Brian Holden: Living museum a trip back in time

Beamish Living Village takes you back in time and down a coal mine. Photo / Supplied

The highlight of our last week in Yorkshire has been a day out at the Beamish Living Museum set up 45 years ago.

Spread over several hectares of Georgian landscape, the museum has a coal mine, farm, railway and town, including a Barclays Bank, school (moved and rebuilt stone by stone), church, grand Masonic Hall, dentist, bakery, grocers and garage. Circling the entire site is a tramway and bus system which allows visitors to move around the vast area, getting on and off as they wish.

The period is set between the early 1800s through to the early 1900s depending on what part you visit. It is when visiting places like these that you pack your lunch, aim to arrive early and plan to spend the entire day there.

Named as the National Heritage "Museum of the Year" a few years back, the museum is acclaimed as not just another historic display, but rather a movie set that takes you back in time. You are part of it, being able to stroll around the streets and mix with those who "live" there and share their experiences. Refreshing to see the staff wearing period clothing rather than the usual hi-viz vests and to see many visitors arrive also dressed likewise for the day's outing.

As we strolled around the streets and the railway yard, we spoke to "residents" cutting their hedges, polishing their cars and a glance in the distance showed farmers ploughing their fields. The old way of course - walking behind a plough drawn by Clydesdale horses.

The highlight, or should I say the lowlight, was being escorted down a coal mine - a real one - and getting a first-hand experience of having to stoop lower and lower as the entrance disappeared behind us.

The maximum height down the mine was 1.38m (4' 6") that was to accommodate the height of the pit ponies. When the lighting was switched off, we were thrown into almost total darkness, illuminated only by one miner's lamp. Underground mines were not desirable places for workers who suffered from claustrophobia, but in the old days you had to "get over it", because of the need to work. Times were hard and shying away from one's duties for such fears, was simply not an option.

We were impressed to learn our guide was himself a retired coal miner after having worked underground for 27 years.

To spend that amount of one's working life in the dark is unthinkable for most of us, but for hardened men such as our guide - he told me his name which I have since forgotten - it is just a way of life.

All of the male members of his family are or were miners in the district, including his father and his great-grandfather.

"It's just what we did," he told me. "You left school and got a job down the mines." Expecting to be speaking with a rough-talking, grimy-skinned character, I was surprised that the gentlemanly chap actually looked little the worse for wear for all his labours, softly spoken and immensely proud of his part in the mining industry.

When asked if he knew of New Zealand's Pike River mining disaster, he solemnly replied: "Oh yes - oh yes." After that nothing more was said about it. It is evident that when such mining disasters happen around the world, every miner quickly gets to hear about it.

To round off the day with a little something out of the ordinary, we rode in an open carriage behind an early 1800s Puffing Billy replica steam locomotive. Being covered in soot and black smoke belching from such a beast wouldn't be seen as the most pleasant of experiences for some, but for us it was a lot of fun. And after all, that was what the first railway passengers - first or second class - had to put up with back then. To think we were there to be part of it all in keeping with the living museum experience.

-Brian Holden has lived in Rotorua for most of his life and has been writing his weekly column for 11 years.