The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra

In Northern Ireland there one of my favourite Museums that I love to visit both as a school child and now I am a little older is the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. It is a part of the four main Museums in the North of Ireland and is one which I have many happy memories about when I think back to the numerous times I have visited it. 

It comprises two separate museums, the Folk Museum and the Transport Museum. The Folk Museum shows us the way of life and traditions of the people in Northern Ireland, past and present, while the Transport Museum explores and exhibits methods of transport by land, sea and air, past and present.

The Folk Museum houses a variety of old buildings and dwellings which have been collected from various parts of Ireland and rebuilt in the grounds of the museum, brick by brick. 170 acres are devoted to illustrating the rural way of life in the early 20th century, and visitors can stroll through a recreation of the period's countryside complete with farms, cottages, crops, livestock, and visit a typical Ulster town of the time called "Ballycultra", featuring shops, churches, and both terraced and larger housing and a Tea room.

This is a street in the Museum that shows how life used to be in Ireland

The Transport Part of the Museum

The Transport Museum houses an extensive transport collection, and endeavours to tell the story of transport in Ireland, from its early history to the modern era. It is the largest railway collection in Ireland. Attractions in the grounds themselves include a model railway operated by the Model Engineers Society of Northern Ireland, and the 120 ton steel schooner Result.

The famous steel schooner 'Result'

Personally I feel that the most interesting part of the Museum is the Titanic exhibition, documenting the construction, voyage, and eventual sinking of the ill-fated vessel. The ship has long been associated with Northern Ireland, as it was constructed in the Harland and Wolff shipyards, just a few miles from the museum. The newly refurbished Titanic exhibition, tying in with the Folk museum's 'Titanic Trail' is titled TITANICa.

The Museum is the holder of Northern Ireland's main film, photographic, television and sound archives. The Museum holds the BBC Northern Ireland archive of radio and television programmes, and also possesses over 2,000 hours of sound material broadcast between 1972 and 2002 by the Irish language radio station RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, from its studios in Derrybeg, County Donegal. The museum also maintains an archive of Ulster dialects, and a large library containing over 15,000 books and periodicals.

This shows a typical scene from the Museum. 

As i have visited this Museum many times myself I feel that it would be a really good museum to visit with my pupils. I feel it would tie in with a lot of the curriculum that is taught in Ireland and also it is a really fun way for the children to find out a lot about how their ancestors lives and the type of lifestyle that they might have had.