Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse

We had our first ever visit to Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse last year for their fabulous Village at War event. Each of the children has been on a school trip there since September and they have been asking to go back ever since so I don't know why we'd left it so long before returning.

Me & the children went today and spent 6 hours there and could have easily stayed longer if they weren't closing up. We discovered new parts to the farm and museum, took part in all of the children's activities and had a thoroughly enjoyable day.

The workhouse museum often leaves me feeling rather depressed after reading about the lives of some of the inmates there and in other local workhouses but it serves as a great reminder to me (and the children) of how fortunate we really are.

Saying goodbye to the workhouse mannequins #workhousevoices

Molly: "I'm glad that I didn't have a life like yours" #workhousevoices

The museum is currently going through a period of renovation and refurbishment as part of the Voices from the Workhouse programme so it's emptier than usual but that didn't affect our enjoyment.

Any excuse to 'dress up'

Lorina Bulwer was a lunatic inmate at the Great Yarmouth workhouse who embroidered her angry letters onto patchwork fabric. Gressenhall museum have taken extracts and phrases from her letters and turned them into a magnetic display. The children had great fun creating new sentences, especially when they found "Old Mad Molly' Poor girl!!  

Pumping for water outside the farm cottage

My favourite parts of the complex are the beautiful gardens by the cottages. I've always loved a walled garden and I find them so peaceful and could sit in there for hours.

Lunch was delicious homemade scones and sausage rolls. Even 'Fusspot Charlie' was impressed with the food and begged for another scone.

Homemade fruit scone. Delicious!

While Harry and Molly decorated some bunting in the chapel Charlie pestered one of the staff who was running a competition to guess how many buttons were on a waistcoat. The poor bloke had a huge amount of patience considering my son had verbal diarrhoea and just wouldn't shut up. I bet he was glad when we moved on. (Thanks Paul!)

We finished the day off with half an hour in the extensive woodland playground, just to completely make sure that the children would sleep well tonight!

Just hanging around…..with Harry on the zip wire in the distance

There's so much more to Gressenhall than I have shown here but trust me when I say that you'll need a whole day to cover it all. Now that we have our Norfolk Museum passes we'll definitely be returning and I expect that it'll be quite a few times over the next 12 months!