Why Beamish Museum is integral to my northeast novels

As a writer, my days are filled with wonderful things. New things, exciting things, and yes, some days, worrying and dark things as I struggle to find my way through writing a novel. It's not easy, as I think you might know.

But today is a good day, a nice day, a happy day. For I'm incredibly proud to be able to announce that my debut novel Belle of the Back Streets is going on sale in the gift shop at Beamish Museum.

Now, Beamish is not just any old museum. It's the award-winning, outdoors, living museum of the North. It's the most incredible place and if you haven't been, you should go.

For writers and researchers, they offer a resource room where you can access documents, catalogues, pictures and items that aren't on show to the public. And so it was that I went along to research Belle of the Back Streets and the volunteers working in the stores couldn't do enough to help. I held in my hands documents that made me cry, notes from world war one, books that laid bare the horrors of life in a pit village, accidents, death, babies dying, men being killed.

But there was joy too - a funfair set up in Beamish grounds led me to think about a fayre on Ryhope village green and I included this in the book. The pit village in the grounds of the museum provided inspiration too as I walked the back lanes, trailing my hand along brick and stone walls, breathing in the coal dust from fires in the cottages, imaging life when the air was thick with coal smoke and the washing on the line in your back yard would never be as white as you'd like.

I've been back to Beamish again and again, for research for my second novel The Tuppenny Child and for my third novel Pearl of Pit Lane.

Indeed, in The Tuppenny Child it opens with a heart-stopping scene set in a ladies' waiting room in a railway station as the heroine of the story hides there to escape. My inspiration for the opening scene came while I was visiting the ladies waiting room at Beamish, here it is:

And in my third novel, Pearl of Pit Lane, clippy-mat making is integral to the story and I went on one of the clippy mat making workshops at the museum. You can read all about my adventures here. Also, for Pearl of Pit Lane, I spent a huge amount of time scouring the old Co-operative Stores catalogues of 1919 to find out what kind of food would be on the shelves, in tins or in packets. It's fascinating stuff indeed!

And so, to have my debut novel Belle of the Back Streets, on sale in the museum shop, really is a dream come true. Thank you, Beamish. Thank you.

Visit Beamish museum website.

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Find out all about my gritty saga novels,
published by Headline

Clippy Mat Making at Beamish

Researching for my novel Pearl of Pit Lane I spent the day at Beamish Museum on a clippy mat workshop. And if you're wondering what a clippy mat is, it's also known as a proggy mat or a rag rug.

The BBC puts it like this: Proggy mats were a common sight in working-class homes in the North East of England until the mid-20th Century. Made from old sacks and recycled fabric they were an economical option to keep feet warm and toasty in an era before fitted carpets were the norm.

I remember my grandma had proggy mats in her house and I also remember her making them, but I was never interested back then in learning how to make my own.

As Ione of my characters in my novel makes proggy mats, I could have read about how to make them or even watched on YouTube, I wanted to discover for myself what the process felt like, smelt like, sounded like. And so I booked myself on to a workshop at Beamish Museum, a place I love to visit.

There were six of us on the proggy mat workshop and we were whisked from Beamish entrance onto our very own VIP vintage bus. It was magical.  The workshop took place in the board room above the bank in the Georgian town.  Introductions were made, coffee was poured, biscuits shared and then we were seated at our desks and given a wooden frame and some hessian. I gulped. I'm not a naturally arty or crafty person and I began to wonder if I had what it took to make a decent job of my own proggy mat.

We measured out a rectangle of 20 x 12 inches onto the hessian, following the weave. Then we drew out a 1 inch border.

The next step was to pin the hessian to the wooden frame with heavy duty drawing pins given an extra bash in with a hammer.  Outside the board room the sounds of Beamish museum coming to life with families drifted in through the windows of the bank board room we were working in. It really added to a very special event.

With the hessian stretched tight on our fame we were given a pile of pre-cut strips of black felt for our borders. With our progger tools - and I used my grandma's old one -  we pushed a hole into the hessian. Into the hole we threaded one end of the black felt piece. Another hole was created and the other end of the black felt was pushed into that. A second piece of black felt was added, the first end of it going into the last hole created from the first piece of felt. And with that, we were off!

Here's the border of my mat starting to take place.  This is the back of it, of course. The strips of felt on the other side of this creates the front of the mat.

Then it was time for lunch!  Our picnic bags were brought into the workshop with sandwiches, fruit, crisps and water in them. More coffee was drunk, more biscuits shared. We were told we could take as long a break as we wanted to and wander around the outdoors museum but none of us did, we were all too excited to get back to our proggy mats.

Here's my completed frame.

And then I started adding the colours. I decided on a random pattern, which is traditional, while some members of the group decided to tackle circles, hearts and even a Christmas tree.

We were given sheets of felt and the tools to cut our coloured felt into strips to use in our proggy mat. The afternoon melted away as we were all in the proggy mat zone, concentrating on what we were doing, really lost in the moment of creating something unique.  Again, the sounds of Beamish museum filtered into the bank board room where our workshop took place. And what joy - it was a brass band playing in the field, we could hear every note as we sat and worked away.

All too soon the day long workshop was over and it was time to leave. We were given our proggy mats on frames to take home to finish and had instruction on how to finish them off after we removed them from the frame at home.

And here it is, my completed proggy mat.  I've got sore hands now after two days of proggy mat making. It wasn't as easy as I thought but repetitive work that has swollen my fingers and given me a blister too.  But it's all been well worth it.

I've learned a great deal about the mat making process and while proggying the mat, I thought of my character in my novel who will make the mats too. I know how she might have felt now and that can only help enrich my work when I start writing this week.

Buy Pearl of Pit Lane here.

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Find out more about me and my books at: Glenda Young Books

I'm on Twitter @flaming_nora and Instagram @flaming_nora

Writers Day at Beamish Museum

The invitation to join a writers day at Beamish Museum with their writer in residence Becci, came through on a tweet from Mslexia magazine. I signed up immediately and was one of a handful of writers on a sunny Tuesday in July who met in the museum café.

After introductions we went in twos and threes to explore various parts of the site. My first area to visit was the Fairground and Railway, which had yet to be invaded by the mass of visitors I’d passed on my way into the museum. As the carousel was steaming up, there was an eerie calm to the Fairground. Short story ideas came thick and fast and my mind is still whirring, wondering which direction to take this inspiration and make it work best.  Becci gave us some prompts to think about when visiting each area and these were very useful. After the Fairground, a visit to the Railway again inspired all kinds of different short story ideas, and one possible large non-fiction project which I’m going to investigate fully.

It was time for lunch and a catch up with the rest of the group in the Resource Centre. We found out about each other’s work, families, tastes in sandwiches. And then the magic happened. We were taken on a behind-the-scenes tour, to places that the public don’t see, into the archives and collections. And just when I thought the magic couldn’t get any better, it did. We went into the costume department and were given a talk from the costumier, a lovely woman with a wonderful turn of phrase. My notebook was filling up with some fantastic material about, er, material.

It was time to head off to a second part of the site and I wandered down to Pockerley Village and then into the Town. With tourists and visitors now filling the site, I found it harder to get into the head space needed to take notes and immerse myself in the sights and smells and sounds of what was going on around me. And so I walked… I walked around the site, taking as much in as I could. The trams, the trains, the sheep. I closed my eyes, I breathed in the fresh air, I opened my eyes, I made notes.

At the end of the day we met again as a group in the Resource Centre for a chat and a debrief with Becci. Everyone said how fantastic the day had been. We’d made new friends, we’d even… and I hate this word.. we’d networked. Email addresses will be swapped, URLs will be Googled. I can’t wait to get back next week for day 2 of what I already know will bring a smile to my heart and pages scribbled full of writing inspiration to my notebook.

I’ve visited Beamish Museum a few times in the past, but never before have I seen it with my “writer’s head” on. It’s going to affect – for the better - how I view almost everything now!

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I'm on twitter @flaming_nora