Thank you for taking the time to send us such a lovely review of your recent visit. We are delighted you came back to visit us again after some time. You must have seen a few changes from your last visit. We look forward to you visiting us again soon.

Thank you for your review, we are delighted you enjoyed our 'Photographers dream location' for your U3A group visit. Please note that groups (of 10 or more) must pre-book with the Museum so we can allocate our coach bays accordingly each day. Individual/family visitors are encouraged to pre-book if they wish to guarantee their visit on busier days, however, you can just arrive at the Museum on the day of your choice and purchase tickets at the admission desk - unless otherwise stated on our website for our activity/event days.

Thank you for taking the time to send us a review of your visit during this February half term. The Museum is built in-keeping with the time periods they represent, so the paths around the Museum do vary, which can get a little muddy in the wet weather. Our wonderful team of volunteers and interpreters are always keen to share their knowledge with our visitors, so we are delighted they made your visit feel special.

Thank you for your feedback on your visit from back in December, I am sorry you did not feel you could contact us directly sooner with your disappointment. We have been hosting Green Father Christmas for many years at the Museum, moving it outside as a result of the last couple of years. We decided to keep it outside again this year as we found many visitors still feeling more comfortable in the outdoors. For this reason, our booking details for the event clearly stated that it was an outdoor event. The area in which Green Father Christmas was located was decorated especially for the activity, being made from all natural materials and greenery collected from the Museum itself, along with lanterns lighting the pathway to meet him. Unfortunately, they may have been extinguished temporarily by the heavy rain we experienced on the day of your visit. The area was also dressed with toys and tools from his workshop, along with a campfire. The hot mulled apple drink for adults and an apple juice for children was available every day and was included for all visitors to Father Christmas, along with a packet of biscuits each. So I am not sure why you would have been refused this, this will be noted and addressed in the review of the activities. The price of the ticket to see Green Father Christmas also included a full visit to the Museum, which was offered at a reduced rate as part of this activity. We welcome our visitors to come and spend the whole day at the Museum, along with a visit to meet Father Christmas at your allocated ticket time. We had varying activities going on each day around the 40 acre site for all our visitors to enjoy.

Thank you for your review, we appreciate all feedback from our visitors. Last year we relaunched our Christmas weekend as a visit to the Museum and a Christmas market. We took the decision to move away from just a Christmas market which took over the whole site, moving the market stalls out of the historic homes as it was causing too much damage to the buildings which we conserve. So the Christmas weekend event is priced at the standard museum entry price with the Christmas market and other activities being included in the ticket price. We never charge any extra for our children’s activities, as we believe families should have an inclusive visit once they are on site. We also introduced the park and ride to assist with our car parking, and also to help manage the number of visitors arriving at and around the site. As the Museum exhibits span over 1,000 years, not all of the era’s we cover would have celebrated Christmas as we do today, or not at all. So some areas of the Museum are not decorated for that reason, and the decorations and activities in the houses are in-keeping with the time periods of the houses. So once you are in the Museum, we do not have modern decorations on site (with the exception of in the market stalls). The demonstrations on site focussed on how people lived and worked in those eras. We did have the fires lit in the houses that we are able to do so, and we do use candles on occasion. However, the Museum adjusts its closing times in the winter to account for the change in light as this time of year. The programme for the day listed all the things you could hear, see and do at the Museum. We had many visiting demonstrations on site, in the watermill, bakehouse, Walderton, Whittaker’s cottage, Poplar, Winkhurst kitchen and candle dipping in Solestreet. We also had Visiting Choirs with music in the market square, and in South Wonston Church we also had a variety of advent and Christmas readings throughout the day. We also has a stall selling Mulled wine and hot chestnuts in the market square.

Thank you for taking the time to send us a review on your recent visit. We hold our Tree Dressing activity each year on the first Sunday in December, which we have been doing in the same way for many years, with the support of our wonderful team of interpreters and volunteers. The Museum is open as usual, with our historic houses manned with our volunteers and varying demonstrations around the site. As we start to close the houses around the site, we then invite our visitors to join in the celebrations around the Museum and at the end of the day (approx. 3.45pm) with the procession around the site to end with hanging the lights on/around the tree. We did have around 350 visitors for this day, and our admission tickets are set to our car park capacity during the winter months, which is why we had sold out of tickets for this day.

Thank you for taking the time to review your recent visit, we appreciate all feedback from our visitors. Rural life is at the core of the Museum’s storytelling, but we do not have people dressed up in old clothing all of the time as we do not focus on re-enactments or first-person story telling. We do have historical specialists and volunteers dressed up at some of our Historic Life Weekends and other event days, when we focus on specific time periods or historic buildings. This week we have been focussing on the Saxon times in some of our historic homes. As our Museum is a rural location with the buildings being built in the time periods they are from, we do not put large interpretation signage on them, as this would not be in-keeping with the conservation aims of our Museum and charity. We do have information signs outside of every building and folders of information inside for visitors to read. We also have our wonderful team of knowledgeable volunteers stewarding the historic buildings to they can talk to our visitors and answer questions. Activity at the Museum does vary each day, but throughout the summer holidays we have a range of hands on activities and trails for children to take part in. We have also had selected opportunities for children to have a go in the smithy, but with health and safety key to any activity like this, we can only have one or two participants at any one time as they need full supervision from the blacksmith, which can make it difficult for them to interact with the public during this activity. They will usually make time in between participants to answer questions from the spectators. We have not been able to have the mill running this week as we have not had our usual delivery of grain, as there is currently a local shortage. We hope to have the grain back soon so we can demonstrate within the mill and bakehouse, along with our usual supply of Museum milled flour to be available in our shop. We would be interested in your feedback on what your 11 and 7 year old would have liked to have purchased from our shop, as we stock a wide range of toys and games for all ages which sell very fast during the school holidays. If you can find out the type of things they might be interested it, it would be wonderful if you can share that with us. Please do feel free to email us at office@wealddown.co.uk and we will pass the information onto the retail manager. Again, thank you so much for your valued feedback. Kindest regards

Thank you for taking the time to send us such a lovely review of your recent visit. We are delighted you enjoyed your day out with us, including trying some of the traditional freshly baked items in our working bakehouse. We also mill our own flour in our watermill, which we use in the items we bake.

Thank you for taking the time to send us a review of your recent visit. We appreciate all feedback as it does help us to review and improve our offer at the Museum. As an independent Museum and charity, our café is only open during our Museum opening hours and caters for the seasonal demand of our visitors. We regularly update our menu and try new items, and have a selection on the menu that can be adapted to suit many dietary requirements. We have tried different Vegan menu options, but found they were not as popular and were going to waste. So our current winter menu has been created from feedback from our visitors, so although some may feel it is a little old fashioned, it is what the majority of our visitors enjoy during the winter season. Our menu will be updated again soon with the change to the summer season, and we will vary the menu options during the busier school holidays to help us meet the demands of visitor numbers.