The Folk of Gloucester

The Folk of Gloucester is a community centre in three of the city’s oldest buildings. Two are Tudor merchant’s houses and one is a 17th-century town house on Westgate Street. The site tells the social history of Gloucestershire through everyday objects and stories. Bishop Hooper stayed here the night before his execution in 1555. The building was once called Gloucester Folk Museum before becoming a community space in 2020. The centre holds local crafts, River Severn fishing tools and historic costumes. A Victorian classroom and a pin factory have been rebuilt inside. Displays cover domestic life from the 16th century to the present. Publications from the 1950s and 1980s describe bygone farming and dairy tools. These items show how people lived and worked over centuries. Visitors find rooms filled with tools, clothes and schoolroom desks. The reconstructed pin factory stands where one once operated. Upstairs, costumes hang beside fishing nets from the Severn. Downstairs, a classroom shows ink pots and slates from the 1800s. The walls carry stories of bishops, merchants and ordinary families who shaped the county.