Back in time on the Weald and Downland

A crisp and sunny November day saw Lizzie and I venture into West Sussex, and the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum.  The museum opened in 1970 and since that time has been collecting dilapidated historic buildings of southeast England, bringing them to the site, and restoring them to their former glory.  By doing this, the site preserves these important historic structures, opening them up for people like us to go and have a nose around.

The open air museum is spread around a 50-acre site nestled snuggly in the heart of the Sussex countryside.  The reconstructed village has over 50 structures, ranging from the rather modest peasant’s cottage, to the grand medieval houses, an old market hall from Titchfield in Hampshire, workshops, a school house from West Wittering, and a church to name but a few.  Many of these buildings have a certain atmosphere to them, and their largely bare, often dark interiors hint at the hard, difficult life endured by our forefathers.  This is particularly poignant in the peasant's cottage from Hangleton in Sussex, a single-roomed house with a wattle-and-daub partition, a little wooden bench and a pile of straw on the cold, hard floor, something of a primitive bed.  The experience here is strangely humbling, and makes me pose a series of questions; did the people who lived here think they had a hard life?  What would they think of my life?  And what will people think if they looked back on my life, 500 years from now?

Back in the centre of the village, the shire horse was hard at work, whilst the museum's cows and chickens rested lazily in the shade.  At the centre of the site lays the museum’s commercial structures, amongst them a plumber’s shed, a carpenter’s workshop, and a wonderful old blacksmith’s, iron tools hung up on all four walls.  The blacksmith was hard at work creating a tool for fruit picking, and his shack is probably my favourite building – it is reminiscent of a very bygone age, where people had a lifelong trade, and the community worked together, like a well-oiled machine.

Talking of well-oiled machines, the last building we visited was the Lurgashall Mill, an old working mill that is still producing flour by way of an enormous water wheel.  Upstairs, the mechanisms can be seen up close, the clattering of ingenious cogs going around and around, powered solely by the overflow from the museum’s lake, whilst at the door of the mill, waiting for titbits, is the biggest crowd of well-fed ducks I have ever seen.

What a great throw-back to the days of our forefathers, and both an enjoyable visit, and a real eye-opener into just how our ancestors were surviving in the world prior to our more technological times.