to eat old-fashioned treacle, delicious chocolates,
sweetmeats and dollies as they were made in the ancient times.
There
is an automobile shop for the motor crazy people, an old grocer’s shop, a
Barclays bank branch, a printing press, a stable with Victorian coaches, saddles
and reins, and a lovely park. The bandstand in the park provides a comfortable
place for a relaxed picnic. One can also take a ride in a grand coach drawn by
graceful horses at the centre.
Another
attraction of this place is the house of a teacher, lawyer and a dentist. Here
one can get to see the lifestyle of the common man of that era. The houses are
narrow and small. They have some exquisite pieces of art and furniture. Notable
among these are the drawers, chinaware, dolls, paintings and wooden furniture.
The dentist’s house has a clinic on the top floor along with a bedroom and a
child’s nursery.
Interestingly
we learnt at the dentist’s house that the instruments used by the modern day
dentists are not very different from those used by the dentists of the 19th
century!! On display are a variety of instruments and gas cylinders used for
anesthesia. The kitchens in all houses had a fireplace that was used for cooking
and neatly laid-out tables. One is indeed transported back into the Victorian
age while one visits these houses.
The
last interesting place to visit in the town centre is a railway station. An old
stationmaster can be found signaling the approaching trains that still run on
coal engines. One should not miss the vanilla ice cream available at a stall
near the station. The sugar cone and the ice cream available here are the best
we had ever tasted in the whole of England. One should not forget the gift shop
at Beamish where one can find dolls and models made out of coal.
A
daylong tour of Beamish really clears our murky vision and throws some light on
the lifestyle of the people in the Victorian era. Of course one would expect big
cities like London to have had a more sophisticated standard of living but by
and large, the life of a commoner was pretty much the same all across England.
Nowhere except in royal palaces did one see evidences of excessive materialistic
comforts. When compared with how our lives were in India at that time, I would
imagine that we pretty much had a comparable standard of living. Just that we
did not use forks and knives or depend heavily on engines!
Yet,
another remarkable feature about England as a whole is that any town or city has
still not lost its original identity. The same old stone buildings are in use
today; the shops and inns look pretty much the same from outside and even the
roads or the railway stations have not changed much. On the other hand we have
come a long way in the last two centuries in India and our cities and villages
have changed remarkably. Probably we as a country have borrowed a bit of all
cultures and have emerged as a country with a unique identity.