A TRADITIONAL HARVEST CELEBRATION

The Autumn Countryside Show, Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, Saturday 10 & Sunday 11 October

All the sights, sounds and smells of a traditional harvest will delight visitors to the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum’s ever-popular festival of the countryside on 10 & 11 October. The Autumn Countryside Show allows an evocative glimpse of the past, when the whole rural community was involved in the vital tasks of harvesting and preparing the land for the following year’s crops, as well as showcasing and celebrating other traditional countryside activities.

 

 

The beautiful Downland landscape of the Museum's 40-acre site at Singleton, near Chichester, West Sussex, is the ideal location for this annual event. Heavy horses, vintage tractors and a steam-driven threshing machine will be in action: the hissing and chugging of steam-driven corn threshing, and the scrape of metal on earth as horse and tractor-drawn ploughs eat into the ground remind us of the rural way of life which now seems lost but is really only a generation away.

The working plough horses are always a favourite with visitors of all ages, with the Museum's own Shires among the teams of Suffolk Punch, Ardennes and British Percheron draught horses that will also be at work. Vintage tractors will also be busy preparing the ground after the harvest, and there will be a display of tractors and farm implements.

This year there will be a strong wood element to the Show, with demonstrations and craft stalls featuring a range of traditional woodland crafts and products. There will be a chance to browse and buy at the many trade stands featuring wooden items, plus many others with a countryside theme.
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The Weald & Downland Open Air Museum is England’s leading museum of historic buildings, and some of the exhibits – farmhouses, barns and workshops – are thatched with wheat grown and threshed on the Museum site. The threshing of the crop – separating the grain from the ear – is one of the main attractions during the weekend: in the days before the combine harvester, the ‘threshing train’ was a common sight working the farms and travelling the lanes during the autumn and winter months. It usually comprised a steam engine, threshing drum, elevator and living van used by the engine drier and his mate. A threshing train will be on display at the Show, complete with the Museum’s recently-restored 1862 threshing drum, one of the oldest working drums in the country.

The weekend’s celebrations will also include Gun Dog displays, working donkeys, falconry displays, a Fun Dog Show on the Sunday, and the chance for visitors to enjoy a horse-drawn wagon ride around some of the most beautiful areas on the Museum’s site. In addition the Museum is delighted to welcome back the National Society of Master Thatchers to this years Show: the NSMT will be involved throughout the weekend, with thatching demonstrations, presentations on various aspects of owning and maintaining a thatched property, plus hurdle making and spar making competitions.

The Museum is open for the Autumn Countryside Show on Saturday 10 & Sunday 11 October, from 10.30am - 5pm. Admission prices are adults £8.95, over 60’s £7.95, children £4.70, family ticket £24.25. The Museum is open daily until 23 December with opening hours 10.30 – 6pm during British Summer Time, and until 4pm during the rest of the year.

Background information

The award-winning Weald & Downland Open Air Museum has over 45 historic building exhibits and is designated by the Government for the outstanding importance of its collections. Exhibits include a medieval farmstead; a working watermill producing wholemeal stoneground flour; exhibitions focusing on traditional building techniques and agriculture; historic gardens, farm livestock and a working Tudor kitchen. The Museum runs a well-established schools programme, and an adult learning programme of courses in building conservation and rural crafts. There is a café which uses the Museum’s own flour and a shop with gifts and books on countryside and buildings themes. The modern Downland Gridshell houses the Museum’s building conservation centre and artefact collection. There is a daily tour at 1.30pm when the Museum is open, and an appointments system for visits to the collections for research purposes.

Note to editors: Reporters and photographers welcome. For further information and photographs contact Cathy Clark, Marketing Officer on 01243 811363, fax 01243 811475, email marketing@wealddown.co.uk . Further details about the Museum and its activities are also available on the Museum information line on 01243 811348, or at www.wea

23.09.09

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