Because I’m still woefully behind in writing up about our days out, today I’m going to talk about the Elsecar Heritage Centre, which we visited over 6 months ago. It’s in the village of Elsecar, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, and is a part of the village that has been preserved to look much as it would in the 19th century.
The centre includes many ex-industrial buildings. However, rather than being a static museum, most of the buildings are now leased out, and now host an array of craft shops. The main building, in the photo, is now a soft-play gym, which I think our two-year-old very much appreciated.
Around the back of the site is the Elsecar Heritage Railway, which runs for a short distance using heritage trains. You can have a look at some of the locomotives and carriages in the yard, and there’s a station with services running at weekends.
We actually picked quite a good day to visit, as there was also a small birds of prey exhibition, and an indoor craft market in one of the larger buildings. We’d also been lucky with the weather, although we had a string of nice weekends last autumn.
That being said, without the extra events, I don’t think it would have been much worth coming to Elsecar on its own – at least, not for the distance we travelled. Whilst there are plenty of information boards around, and it’s nice to look at, it’s not really a full day out. If we were to come again, I think we would need to combine it with something else in the area, such as Cannon Hall Farm.
You can view the photos I took on Flickr, as usual.