Key Visitor Economy Developments

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

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.

The centrepiece will be a reconstructed 1950s Town, which will include houses, shops, café, cinema, and recreation areas. 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.