Highland Folk Museum

📌 Newtonmore, Highland
★★★★

We first visited the Highland Folk Museum on a warm afternoon in June 2019, expecting to find an interesting heritage site that might take an hour or two explore. We eventually finished our visit after two days and about 7 hours spent within the gates, and pretty much agreed that this is about the best museum anywhere in the Scottish Highlands. The “museum” is actually a series of three, reconstructed villages displaying Highland life from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, spread along a narrow site about a mile in length. At the west end is Baile Gean: a 1730s township reconstructed to the exact layout (well, a mirror image!) of Raitts, which was the region’s original settlement prior to the founding of Kingussie in the 1790s. Next, in the middle is Balameanach, with buildings from the early 20th century. And to the east is another cluster of houses centred around Aultlarie Farm Steading, representing a broad range of dates between about 1850 and 1930. Each of the two-dozen buildings is lovingly furnished, with period actors and special events on certain summer dates – you can even buy old-fashioned sweets from the village stores! For an idea of the types of buildings represented, scroll down to see our photos, which are organised by each village “cluster”. Information panels about all the buildings are few and far between, so we strongly suggest purchasing one of the chunky, 50-page guide books which has a page on each.

🌍 Location

📌 Aultlarie Croft, Kingussie Road (A86), 1 mi east of Newtonmore village centre

🧭 O.S. Grid Reference: NN 727996

🛰️ GPS coordinates: 57.069559,-4.102967

🚌 Bus to Newtonmore | 🚆 Newtonmore (1 mi)

🚗 Car park

📝 Key info

⌚ Daily, 29 March to October 2024

🎫 Free

🔗 highlifehighland.com