New attraction opens at Highland Folk Museum in time for Easter
The leader of an American historical re-enactment group is to open a thatched Highland cottage – the latest addition to The Highland Council’s award winning Highland Folk Museum in Newtonmore.
The cottage, which has been recreated using a photograph taken of a building in the 1800s at Grantown on Spey is to be opened on Wednesday 13 April at 12.30 pm by Elliot MacFarlane, leader of the Canadian and USA based ‘MacFarlanes Company’.
The volunteer living history troupe, MacFarlanes Company has been visiting the Highland Folk Museum for the past seven years. They bring with them their unique interpretation of the rich history and culture of Scotland and the Scottish diaspora in North America.
Elliot MacFarlane of Toledo, Ohio welcomed the invitation from the Highland Folk Museum to open the cottage. He said: “It is a great honour for me to have the pleasure of opening this additional cottage at the Highland Folk Museum. We are great fans of the museum as it enables us to recreate the past culture of Highland life in a highly practical and visual way that provides a huge amount of pleasure not just for us as re-enactors but for the many visitors to the museum.”
The original ‘Highland cottage, Grantown’ was a dry stone walled and thatched dwelling from the early 1800s that no longer survives. It was recorded in a photograph taken in the late 1800s. Using the knowledge and skills of the Highland Folk Museum’s craft workers this simple, vernacular home was re-created. It interprets a dwelling of the 1890s with peat-fuelled wooden ‘hanging lums’. The Highland Cottage is located next to the Old School in a central location of the Folk Museum site.
The cottage joins a range of buildings that have already been carefully relocated to, or recreated on the Highland Folk Museum site including: a re-created 1700s township of timber framed, turf walled and thatched buildings; Aultlarie farm steading; the railway halt; Glenlivet Post Office; a shepherd’s bothy and fank; Knockbain school; Leanach Church; Macpherson's Tailor's Shop; clockmaker's and joiner’s workshops; the Newtonmore Curling hut; and Ardverikie Estate Sawmill.
Bob Powell, Museum Curator said: “We are extremely pleased that Elliot and the members of MacFarlane’s Company will be with us to open the Highland cottage in time for the Easter holidays.
“We are also delighted that on the same day that there will be a study tour of around twenty students from the St. Andrews University post-graduate ‘Museums Studies’ course who will have a first-hand opportunity to view our new addition to the one mile long, eighty acre museum site with nearly 30 buildings and structures.”
“For those attending the opening there will also be an opportunity to view the soon-to-be-opened weaver’s workshop, ‘Craig Dhu Tweed Cottage’ and to hear about other forthcoming building developments.”
The developing open-air Highland Folk Museum was winner of the 2010 Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions ‘Best Visitor Experience’ Award. It re-opens for visitors on the 11 April to 31 August from 10.30am until 5.30pm and during September to October from 11am to 4.30pm. For further information please contact: Bob Powell, Curator, on 01 540 673551 or e-mail: bob.powell@highland.gov.uk or view the website www.highlandfolk.com