We are now closed for the winter opening only for a special Festive Weekend on the 2 & 3 December.

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Museum Blog

Victorian Toll House Undergoing Restoration Work

Help Restore the Victorian Toll House at Chiltern Open Air Museum

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This Giving Tuesday we hope you will continue to support our vital conservation work by making a donation, no matter how small or large, towards the restoration of our Victorian Toll House that originally stood in High Wycombe.  Why not take a look around the Toll House. Each year 50,000 buildings are demolished in the

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Suffragists or Suffragettes

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Women’s suffrage societies which campaigned for the right to vote began to appear in Britain in the middle of 19th century and their members called Suffragists believed in peaceful, constitutional ways to promote votes for women. In 1866, a group of women organised a petition that demanded that women should have the same voting rights

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an 1858 painting by George Washington Brownlow entitled 'Straw Plaiting School in Essex'

The life of country children

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Country life for working families before the early 20th century was not at all as some popular paintings portray – roses round a cottage door, happy and healthy children playing in a well-cared for garden. Many families with three or more children would live in cottages with only two rooms. Parents would do the best

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Threshing Machine at COAM

Swing Riots

The Labourers’ Revolt, commonly known as Swing Riots was mainly rooted in the poor living standards and impoverishment of agricultural workers for more than fifty years. A wave of more than 3000 acts of revolt swept across England for over 2 years. The system of farmland imposed by Parliament in the previous century had removed

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