Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings

Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings stands in Stoke Heath, a district of Bromsgrove in the West Midlands. It is an open-air museum where rescued buildings have been dismantled and rebuilt on its site. The museum began in 1963 after a 15th-century timber-framed house was saved from demolition in Bromsgrove. This house, now called the medieval Town House, was the first building reconstructed here in 1967. It became England’s first open-air museum and the second in the United Kingdom after St Fagans in Wales. The museum now holds over thirty relocated buildings, each saved from destruction and restored to reflect different periods. The collection includes a working windmill, a post-war prefab house, and a Victorian tin church originally built in 1891. The prefab house was moved from Birmingham in 1981 and shows how homes were quickly rebuilt after the Second World War. The New Guesten Hall incorporates the preserved timber roof of a hall near Worcester Cathedral. The museum also holds the UK’s largest collection of telephone kiosks, with working analogue exchanges and manual switchboards. These exhibits span over 700 years of history, from medieval barns to industrial workshops and domestic homes. Visitors walk through a landscape filled with furnished interiors, empty shells, and display materials that tell stories of past lives. Some buildings, like the perry mill and toll house, show how people worked and traded centuries ago. Others, such as the cruck-frame barn and earth closet, reveal rural and domestic routines. The museum’s events programme features re-enactors dressed in period costumes, bringing history to life during holidays and weekends. The grounds also include a small objects collection and a licensed Victorian church used for services and weddings.