Meet Julie Peachy: Volunteers’ Week 2026

Julie Peachy came to Weald & Downland Living Museum at the start of 2019, at a point in her life when she was looking for something to give her days shape and purpose. She had recently left work, and the question of how to fill her time was a real one. Her answer, as it turns out, was a very good one.

“What better than to volunteer in such a wonderful place as Weald,” she says.

Julie began as a house steward, welcoming visitors and helping bring the Museum’s buildings to life. But before long she moved into working with schools, and that, she makes clear, is where her heart is. “I absolutely adore everything I do with the schools,” she says — and it shows. For Julie, working with young people is not simply a task on a rota. It is the thing that makes her week.

That passion has a history behind it. Julie is already a historical re-enactor, someone who has spent years immersing herself in the past and finding ways to make it vivid for others. Coming to Weald & Downland Living Museum was, in her own words, a natural progression. Here was a place where her knowledge and her love of history could be put to genuine use — not just performed, but shared. The Museum’s education work, which brings schoolchildren face to face with centuries of rural English life, is exactly the kind of environment in which someone like Julie thrives.

But there is another dimension to what she values about the Museum, and she speaks about it with an honesty that is striking. The site itself, she says, has a quality that is almost therapeutic. If you arrive in the morning feeling tense or weighed down, something about the place works on you over the course of the day. “You find that as the day goes on all that tension disappears and it’s just so calm and peaceful.” It is not a small thing, and Julie does not treat it as one. She acknowledges that it was something she very much needed when she first joined, and that she continues to need it now.

There is something that Weald & Downland Living Museum offers, quietly and without ceremony, that is hard to find elsewhere. The open landscape, the unhurried atmosphere, the sense that the concerns of ordinary modern life are briefly set aside — these things matter. For volunteers who give their time to the Museum, they often receive something substantial in return.

Julie is clear about what that is: the chance to share knowledge, to engage with visitors, to work alongside fellow volunteers she describes simply as “marvellous,” and to spend her time somewhere that asks something real of her and gives a great deal back.

She came looking for something to fill her time. She found considerably more than that.

 

Get to know Julie! Watch his full video interview here:

 

Could You Be Our Next Volunteer?

Julie’s story is one we hear again and again: a lifelong interest in history, a love of the Museum, and a desire to be part of something meaningful. Whether your passion is agricultural heritage, building conservation, crafts, education, or simply welcoming visitors — there’s a place for you here.

If you’d like to find out more about volunteering at Weald & Downland Living Museum, check out our Volunteering Page or speak to a member of the team on your next visit. We’d love to hear from you.