Safeguarding Britain’s Heritage Crafts for the Future

The Weald & Downland Living Museum is playing a vital role in protecting and passing on Britain’s heritage crafts, ensuring the traditional skills that shaped our culture continue to thrive for generations to come.

 

More than an open-air museum, the Weald & Downland Living Museum is a place where history is actively made and shared. Across its 40-acre site of reconstructed historic buildings and working landscapes, visitors encounter craftspeople practising the same skills that once defined everyday rural life, from timber framing and thatching to basket weaving, blacksmithing and charcoal burning.

Here, heritage crafts are not static displays but living, breathing practices. Through demonstrations, hands-on workshops, accredited courses and immersive events, the Museum ensures these traditional skills are embodied, practised and passed on.

“In an age of mass production and environmental concern, heritage crafts offer timely lessons,” says Hilary Cunningham, Learning and Programming Manager at the Museum. “Their emphasis on repair, renewable materials and sustainable methods speaks directly to modern challenges such as climate change, waste and the loss of local skills. By learning these crafts, we’re not just preserving the past, we are equipping people with skills for the future.”

 

Learning Through Craft

The Museum delivers an extensive programme of training and education opportunities, from short courses in basket weaving and hurdle making to week-long timber frame construction and building conservation programmes. These courses support sustainable building, heritage conservation and the development of a skilled future workforce.

The team also works closely with education partners, including the Chichester College Group and the Sussex Heritage Trust, to host Heritage Craft Days. Students studying construction and building trades are given the chance to step away from modern power tools and learn traditional methods by hand and eye, gaining a deeper understanding of historic techniques and materials.

Clare de Bathe, Museum Director, said: “Heritage crafts are an essential part of our national story and our local identity. By giving people the opportunity to learn directly from skilled craftspeople, we’re helping to safeguard knowledge that might otherwise be lost. These skills aren’t just relevant to the past, they are crucial to building a more sustainable future.”

 

Events That Keep Traditions Alive

Throughout the year, the Museum’s lively programme of events keeps rural life and traditional crafts firmly in the spotlight.

Two Charcoal Burn weekends (2–4 May and 29–31 August) celebrate one of the Museum’s earliest working exhibits, with knowledge handed down through generations of staff and volunteers since the site first opened in 1970.

Families can explore heritage skills first-hand at the Try a Trade weekend on 9–10 May, where children become junior apprentices and discover traditional crafts in a fun, accessible way.

The highlight of the year is Made by Hand: Heritage Crafts & Skills on 26–27 September, an ever-popular showcase bringing together skilled local and national makers. The weekend offers visitors the chance to meet craftspeople, watch demonstrations and try traditional techniques, shining a spotlight on crafts that are increasingly rare.

With many heritage skills now at risk of disappearing, the Weald & Downland Living Museum continues to act as a custodian of Britain’s craft future — connecting people to place, tradition and practical knowledge, and ensuring that these vital skills remain a living part of our cultural story.

 

Find out more about the Museum’s full programme of events on our what’s on page