Chiltern Open Air Museum is a museum of vernacular buildings and a tourist attraction located near Chalfont St Peter and Chalfont St. Giles in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire, England.
The museum was founded in 1976 and aims to rescue and restore common English buildings from the Chilterns, which might otherwise have been destroyed or demolished. The buildings have been relocated to the museum's 45-acre (180,000 m2) site, which includes woodland and parkland.
The collection has more than 30 buildings on view including barns, other traditional farm buildings and houses.
Buildings of interest include a 1940s prefab from Amersham, a reconstruction of an Iron Age house, a Victorian toll house from High Wycombe, a "Tin Chapel" from Henton, Oxfordshire and a forge from Garston, Hertfordshire. A fine pair of cottages from 57 Compton Avenue at Leagrave, near Luton which started out as a weather-boarded thatched barn with central double doors in the early 18th century. In the late 18th century the barn was converted into two labourers' cottages.
Recently, the museum has undertaken reconstruction of a wychert style farmhouse.
The museum's collection includes 16 buildings that are in storage and due for re-erection as and when the museum's funds permit.
Chiltern Open Air Museum is a registered charity (No. 272381). Chiltern Open Air Museum has a small number of full-time staff and a volunteer workforce of approximately 200.
Famous quotes containing the words open, air and/or museum:
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—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
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—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
“One can think of life after the fish is in the canoe.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 23, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)