Portland Basin Museum: Take a step back in time on a visit to this Greater Manchester museum with a realistic 1920s street

National World - LocalTV

Portland Basin Museum in Tameside in greater Manchester is an exciting family friendly museum which focuses on the area's industrial heritage.  Built in the restored nineteenth century Ashton Canal Warehouse in Ashton-under-Lyne, the museum houses an entire street where the sights and sounds of 1920s Tameside are brought to life.  Step into the museum and you will be transported back 100 years. Explore what a typical Greater Manchester house would have looked like, sit down for class at school, or take a trip into the site's fish and chip shop and browse the menu.  Portland Basin Museum allows you to immerse yourself in history, so take a peak behind the blue door to get a glimpse of the past.

Transcript

00:00 Portland Basin Museum in Tameside in Greater Manchester is an exciting family-friendly

00:05 museum which focuses on the area's industrial heritage.

00:09 Built in the restored 19th century Ashton Canal warehouse in Ashton-under-Lyne, the

00:14 museum houses an entire street where the sights and sounds of 1920s Tameside are brought to

00:20 life.

00:21 Step into the museum and you will be transported back 100 years.

00:26 Explore what a typical Greater Manchester house would have looked like.

00:29 Sit down for class at school or take a trip into the site's fish and chip shop and browse

00:33 the menu.

00:34 Portland Basin Museum allows you to fully immerse yourself in history, so take a peek

00:39 behind the blue door to get a glimpse of the past.

00:42 Over the last 100 years or so there's been obviously a lot of dramatic changes in people's

00:48 industrial lives and working lives as well.

00:51 Our museum helps to preserve bygone lives essentially and we do actively encourage people

00:57 to donate objects to us for our collections and with potential for it to go on display

01:04 in the future.

01:05 We've got our 1920s street so you can take a walk down an imagined street of 100 years

01:10 ago and explore what it was like to live in a two-up, two-down terraced house.

01:17 There's a school room, there's a pub, there's a pawnbroker's and grocer's so you can really

01:22 immerse yourself in 1920s Tameside and that's a big hit for our visitors as well.

01:26 So you can explore what it's like to go into an old-fashioned chip shop for example and

01:30 see what's on the menu.

01:32 You can take a peek inside the two-up, two-down house as well and see what the kitchen and

01:38 the living area was like.

01:40 So for example the kitchen was like the heart of the home with its big range and fireplace

01:46 and table so that was where families spent most of their time.

01:50 There's also the pub as well, we can go and see what a 1920s pub looked like.

01:54 It's a big wow factor I think when they first go in it because for a lot of visitors as

01:59 well it can evoke memories of what perhaps their grandparents' houses were like a long

02:06 time ago and perhaps their childhoods and experiences of life have changed over the

02:11 past and it's really nice to see the grandparents telling their grandchildren about what life

02:18 was like in the past and maybe what toys they played with and what it was like going to

02:22 school and what their fathers and mothers did around the house or what they did for

02:29 a living working in the mills or going down the mine, that sort of thing.

02:33 We've also got the made in Tameside industrial gallery which we're in now and that explores

02:39 the industries and the companies of Tameside.

02:42 There's the nuts and bolts area where children can get a bit of hands-on play time as well

02:48 with train sets and a market shop as well.

02:52 We're on the canal side where we've got the junction of three canals so you can always

02:57 combine a visit to the museum with a walk down the canals if the weather's nice as well.

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