A TRADITIONAL HARVEST CELEBRATION

The Autumn Countryside Show
Weald & Downland Open Air Museum
Saturday 9 & Sunday 10 October 2010
 

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 9 & 10 October. The Autumn Countryside Show is a delightful event held on the Museum’s site at Singleton, near Chichester, West Sussex, in the heart of the South Downs National Park. As well as heavy horses and vintage tractors ploughing, there will be steam-powered threshing, and a variety of rural craft demonstrations and displays.

At this special time of year, the Museum’s beautiful 40 acre downland site is the ideal location for this annual event which showcases and celebrates many traditional countryside activities. 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, Clydesdale, Ardennes and British Percheron draught horses that will also be at work. The vintage tractors will also be busy preparing the ground after the harvest, and there will be a display of tractors and farm implements.

The weekend’s celebrations will also include a Fun Dog Show, Gun Dog display, working donkeys, a falconry display, a chance for visitors to enjoy a horse-drawn wagon ride around some of the most beautiful areas on the Museum’s site, and an opportunity to watch a variety of traditional rural craft demonstrations. The Museum is delighted to welcome back the National Society of Master Thatchers to this years Show: the NSMT will be holding hurdle making and spar making competitions as well as thatching demonstrations, and a series of short presentations on various aspects of owning and maintaining a thatched property. The Sussex Engine and Associated Machinery Society will be attending with a collection stationary agricultural based engines on display over the weekend, and there will be a chance to browse and buy at the many trade stands featuring a variety of countryside items.

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 1862 threshing drum, one of the oldest working drums in the country.

The Museum is open for the Autumn Countryside Show on Saturday 9 & Sunday 10 October, from 10.30am - 5pm. Admission prices are adults £9, over 60’s £8.15, children £4.80, family ticket £24.75. 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 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 are welcome at the Museum. For further information call the Museum information line on 01243 811348 or contact Cathy Clark, Marketing Officer

Tel: 01243 811014.
Fax: 01243 811475
Email: marketing@wealddown.co.uk.

Full details about the Museum and its activities can be found at www.wealddown.co.uk 

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