Record Breaker

Beamish is celebrating record visitor numbers for the third successive year.

The museum welcomed an amazing 671,330 people in 2015/16, up 2.35 per cent from the previous year.

Beamish has set – and then broken – new records for visitor numbers in each of the past three years.

Richard Evans, Beamish’s Director, said: “We are incredibly proud of these record breaking results – with more than 670,000 visitors enjoying Beamish during 2015.

“It is hard to believe that just seven years ago we welcomed under 300,000 people – our growth in recent years is a fitting tribute to the quality of our museum and all our staff and volunteers who bring the past to life and work so hard, all year round.

“This growing audience has an important impact not just at Beamish, but throughout the North East region, as half of all our visitors are tourists and we know the vast majority go on to visit other attractions and stay overnight in accommodation. We also know that half of these tourists are drawn to the North East because of the museum – they would not be in the region if it were not for Beamish.

“It’s particularly noticeable that we have been welcoming more and more ‘regulars’ in recent years – people drawn to the museum year after year. Many of our regulars are local families with children and many have relatively low incomes. This is really great to see – local people from across the region exploring their own past. Beamish was created for these families – it is why we do what we do.”

The news of record visitors comes after another great year for the museum, including being named Large Visitor Attraction of the Year at the North East England Tourism Awards for the second year running (2015 was a joint Gold Award with Seven Stories). Beamish received the bronze award for Large Visitor Attraction of the Year at the national VisitEngland Awards for Excellence 2016.

Last year saw the official opening of St Helen’s Church by the Right Revd Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham, and the launch of the new Frost Fair, including our real ice rink.

There were also some new additions to our packed programme of events, including the hugely popular Horses at Work, Dig for Victory and 1950s cinema evening.

We’re looking forward to an extremely exciting 2016, including the opening of our chemist and photographer’s studio in May.

The museum is due to receive a decision this summer on the £10.75million Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant for the Remaking Beamish project.