Highland Folk Museum

A unique visitor experience

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ounded in 1935 by Dr Isobel F Grant (1887 – 1983) the Highland Folk Museum offers you a unique opportunity to step back in time and experience a sense of what life was like for your Scottish ancestors from the 1700s up until the 1960s. Isobel Grant found the museum on the basis that “the oldsetting of our daily life….be saved”

Isobel’s father was one of the Grants of Tullochgorm and a Colonel in the 78^th and Seaforth Highlanders.

Her early interest in farming history was fed by reading the history of her mother’s family farm at Balnespick. She went on to become a pioneer in British folk life studies and author of ‘Everyday Life of an Old Highland Farm’ and her seminal text ‘Highland Folk Ways’.During her travels around Scotland in her Morris 8 car she collected farm implements and farm stories during a time when changes in agriculture saw heavy horses gave way to tractors as older tools were discarded and techniques forgotten.

Originally based on the island of Iona the museum was moved to Laggan, Inverness-shire before finding its current location at the three acre site in Kingussie in 1944.

There are now over 30 historical buildings furnished appropriate to their time period. Some have been built from scratch on site and some have been moved here from other locations.The site is a mile long and features a 1700s Township (featuring 6 houses) at one end through to a 1930s working croft at the other. There is a cafe, gift shop and a fantastic children’s playground. The Museum is located at Newtonmore in the Scottish Highlands amidst some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.The museum is also home to ‘Am Fasgadh’ (Gaelic: ‘The Shelter’) storing 10,000 artefacts plus high quality meeting rooms, a research library, conservation laboratory and suite of offices.