Rural Life Living Museum, Tilford
open air museum of rural life near Farnham in Surrey, United Kingdom
The Rural Life Living Museum is in Tilford, Surrey near Farnham in southern England. Formerly known as the Old Kiln Agricultural Museum and the Rural Life Centre, it is an open-air museum of country life run by the Old Kiln Museum Trust, a charitable trust. It covers over 10 acres (40,000 m2) of field, woodland and barns, and collects and preserves objects associated with farming and goods used by local craftsmen between 1750 and 1960. There is also an arboretum with over one hundred species of trees.
The museum displays farming through the seasons, local hop growing, tools and crafts allied to country industries and needs. The social history of village life from the 19th century is displayed covering school life, domestic work, period shops and trades. There is a working iron furnace and a woodyard, both run by the volunteers. It also hosts the 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge Old Kiln Light Railway and a Blacksmith's forge.
The museum was originally assembled as a private collection by Henry and Madge Jackson, starting from 1948 when they moved into the adjacent Old Kiln Cottage. The Old Kiln Agricultural Museum itself first opened in 1973, originally occupying Henry's Yard, a small part of the current site.
“Rural Life Living Museum, Tilford” enters the record as open air museum of rural life near Farnham in Surrey, United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rural, Life and Living can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7380528. Authority coordinates are 51.183, -0.772. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1750, 1960, 1948 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rural Life Living Museum, Tilford” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.