The World of James Herriot Museum

The World of James Herriot re-opened on Tuesday after an early spring clean - and with a new exhibition.

The Thirsk museum was closed for seven days while staff and volunteers overhauled the period rooms.

“Everything that could be moved, washed, polished, dusted and hoovered has been – and a lick of paint was also applied where it was needed,” said centre manager, Alison Scurrah. “It is very difficult to give any of the rooms a thorough clean when the centre is open every day of the year. The weeks following Christmas are traditionally a quiet time so we decided to close for a week. All the staff put on their rubber gloves and got stuck into the cleaning – and without the help of the volunteers we wouldn’t have got through half of the jobs.”

The new exhibition looks at farming across the years and especially the production of butter and honey. Farming tools and memorabilia have been loaned to the exhibition by the Ryedale Folk Museum.

The centre is open from 11am until 4pm daily (last admission 3pm) – for more details call 01845 524234 or check out www.worldofjamesherriot.org