History Scotland Magazine: The Museum of Scottish Country Life

The Museum of Scottish Country Life

The Museum of Scottish Country Life is a new museum designed to show how country people lived and worked in Scotland in the past, and how that has shaped the countryside of today. It is located at Kittochside on a 170-acre site in the green-belt between East Kilbride and Glasgow and is Scotlands first National Museum in the West.The project has come to fruition as a result of the generous gift of the farm buildings and site to the National Trust for Scotland by Mrs Margaret Reid in 1992. The farm was home to ten generations of the Reid family, who farmed there for at least four hundred years. A unique partnership between The National Trust for Scotland and the National Museums of Scotland was created to transform the site into an extensive visitor centre to provide the public with a window on Scottish rural life.

The facilities include a new exhibition building, an historic farm with Georgian farmhouse, a 60-acre events area, a theatre, picture gallery, seminar room, caf and shop.The major new exhibition building, designed by Glasgow architects Page and Park, houses the rural life collections of the National Museums of Scotland and provide the gateway to the rest of the site. The building is in Scottish rural style with a pitched slate roof, white-rendered and rough-sawn timbered walls and handmade bricks, and provides spectacular views across the countryside as well as a rich setting for exhibition galleries on the environment, rural technologies and people. Rural Life Collection

The rural life collection housed at the museum, forms part of the vast National Museum Working Life Collection which comprises thousands of artifacts from the life and work of people in Scotland from the eighteenth century to the present day. It include the oldest surviving combine harvester used in Scotland, from East Lothian, 1932 and a threshing machine from Orkney, c1805, believed to be one of the oldest in the world. It has the best collection of combine harvesters in Europe and a variety of early agricultural tools. There are also many exhibits which give a wider picture of life in the country - including toys, clothes, musical instruments and household and personal items. Many items which were kept in storage are now on show for the first time in the exhibition area and in open stores.

Hands-on

One of the interesting features to this whole project are those aspects which really bring the museum artifacts to life. For example, there is a learning centre where children can experiment with everything from cooking on a griddle to making candles. Educational events and workshops, ranger walks and events, the re-discovery of old skills, field study days and backpack tours for children are just a few of the ways in which the public can learn how the past has shaped the countryside of today.

Historic farm area

The historic farm area of 60 acres of land has, unusually, never been intensively cultivated. It is thus of condsiderable environmental importance and retains many traditional rural features which have vanished from the countryside throughout Scotland. The farm is to be worked to demonstrate traditional methods of farming and in particular illustrate the period of intense change around 1950 which allows visitors to look back to man and horse power and forward to tractor and combine harvester. The farm will operate throughout the year, following the pattern of seasonal work to show ploughing, seed time, haymaking and harvest. A dairy herd will be milked and other livestock reared using traditional methods.

As part of its educational outreach programme schools will be able to experiment with plots of old and new crops and varieties and community groups will be able to use the area for special events. It will also be utilising its website to exploit the multimedia exhibits that form part of the museum exhibition, as well as offer learning opportunities to educational users across Scotland, by creating digital resource packages. Academic papers and research will also be made available through the website.

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Open daily 10am - 5pm
Admission costs: 1.50 concession,
3.00 adults, children FREE.
By bus: First Bus no. 31 from St Enoch Centre, Glasgow to Stewartfield Way. The Museum is 200m from the bus stop. The service is every half hour Monday to Saturday and hourly on Sundays.

By train: to Thorntonhall, Hairmyres or East Kilbride station from Glasgow Central Station.