Beamish Living Museum

Beamish Living Museum was conceived by Dr Frank Atkinson, director of the Bowes Museum who had visited Scandinavian folk museums in the early 1950s and was inspired to create an open air museum for the North East. Opened in 1970 Beamish Living Museum is the first regional open-air museum in England. Its guiding principle is to preserve an example of everyday life in urban and rural North East England at the climax of industrialisation in the early 20th century.