Festival of 50s
As you can imagine, we love an excuse to dress up here at Beamish. This gets especially exciting if this can be outside of our usual costumes that we wear day to day, and more exciting still if the costume flashes a small sliver of ankle or a larger pop of colour than usual.
As you may have guessed the highlight of our costumed year is our Festival of 50s – which takes place 6th-9th July! The bright green skirt and red lipstick I wore at last year’s event is still a happy memory for me, and ask anyone who has helped out with the festival of previous years and they can still reel off what their costume consisted of with ease.
From a food point of view, we are in full 50s swing, lots of research goes into the event every year and we are always keen to try new things. Luckily we have a wealth of brilliant recipe books, adverts and catalogues from the period that have been donated to us, perfect for browsing for ideas!
Amongst this year’s delights we will be making macaroni cheese and oxtail stew, which I am already eagerly awaiting with bowl in hand! We will also be mixing up delicious 50s milkshakes, perfect after all that rock ‘n’ roll dancing! For adults, we will be serving Babycham and Advocaat, the ultimate tastes of nostalgia!
A part of the festival that gets more popular each year are our cinema events on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th July we are showing two films from the era; Penny Points to Paradise, which was Peter Sellers’ first film and The Titfield Thunderbolt – the first Ealing film shot in colour. There are only 80 seats available for each night so book up quick! The details for tickets can be found here.
Obviously the food details are very important! The ticket includes a bag of delicious handmade Beamish sweets from the Jubilee Sweet Shop and a bottle of aerated water from our chemist shop, the sound of rustling sweet bags will be unavoidable! Usherettes dressed in period costume will be on hand, so feel free to say hello and pose with us for photos!
So get your petticoats ready and pop in to see our Festival of 50s, (which is included in your usual Unlimited Pass), don’t miss out!