Black Country Museum

 

A few weeks ago we went on a trip to one of my favourite places in the Midlands, The Black Country Museum. If you love history (or even if you don't, really) it is a great day out. It is a whole town of recreated and relocated buildings where you step back in time and discover how people lived in days gone by. You can go down the mine, visit the Victorian fairground and go to a cinema and enjoy a silent movie. There is an old fashioned pub, sweet shop and chip shop for refreshments, and loads of shops packed to the brim with period details. Not to mention you get to have a nosey around people's houses!

What makes this place extra special is the fact that the people who work there really get into character. In every shop or house you walk into there is the proprietor or resident, who is ready (and very keen) to tell you all about what life was like for them, and they really do stay in character! It's so much fun. 

We took quite a few photos on the day and I couldn't resist playing around with my new photo editor to make them look a bit old! Like we really did step back in time...

All the fun of the flea!

If you're a vintage lover (and if you're reading this blog, I'm guessing you just might be!) and you live not a million miles away from the midlands, you simply must check out Malvern Flea! It's basically vintage heaven. It's a huge market that happens once a month and is a fantastic blend of vintage, antiques and oddities.

What's great about it is the fact that it isn't a full on antiques fair, so the variety of stalls means that you might find pretty much anything, and that's the fun of it. And for the odd stall that is selling nothing better than old tat, there are about twenty more selling amazing treasures. Also, Great Malvern is such a pretty little town, so you can pop in there afterwards for spot of afternoon tea, and you have the perfect day out! You can find out more here.

The Haul

We didn't actually buy all that much, we tend to buy a mix of stuff for ourselves and for Minimum Mouse, today we picked up some beautiful leather bags, a cool 1970's flight bag, a gorgeous Welsh tapestry purse and some pretty hand mirrors. I also picked up a 1930's guidebook to Glasgow and the west of Scotland, which I'm planning to give to my dad as it covers his hometown, and then, perhaps inspired by this, we spent quite a while at an amazing stall jam packed with old postcards and found a few hometown treats for ourselves - two old postcards of Aberystwyth for me (one is from 1904!) and a couple of retro 60's Birmingham postcards for James. We're going to frame them and add them to our growing collection of kitsch pictures at home.