This year I booked a few tickets for different events for Heritage Open Days and now I’m sharing a few highlights from four locations. It was lovely, as it is every year.
Leigh Spinners Mill is a beautifully preserved mill in Greater Manchester. We’ve had a guided tour and we were able to chat to someone who knows a lot about steam engines. It was fascinating. These two steam engines would power the whole mill, with ropes that you can see in a picture below.
Like all Victorian technology, a lot of oil was necessary to keep the wheels turning.
Staff at the mill would change any broken rope while the engine was still operating.
Besides the mill, the guide talked about the family who owned it and showed us different artefacts. I loved the children’s chairs in the mock teaching room, so I asked my husband to stand beside one for size comparison.
Another fascinating event this year was the Port Sunlight Edible Heritage Walking Tour. It was quite a long tour, of almost 2 hours. The Heritage Open Days theme this year was Edible England, so some of the places taking part focused on this aspect. The tour was very interesting and we already know Port Sunlight. We lived in Wirral and went from time to time to see the village. It’s such a beautiful place.
The guide talked about family, the company (now is Unilever), the architecture, but also about the issues with transporting food, where people were buying it from, the importance of the allotments. We don’t always appreciate how easy it is for us to get the things we like, just pop in the car, drive to the shops, and complain if we don’t find exactly the brand or the product we want to get. For them the allotments were needed to provide food.
The train station has a lovely story, related to royalty. Without the royal visit, the station might not have been there, which was used by the employees and made their lives so much easier as they were not required to walk a long way from the other station to the factory.
Clayton Hall is located in Greater Manchester. It is a 15th Century timber framed, moated manor house. It has two distinct sections, an Elizabethan part and a Tudor part. We were able to have a guided tour of the house, before having refreshments in their outdoors cafe.
How amazing is this Victorian sink? I love the artisan look of it.
That small alcove with the desk is what many would have liked for working from home. My husband and I loved it and we have a lovely office to work from.
Museum of Transport in Greater Manchester looks very similar to a museum in Wirral we’ve been to. I imagine all transport museums must look like this. They are always a delight to visit.
These two buses were made only 2 years apart. Even more peculiar, the green one is from 1952 and the blue one from 1950.
This roll has the names of the stops on it. It was placed on a drum and a lever was turned to change the stop. How inventive and very useful for customers too.
These were the highlights from the Heritage Open Days this year. We only visited during the weekends.
This is all so interesting. I especially love the homes and the architecture but they all are fascinating. I love the open days concept.
You’ve shared so many interesting things here! We take so many things for granted in our modern lives, and not just the availability of food. We should think about that more often when complaining about things in life. As my kids always like to say, “first world problems”.
Yes, I agree. Last week I was so upset that it wasn’t clear about my modules at university and I completely ignored how amazing it is that I can go to university in the first place, as millions of people can’t do that. Putting things into perspective would make us appreciate more what we have.