With a trip to London planned, I decided to fly to the U.K. a few days early last month to visit Belfast in Northern Ireland to meet Heritage Carpenter Peter Sloan and Curator of History Fiona Byrne at the Ulster Folk Museum. They are working together to document and photograph all the many chairs and other seating in the museum’s collection, and kindly pulled some for me from storage so that I could take a closer look. Then Peter showed me around the open-air living history museum.
Located just outside of Belfast, the museum, which opened in 1964, is currently undergoing a £50 million “Reawakening Project.” It includes 60 historic buildings that have been moved to the site from across Ulster and reconstructed in town and country settings to allow visitors to experience life in the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Below are just some of the chairs that are currently in storage.
And here are some scenes from buildings in the living history museum:
And of course I found some cats, basking under a heat lamp in a hay-filled wooden wagon.
If you find yourself in Belfast or thereabouts, the Ulster Folk Museum is well worth a visit. And you might find Peter Sloan in the joiner’s shop, dressed in period clothing.