Beamish awarded £10.9m in Lottery funding

Beamish Museum has been awarded £10.9m from the Heritage Lottery Fund for its 'Remake Beamish' project.

The project will add over 30 new attractions to the site, and will take around four years to be completed.

Buildings from throughout the region will be moved or replicated and the musuem's curators are currently working with communities to share their heritage.

The centrepiece will be a reconstructed 1950s Town – meaning that alongside existing attractions depicting life in the early 19th and 20th centuries, Beamish will once again include a period within living memory.

Plans include a fully operational cinema, moved brick by brick from Sunderland, as well as examples of shops and housing from across the North East region.

The home and studio of Spennymoor artist Norman Cornish will also be replicated.

A block of Aged Miners’ Homes will be copied to create a pioneering centre for older people, including those living with dementia.

Alongside the reconstructed 1950s Town the museum will also show what life was like in rural areas in this period, by rebuilding a farm that has been collected from Weardale in County Durham.

A 1950s trolleybus system and restored buses will transport visitors and a bus depot will help pass on heritage engineering skills.

Nearly 100 new jobs will be created alongside more than a thousand training opportunities - including 50 apprenticeships.

Beamish already attracts nearly 700,000 visitors every year and by 2020 this number is expected to grow further, with 100,000 more tourists attracted to the region.

Richard Evans, Beamish’s Director, said: