A Perfect Credit Crunch Weekend on your Doorstep (Heritage Open Days Scheme)

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	Heritage Open Days Scheme
Date:	09/09/09 (76 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's free, it's now - get out and have a look

Disadvantages: If you miss the boat, you'll have to wait another year.

Just in the nick of time, the nice people in the dooyoo office managed to deliver on my suggestion to add the Heritage Open Days scheme to the database. And since it starts on Thursday 10th September and runs until Sunday 13th, I'd better get this posted or you'll miss all the fun.

Do you have a bit of free time over the next few days to take advantage of one of the less well known events that's on offer free of charge throughout England? I'm talking about the Heritage Open Days, a 4-day event that takes place just once a year and offers the public the opportunity to explore properties that are normally inaccessible or, in some cases, would ordinarily charge entrance fees. All the properties and events are related to local culture or architectural heritage and the range of events on offer is staggering - from the chance to visit a local synagogue or Sikh temple through to town halls, factories, castles and courtrooms, there should be something of interest to everyone. Yet despite this, I've met almost nobody who even knows that the scheme exists. Hence the reason to write this review and alert a (slightly) wider audience to the HOD scheme.

* History *

The HOD has been running since 1994 and is part of a wider European Heritage Open Days scheme. In England the scheme is administered by English Heritage and each year they invite people with special properties to apply to be included in the scheme. Last year the scheme attracted one million visitors - clearly none of them people that I know!

* How I got to know about HOD *

I spend a lot of my online time on trivago.co.uk, an international travel website that's capable of sucking up all your free time if you let it. Last year, the community manager for the UK platform set a challenge to the members to visit, take photos and write reviews of properties that were included in the HOD scheme. I checked out the details for my local area and discovered that the HOD weekend is the only time in the year when it's possible to get into Northampton's very beautiful Guildhall. Since this location had been on my 'must do' list ever since we moved to the area, I decided to head into the town on the Sunday and check it out.

What I discovered when I got into Northampton was that hundreds of other people less ignorant than me knew about HOD and were having a great time checking out the heritage buildings of Northampton. And to help them do so, a couple of old vintage buses were driving them between the sites. And to top all that, absolutely everything was completely free of charge.

I really enjoyed my tour of the Guildhall and decided to follow it up with a tour around the Sessions House which was built in the 17th century after most of the centre of Northampton burned down. It was the centre of local law and order for nearly 3 centuries. I saw where they used to hang convicted felons after they stopped using the racecourse because public hangings had a nasty tendency to increase crime rather than deter it. I learned about the architectural features of the courts including two large courtrooms that are badly in need of repair and left me feeling I should probably have been wearing a hard-hat just to sit in them whilst admiring their stunning plaster fruit on the ceiling.

In between the two HOD events, I popped into one of the town centre's large churches which wasn't on the HOD scheme but I'd been 'fired up' by the open access to these other places and inspired to go and have a look. Normally I stand outside wondering what it might be like inside. My biggest mistake was not to start sooner since I had only a few hours of HOD visiting whereas many of the people around me had been hard at it since the Thursday.

Most of us probably know a lot about the towns and cities where we went to school and maybe where we studied later. I could give you chapter and verse on the history of Salisbury where I grew up but I was shocked to realise that I really didn't know much at all about Northampton. Yes, I knew it had been the centre of the shoe-making industry and I also believed it to be a rather unloved and unlovable mess of a town. What I hadn't realised was that it once had one of the country's largest castles or that the city had been badly damaged by fire a few centuries ago leading to the need to rebuild most of it from scratch. I certainly didn't know about Northampton's chip on its collective-shoulder that it gets passed over for city status because of siding with Cromwell against the royals way back in time.

* This Year *

Unfortunately fate decrees that once again the HOD falls on the weekend when my husband is working so I'll be off on my own to hit the HOD scene and take advantage of the chance to see places I couldn't otherwise get into. This shouldn't be a problem as I found last year that the people who go along to these events tended to be very friendly and open and happy to pass on their experiences of which other places they'd been to and whether they were worth a look.

This year I'm torn between doing a bit more of Northampton or popping over to Leicester to check out some of their delights or heading in the other direction and doing Oxford, a town I know ridiculously well but even so there are opportunities to get into places that would normally be really tricky. I think I'll be on the HOD website checking my options a lot over the next couple of weeks. Talking of Oxford, if you are one of the many who find it a frustrating place because so many of the colleges don't exactly welcome visitors, this is the weekend to go as lots will be throwing open their doors to tell the world about their history.

Some of the places in the HOD scheme are open all year round but where that's the case, they lay on special events for the HOD weekend. For example you can visit the Northampton Museum all year round, but for the HOD days they are offering a tour of the Costume Store, another of the Shoe Store (Northants Museum is 60% or more about shoemaking) and there's a special talk about Mary Queen of Scots on the Sunday. The Royal and Derngate Theatres will show you around behind the scenes and there's no need to book in advance.

I quite fancy indulging in a bit of comparative religion. Whilst travelling on my holidays I happily march into any temple, mosque or church without thinking twice but back home I'd probably feel a bit reticent about doing the same thing. I know that any Sikh temple would be happy for us to wander through and we'd probably get some nice sweeties for our trouble but actually doing that just doesn't somehow feel 'right' when I'm at home. So this year I'll try to see the local Sikh temple and check out the Jewish heritage tour though if I fancy a mosque I think I'll have to head over to Oxford as they've got one on their list.

* Planning your HOD visits *

The best place to start is of course the website - http://www.heritageopendays.org.uk - and using the link on the home page which takes you to the Event Directory. Not all places are open on all 4 days so you might want to make a list of your 'must sees' and their availability. Most places need no prior booking but for those that do, it might be best to get your bookings confirmed before planning other events around them. In some cases it might be worth phoning ahead to check if there are set times for tours or if you can just turn up and have a look. If there are tours, check how long they last as you might find there are more things you want to see than you have time for and some of those tours might take longer than you can afford.

* What if you don't live in England?*

If you don't live in England, then I'd suggest that if you're thinking of visiting, this is a great weekend to plan to come since you can see tons of places that you wouldn't normally be able to access. However, if that seems like a bit too much effort, you can check out what other countries are doing. Scotland has a similar scheme called 'Doors Open Days' which runs on weekends throughout September - www.doorsopendays.org.uk - and Wales and Northern Ireland have their own programmes too but the weblinks from the English site are both broken so I can't help you with the details. Or rather I couldn't until I got a message from another member to tell me that the NI scheme has details at http://www.ni-environment.gov.uk/events/events-eho d/events-ehod-belfast.htm . If you live in the Republic of Ireland then you've missed the boat for this year because their Heritage Week ends on 31st August. Duskmaiden has told me that London's running their event a week later than the rest of the country and details are available at http://www.openhouse.org.uk

* So what's stopping you? *

It's free, the people are friendly and there's plenty to choose from. If you hate it, leave early and move on to the next attraction. Take a notebook and your camera and you can probably get enough fodder for a few reviews whilst you are at it. And remember in these credit crunch times, you don't get much for free - certainly not much of this quality

Summary: It's a fantastic scheme with something for everyone and everything for free.