Somerset Rural Life Museum

The Somerset Rural Life Museum stands in Glastonbury, Somerset, beside a 14th-century abbey barn built of local limestone. The barn once stored wheat and rye from the abbey’s 524-acre farm and still shows the thick timbers and stone roof tiles of its time. English Heritage lists it as a Grade I structure and a Scheduled Monument. In 2011 local craftsmen rebuilt the great doors using traditional methods. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries it passed to the Duke of Somerset, later becoming a farm store for the Mapstone family. The museum shows farm machinery from the Victorian and early 20th centuries alongside crafts such as willow coppicing and mud-horse fishing. Exhibits explain peat digging on the Somerset Levels and the making of milk, cheese, and cider. Reconstructed rooms from the village of Butleigh trace the life of farm worker John Hodges from birth to death. Outside, rare poultry and sheep graze near a cider apple orchard and a working beehive. Regular talks and craft demonstrations bring the past to life, and children can join family activities. The courtyard and barn floors display tools and wagons once used across the county. Visitors leave with a sense of how rural Somerset lived and worked through the centuries.