Highland Folk Museum

In 1930, Dr Isabel Frances Grant organised and curated the Highland Exhibition in Inverness, bringing together 2,100 artefacts exhibited as a national folk museum. Grant founded the Highland Folk Museum in 1935, using a personal legacy to acquire a disused former United Free Church on the island of Iona. Grant recorded 800 visitors in the first summer of opening and 900 the following year. Nicknamed Am Fasgadh (Gaelic for the shelter), the Highland Folk Museum's remit was "…to shelter homely ancient Highland things from destruction". By 1938, the collection had become too large for its original home. In 1939 the museum moved to larger premises on the mainland at Laggan, Badenoch, a village in the central Highlands. The museum was located here for the next five years. The collections at Kingussie were developed "…to show different aspects of the material setting of life in the Highlands in byegone days," The museum used live demonstrations to interpret exhibits for visitors. In 1956, the Trust appointed George ‘Taffy’ Davidson, senior fellow in arts and crafts at the University of Aberdeen, as curator. The Council appointed Ross Noble of the Scottish Country Life Museums Trust as curator and a process of modernisation began. The Newtonmore site opened to the public in 1987 and operated in tandem with the museum at Kingussie until the older site closed in 2007. In 2011, High Life Highland, an arm's-length charity, took over responsibility for the day-to-day running of the Highland Folk Museum. The new Am Fasgadh opened in 2014. In 2015, the collections at the Highland Folk Museum received official recognition from Museums Galleries Scotland and the Scottish Government as a Nationally Significant Collection. ==Exhibits==

The museum is primarily made up of three areas that represent and interpret different periods of the Scottish Highlands: • The Pinewoods • 1700s Township • The Open Air section, consisting of buildings that reproduce built heritage from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. The reconstructions are supported by staff members dressed and performing as highlanders. On some days the museum features demonstrations of highland life activities, such as weaving or rope making. Some of the buildings on the museum site were constructed specifically for the museum, while others have been relocated from elsewhere in the Highlands and reconstructed on site. • In 2000–2001, the museum acquired the Glenlivet sub-post office. • In 2011, the museum recreated a thatched cottage from a photograph taken in the 19th century of a house that stood in Grantown-on-Spey. • In 2012, landowners in Carrbridge donated a croft-house built in the 1920s. Museum staff and construction skills students were involved in relocating the building to the museum. File:2011 Inverness-shire Highland Folk Museum - Knockbain School 28-05-2011 17-48-06.jpg|Knockbain School, located in the Open Air Section File:2011 Inverness-shire Highland Folk Museum - Daluaine Summer House 28-05-2011 16-51-43.jpg|Daluaine Summerhouse, located in the Open Air Section File:2011 Inverness-shire Highland Folk Museum The Stockman's House 28-05-2011 18-12-25.jpg|Stockman's House, located in the 1700s Township File:Raleigh lady's loop frame bicycle 1930s.jpg|1930s Raleigh lady's loop frame bicycle ==References==