Wales - folk life museums & social history exhibits

Ideas for visits to cottages or farmhouses - restored or preserved - exploring rural life, domestic life in towns and cities, as lived in the recent or more distant past - living history experiences

Visit museums or ordinary homes from previous centuries. Visit houses, settlements, farm and urban heritage exhibits telling the story of working people's daily lives in town or country. Take a look at domestic life, everyday objects, traditional crafts, old cottages, preserved villages, old-fashioned farms etc. OldandInteresting hopes these suggestions will help people find good days out, and plan holidays. Enjoy!

If you're in reach of Cardiff the large St Fagans site is a must-see. Part of the National Museum of Wales, it includes painstakingly relocated, furnished cottages and farmhouses like red-walled Kennixton from 1610, pictured right. The Ceredigion Museum has an extensive collection of domestic items, with a reconstructed Cardiganshire cottage complete with Welsh dresser in the kitchen. Some cottages listed are at sites with industrial heritage themes like slate quarrying or coal mining. There are also some houses where you can see how "middling" people and their servants lived in earlier centuries. Click on a region below if you're interested in other parts of the UK.

Wales

Please check opening times - especially of smaller or volunteer-run places.

UK folk museums, domestic life and social history exhibits, ordinary homes in the past - introduction

Please send an email if you want to suggest an addition to this list of museums and other exhibits about "ordinary" or "folk" or "everyday" ways of life in the past. So far we're trying to cover Britain and then Ireland, but suggestions for a future USA list are also very welcome. Even though grand castles and stately homes are fascinating too, sometimes with interesting kitchens, laundry rooms etc., they aren't listed here, and nor are industrial heritage exhibits all about manufacturing and technology, without workers' cottages. These pages emphasise ordinary domestic life, our ancestors' everyday objects, traditional crafts, living history, old cottages, preserved villages, old-fashioned farms etc.

Copyright - Information is free, but lists are not! This is the legal position in the UK, and in the USA and many other countries too for "creative" lists like this. As you will appreciate, it takes time, effort, and knowledge to assemble this kind of directory. OldandInteresting has reserved all rights in this work. If you think your readers would be interested, please just link and don't copy.

You may like our new sister site Home Things Past where you'll find articles about antiques, vintage kitchen stuff, crafts, and other things to do with home life in the past. There's space for comments and discussion too. Please do take a look and add your thoughts.  (Comments don't appear instantly.)

For sources please refer to the books page, and/or the excerpts quoted on the pages of this website, and note that many links lead to museum sites. Feel free to ask if you're looking for a specific reference - feedback is always welcome anyway. Unfortunately, it's not possible to help you with queries about prices or valuation.