Beamish Museum harks back to life in the 1950s

The 1950s have been brought back to life at a County Durham outdoor museum.

Beamish Museum has recreated a typical front street of a mining town with houses, a chip shop, cafe, and hair salon, all based on real homes and businesses.

There is also a replica of the home of North East artist Norman Cornish.

The attraction, near Stanley, worked with the original businesses' family members to bring them to working life and give visitors a taste of the past.

People can enjoy ice cream at John's Cafe, a take out from Middleton's Quality Fish and Chips, and have their hair styled 1950s fashion at Elizabeth's Hairdressers.

Helen Barker from the museum said it had been designed to bring memories flooding back for people of a certain age.

She said: "We wanted to recreate a time period which was within living memory, so we've worked with family members and communities who remember these buildings.

"As well as helping us know what the places really looked like, they also helped us develop the stories and retell them."

Among those involved was the family of Mr Cornish, who as well as an artist was a miner when he lived in his original house in Spennymoor from 1953 to 1967.

He died in 2014 and had donated items from his home, and from his later studio, to Beamish.

Ann Thornton, 72, and 65-year-old John Cornish said: "The 1950s decade was a very important period in our father's life.

"Although he had a young family to support by working at the local colliery, he was still able to forge a growing reputation as an artist.

"We are delighted that thousands of visitors to the museum will be able to see how he was able to produce such incredible artwork within the humble surroundings of a colliery house."

John's Cafe features ice cream made on the premises, and has some elements from the original place in Wingate, which was popular with young people in the 1950s.

Then it was owned by Giovanni Baptista Parisella, known locally as John.

His daughter, Maria Ebblewhite, said she was "super excited" that the business would "live on forever" in the museum.

"Dad would be so proud", she said.

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