Beamish Museum plans to build 1950s town in new campaign featuring retro caravan
Beamish Museum in County Durham has hot the road, bringing with it a vintage caravan from the 1950s, providing the general public the chance to see what a caravanning holiday was like 60 years ago.
The refurbished Wanda caravan, equipped with striped deckchairs and traditional bunting is definitely a blast from the past. The cupboards are packed with retro pantry items such as Omo washing powder and CMS custard for starters.
People visiting the classic caravan are being guided by Beamish Museum volunteers Frank and Margaret Jefferson, who are on hand to provide more information about it and the caravan has already visited Redcar, Middlesbrough, with its next stop on Saturday (28 February) finishing up in Stockton.
But why a 1950s caravan? Well, Beamish hopes to encourage people to nominate their homes or childhood homes to be replicated as part of a 1950s town exhibition at the museum. The organisers of the museum project also really want to hear the stories that come with memories from that era, and want people to help with building a collection of select items to go inside the homes.
Beamish’s director, Richard Evans, said: “We’re extremely excited to be offering people this unique chance for their home to become part of history, being recreated at Beamish.
“Our 1950s town will tell the stories of the North East’s communities during an important decade of change. What better way to do this than by recreating the real homes of real people, to be shared with more than half a million visitors each year?”
The project will be called Nominate Your House and will ask people to help decide which 1950s semi-detached social housing should be built in the planned town.
The chosen house will be decided by public vote and the lucky winner will get the chance to stay overnight in the finished exhibit.
Beamish has already received £10.75m in support from the Heritage Lottery Fund grant.
To find out more information on how you can get involved, click here.
