Highland Folk Museum

**Highland Folk Museum**
	; Central part of the museum
Data
place	Newtonmore , Scotland
Art	open air museum
opening	1944/1995
Website	http://www.highlandfolk.com/

The Highland Folk Museum is an open air museum in Newtonmore in the Grampian Mountains of the Scottish Highlands . It depicts life in the Highlands from the early modern period to the early post-war period. The museum consists of four sections: a 19th century farm with partially relocated outbuildings, a 1930s village with school, church and Craftsmen's houses, a forest with a mill and playground and a reconstructed village around 1700. There are also gardens, dry stone walls, the blackhouse transferred from the abandoned part of the museum in Kingussie, a railway station house and a café with a small restaurant.

history

Foundation in Iona

The foundation of the museum goes back to the collections and scientific work of Mrs. Isabel Frances Grant from Edinburgh. As the first museum building, she bought an abandoned church on the island of Iona in 1935 . She called her museum "Am Fasgadh" ( Gaelic : the refuge) because it "should protect the cozy old things from destruction". To accommodate her growing collection, three years later she bought an abandoned church in Laggan, 11 miles from Kingussie .

The Kingussie site

Reconstruction of Isabel Frances Grant's Blackhouse

Another step towards the realization of a larger museum was the acquisition of the “Pitmain Lodge” in Kingussie in 1943, along with 1.2 hectares of land to build some cottages. The Highland Folk Museum became the first open air museum on the "main island" of Great Britain. This location was the center of the museum until it was closed in 2009. It was a living museum with buildings like the Lewis Blackhouse and so became the nucleus for the larger museum in the neighboring town of Newtonmore. The Kinguisse site was given up around 2009. The collections and museum management move into a modern museum building that was still under construction in 2013, and the Blackhouses brought to Kinguisse by Frances Grant are moving a second time, now to Newtonmore.

The Newtonmore site

The Newtonmore site opened in 1995 with an area of 32 hectares and has been developing rapidly. It shows many aspects of rural life in the Highlands and contains many cultural assets in its collections. Another task of the museum is to convey knowledge about life in the Highlands, both to the current generation of Highland residents and to visitors from all over the world.

Outdoor area and exhibitions of the museum

Former museum bus

The site of the museum is divided into four separate areas, which are connected by a driveway. A vintage bus operated on this until 2012, which has not been operational since 2013 and has been an exhibit on the museum grounds since then.

The museum has a variety of reconstructed buildings from 18th century Highland settlements. Also some relocated buildings from the 1930s. Farm animals, museum fields and dry stone walls can be found in several parts of the museum. The museum areas in detail:

The Allt Làirigh (Aultlairie) farm with outbuildings

This is the easternmost part of the museum. These are the remaining in situ Hof Aultlarie with a residential building (currently museum administration and historical candy shop) and farm building, a corrugated iron cottage that served as an outbuilding in various functions, a train shelters, a post office and a shelter for shepherds . The modern administration and exhibition building (still under construction in 2012) is also located in this area.

Hof Aultlarie, residential building
Yard Aultlarie, Corrugated Iron Cottage
Train shelters
New exhibition building (under construction in 2013)
Dry stone walls at the sheep farm

The open air area

This area is located in the central area of the museum below the ticket booth, where museum guides and souvenirs are sold with free museum admission. It consists of a church, a school and several craftsmen's houses (carpenters, tailors and watchmakers) from the first half of the 20th century. The central building with restaurant and shop is also located here. In the course of the merger of the two museum locations, the blackhouse reconstructed by IF Grant will be transferred from the old location in Kingussie and rebuilt in this area.

Culloden Church
Knockbain School
Classroom
School inside
Shepherd's hut
Shepherd's hut, inside

The pine forest

This area connects to the open-air area in the west. In a pine forest populated by red squirrels and planted in the 1920s, there is a children's playground with an excavator, a water mill and a pond with a curling hut including a curling museum. This is a copy of the original but no longer used hut of the Newtonmore Curling Club, only a few hundred meters away on Loch Imrich.

Play media file

Children's playground
View from the curling hut
Curling hut inside
sawmill

Baile Gean, the 18th century settlement

Baile Gean is a reconstruction of seven houses - blackhouses from the 18th century - of the larger Badenoch settlement in the uppermost valley of the River Spey. In the summer, these houses are livened up by museum staff who re-enact the history of the villagers in period costumes.