Heritage venues – many of them not normally open to visitors – throw open their doors this month. Here’s 12 of our favourites
DETECT A DAY OUT
Lancaster Castle, Lancaster, LA1 1YJ
September 7: 10.30am-12.30pm and 1.30pm-4pm
Opening specially for Heritage Open Days, Lancashire Police Museum will be open with a new and free quiz for budding detectives out there. Head to A wing of Lancaster Castle.
Booking not required.
A VARIED PAST
Church Cottage Museum at Broughton C of E Primary School, Church Lane off Garstang Road, Broughton, Preston, PR3 5JB
September 7: 10am-5pm, September 8: 2-5pm
Church Cottage Museum is a 16th century gem which was restored in the mid-1990s and tells the story of its life since its original construction in 1590, as a Tudor dwelling within an agricultural community, as an inn during the 18th century, a Victorian school room and finally as a family home once again for the latter part of the 20th century.
Visitors can join guided tours of the Cottage Museum, cartshed and gardens set in tranquil Lancashire countryside at the heart of the old Broughton Village alongside St John the Baptist Parish Church and Primary School forming Broughton in Amounderness Village Heritage Centre.
Booking not required.
TOUR THE TOWN
Holker House, Railway Road, Darwen, BB3 2RG
September 7 and 14 ((((Times TBC))))
Guided tours starting at the Darwen Heritage Centre will reveal some of the town’s fascinating past. The Heritage Centre houses exhibitions depicting various aspects of Darwen's history, including the regalia used for formal mayoral events when the town was a borough in its own right. The Heritage Centre has a rich collection of photos from the 19th and 20th centuries which have been digitised and can be viewed on a large touch screen in the main exhibition space as well as many photographs housed in photograph albums.
To explore the wider area around Darwen town centre, leaflets detailing two different walks are for sale at the Heritage Centre.
Booking not required.
A (STAINED GLASS) WINDOW TO THE PAST
St Margaret's Church, Rufford Road, Manchester, M16 8AE
September 7 and 15: 1-4.30pm
The laying of the foundation stone of St Margaret's Church on February 11, 1848 was the first act of Bishop James Prince Lee, the first Bishop of Manchester, after his enthronement that morning. The site had been given by Samuel Brooks, a banker, who in 1836 had bought the surrounding area for development from swampy moorland known as Jackson’s Moss into a salubrious neighbourhood named after his birthplace of Whalley. Brooks also gave £1,000 towards the cost of building the church. The cost was £6,000 and the completed church was consecrated on April 28, 1849.
The church was built to designs by James Park Harrison, who designed a number of churches between the early 1840s and the early 1860s. His early churches were in southern England and Whalley Range appears to be the first of a later group in Lancashire, Cheshire and Shropshire.
The church has beautiful stained glass windows, carved oak pews and church furniture and its steeple is a prominent feature of the area.
Booking not required.
COME AND MILL ABOUT
GEM Trust, Grane Mill, Laneside Road, Haslingden, BB4 5PP
September 7, 8, 14 and 15: 11am-4pm
Grane Engineering Museum is a work in progress where community volunteers are bringing an Edwardian Steam Mill back to life after decades of neglect. See its mighty 500hp mill engine, looms in the weaving shed and other engineering exhibits.
Grane Mill was a state of the art weaving mill built in 1907, when cotton was king. A scheduled monument and grade II* listed building, the increasingly rare 160ft chimney is complete with over-sail top and proudly bears its name 'GRANE'.
All the mill's essential building elements survive, including the engine and boiler houses with unique almost completely restored mill engine, made in Haslingden, which can now be demonstrated by electric motor. Looms are being returned to the North-light Shed and brought back to working order to weave once more. There is a fine mill donkey engine made in Burnley which runs on compressed air, and other rescued engines in various stages of restoration together with other related mill and engineering artefacts. These include bikes the weavers would have used plus machine tools and paraphernalia from loom foundries and cotton mills.
The site is being developed into a working museum to not only rescue vanishing regional heritage, but to research textile heritage and use machinery conservation, operation and repair opportunities to educate and provide practical basic training in heritage machinery skills. The mill gives visitors an insight into Lancashire lives through the prism of the engineering that sustained families and local communities for decades and made affordable cloth available to the whole world.
Booking not required.
WHAT LIES BENEATH
Joseph Williamson's House Site (house façade with Blue Plaque), Opposite No 39 Mason Street, Edge Hill, Liverpool, L7 3EW
September 7, 8, 14 and 15: 11am-noon and 1-2pm
Take a guided tour of subterranean Liverpool and explore the tunnels and chambers built by Georgian philanthropist and merchant Joseph Williamson. The Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels will open the chambers beneath Joseph Williamson's house on Mason Street to reveal the dramatic Banqueting Hall and Wine Bins, quarried out of the local sandstone in the early 1800s. Booking required: visits@williamsontunnels.com.
ON THE BUSES
Street of Liverpool, Liverpool, L2 1AB
September 8: 10.30am-5pm
In-keeping with the theme of this year's Heritage Open Days – Routes – the Merseyside Transport Trust will offer free rides on buses from yesteryear on network of routes from Liverpool city centre. Using classic buses that represent types that operated on bus routes across the area in the latter half of the last century.
Booking not required.
NOT A RUBBISH DAY OUT
Longley Lane, Sharston, Manchester, M22 4RQ
September 10: 2-4pm and 6-8pm and September 14: 10am-noon
Go behind the scenes at the recycling centre to find out exactly what happens once your bin has been collected. Discover how state-of-the-art technology sorts and separates the recycling ready to be transformed into something new. You will also have an opportunity to take part in activities to dispel those recycling myths, ask questions and understand why getting it right is important. This is a two hour session that includes a tour plus some indoor recycling activities.
Booking required: 07581 026053, education@recycleforgreatermanchester.com.
AT THE CUTTING EDGE
British Lawnmower Museum, 106-112 Shakespeare Street, Southport, PR8 5AJ
September 12-13: 11.30am and 1pm
A unique one hour guided tour around one of the country’s quirkiest museums by curator, Brian Radam. From the grassroots of the first lawnmower to untold fascinating stories of the two World Wars, to the first robot mower. Discover what lawnmowers Winston Churchill had, from part of the 1500 Lawnmower collection, see the most expensive, the fastest, the biggest, the smallest and lawnmowers of the rich and famous including Eric Morecambe’s lawnmower. The collection also features mowers and gardening equipment owned by Prince Charles Brian May, Paul O’Grady and Hilda Ogden, and sheds light on the history of domestic horticulture.
Booking required: br@lawnmowerworld.com.
MARKET IN YOUR DIARY
Box Market, Earl Street, Preston, PR1 2PT
September 14: 10am and noon
Discover the ever-evolving history of Preston's markets – including the Market Hall and Box Market under the Grade II listed canopies built in 1875 and 1925. This specially created tour will reveal fascinating tales and facts about the markets and their structures, in particular the historic canopies, which have recently been restored. The tour is led by the senior market officer and lasts about an hour. Preston Market has stalls selling deliciously edible local produce, including Lancashire cheeses, traditional butter pies, and fruit and vegetables from west Lancashire.
Booking required: 01772 906048, markets@preston.gov.uk.
A BARREL OF FUN
29 The Gravel, Mere Brow, Preston, PR4 6JX
September 14: 10am-4pm
The Becconsall Living History and Heritage Park will jointly host a display about the craftsmanship of the last remaining cooper from Preston Docks. The traditional craft of a cooper was an essential part of dock life in any port and this display will focus on the skill and craftsmanship of a cooper and how changing times impacted one family. There will also be a working blacksmith’s forge and other metal working demonstrations.
Booking preferred: 07306 368225, manager@lancashireheritage.org.uk.
MEET WITH FRIENDS
13 Co-Operation Street, Crawshawbooth, Rossendale, BB4 8AG
September 14: 9am-4.30 and September 15: noon-4.30pm
This early 18th century grade II* listed Meeting House in a walled peace garden/burial ground near the Limey Water and packhorse bridge with an attached cottage is an active worshipping community of Friends.
The original Meeting House, built in 1716, has low beamed ceilings and the main Meeting Room was added in 1736 by creating a wooden partition below the gallery above which is the library and reading room. Visitors can tour a burial ground dated 1663 at Chapel Hill above Rawtenstall and the garden at the Meeting House is a place of peace and tranquility.
Booking not required.
* Times and dates may change, check heritageopendays.org.uk for full details, latest information and new listings.
