The Museum is on the corner of Reeth Green, down from the Post Office. It is open November to Easter - Sundays 10.30 to 5.30. Easter to end of October - Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays 10.30 to 5.30. Please call us for opening at other times. Groups very welcome, specialised tours and hands-on sessions available.

The museum also has accomodation availiable. For more information, click here.

13 small silver shields were brought into the Museum last month, 10 of which are engraved, the first 'Fremington 1924' the last 'Marske 1933', other shields bear the names: Reeth 192, 1930. 1931), Gunnerside (1925), Downholme (1926), Marrick (1927, 1928), Arkengarthdale (1932). Do you know what triumphs these plaques commemorate, and where is the trophy and plinth to which they were attached? If you have any ideas, or even a photograph let us know!

Swaledale & Arkengarthdale are the most northerly of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales. The austere beauty of its hills and moors and fast flowing becks remain much as seen by the invading Romans and Vikings and the raiding Scots. But the stone farm houses and barns, mile upon mile of stone walls and the abandoned mine workings remind us of the inhabitants of more recent generations who gained their livelihood from the landscape. With the closing of the lead mines in the late nineteenth century due to the importation of cheap Spanish lead, almost half the population packed their belongings and began their journey to seek work in the mills and mines of the West Riding, Lancashire or Durham or overseas to Spain and the Americas.



The MUSEUM was opened in 1974, and is based in the old Methodist School, which took its first pupils in 1836. It is a fascinating repository of over 1,000 objects connected with living and working in the Dale. If you want to learn about LEADMINING this is the place for you, where lead and its associated rocks, minerals and fossils were yielded up by the hard labour of the miners. You can see the TOOLS they used, trace their progress through the landscape via nineteenth century MAPS, and imagine what it must have been like to work underground with only candlelight for a guide. SHEEP FARMING has been the mainstay of Swaledale agriculture since Tudor times.

As a thriving community the Dale was also home to many skilled TRADES & CRAFTS: tinsmithing, joinery and stonemasonry, all represented in the Museum. While work was hard outside, it was no less easy inside.

There are displays of DOMESTIC EQUIPMENT from washing tubs and dollies to early electric irons. Keeping the house clean, and the family fed was a labour intensive job, but did not preclude time for ENTERTAINMENT. The strange iron spring with a spike is for playing KNURR & SPELL. There are nineteenth century quoits, and a whole section on the local BRASS & SILVER BANDS. There are many OLD PHOTOGRAPHS which show Reeth as it was in the early twentieth century, and faces that are still familiar.



There are many CURIOSITIES, the pair of what look like wooden scissors are glove stretchers, and a beautiful ivory tube, a container for sovereigns; the small walnut wood case is a lady's snuff box. Do you remember Lingford's baking powder, we have a tin, but what is Seidlitz powder? Have you seen a SPOKE DOG, and what is it for? Would you be able to identify clogging tools? What is a STICKLE PRICKER?

We invite you to come and explore our Museum and discover a past which is not so very far away, but which is all too easily forgotten.