Highland Folk Museum

Fantastic place to visit, so much to see and a great way to spend the day. Great insight into Scottish life through the ages. If your in the area definitely worth visiting. It's free but you can donate (recommend donations about £10) parking was only a couple of pound for the day. Worth every penny in my opinion.

This museum is spread over a large area so be prepared to walk a fair bit. There are a great number of exhibits to view,all in all a great place to visit. Cafe on site is a bit busy between 12 and 2pm,but there are a lot of outside tables with benches if weather is good,which it was today. Pinewood walk and village is also very interesting. There were a lot of kids at museum and they seemed to enjoy experience. No entrance fee but they do ask for donation.

Lovely museum with loveliest staffs. The old township was fascinating and the 3 different colours highland coos are the cutest. There is also no entrance fee. Highly recommended!

Great stop with LOTS of walking. This is around one mile in length with plenty of elevation change for mobility hindered or concerned folks. Paths are nice, wide and well groomed but quite a lot of walking. The exhibits are quite good, a handy booklet with map, each page corresponding to a featured building or section come included with the suggested donation. Super friendly, happy to do their job, greeters at check in booth one must pass to gain entrance. And there are three HAIRY COOS! Fabulous little guys. I don’t know what the heck it is about these critters but they near entrance me. Took way too many pictures and mostly they show their butt “at”you. Occasionally one may get a prized face shot but quite elusive. Three different time periods set in actual period building styles and there are actors dressed in same time frame outfits that enrich the experience in the 1700s, time zone, if you will. Clever, interesting. Something for everyone. And all for a small donation. Excellent job in maintaining a representation of the life and trials of Highlander living. The idea, that in unbelievably harsh winters, like HARSH!!! What with the 15-20 FEET of snow fall during those years, the people MUST have the necessary food stores to sustain the exceedingly long winters. Folks would have both a “people” side and a livestock side to the dwellings. Everything would die if not. Most of the poor didn’t even own and livestock and those that did cohabited with their beasts. In mild seasons most just lived outside. But in cold temps there could be as many as 70 people in these smoke-filled, literal stone huts. The smoke served a purpose other than burning your eyes! The rats, lice and other pests wouldn’t take up residence in the thatch roof since it was always, constantly seeping smoke. Drove the vermin away. One less problem! It’s amazing humanity survived in these parts. Tough sons (and daughters) of guns!!! I mean like super tough, hardy folk!!! Fabulous stop off the highway (motorway) for young and old. 8-80!!! Loads of paid parking. And if you can, pass along your unexpired parking voucher/receipt to someone else. Makes for an even more pleasant experience. Pretty clean. Toilets and cafe( not literally) side by side, near entrance. Sweet shop at one end near the stars of the show, hairy coo. That by the way, pretty much eat all dam day long from my observation! Kinda need to, not a lot of caloric alive in grass. Gotta keep up their coo figure! One could spend a good while there. Lots of smiling faces and likely slightly sore feet if you walked a lot that day! Like we did thanks to my beloved, marathon style, sightseeing wife! Happy to do it and you likely will be too. Bring children and run them hard and they’ll crash out hard lol! For your sake! Hopefully.

This is a gem of a find! Free entry and only £2 to park, this is a must visit for any outlander fan or anyone interested in the history! Spent 3 hours here, time well spent, could have stayed another 2 to see it all. Accessibility is varied. You'll struggle to get into all the replica buildings if you are wheelchair bound and the township (pictured below) is accessed through a very steep woodland walk, so either a mobility scooter or a very fit pusher is needed! All the essentials is wheelchair friendly though!

Whilst free to enter it is worth donating as such good stuff here. Wide ranging local history with an interesting back story. From farming to weaving, from clockmaking to joinery. A historic settlement. About a third of all thatched roofs currently known about in/Scotland.... And if that was not enough ... you can go back to school (ink well and nib pen for writing practice!) Wear stout shoes and be dresses for the weather forecast! Also the cafe serves a canny cup of coffee.

We had an absolutely brilliant family day at the museum. What a place! I will be back in the future. I would recommend it to anybody.

A must visit museum of life of the Highlanders from 1700's to mid 1900's, yes a decent amount of walking to reach the 1700's township, but very worthwhile. The township have thatched dwellings on a mound by a pond, all aspects of life depicted here, with a guide at the Township to advise on anything you want to know. Walk through time to various reconstructions of original buildings moved to this site, great for historical buffs, fir textiles, for woodwork, for some aspects of engineering. A good 2-3 hours needed, cafe and facilities on site, take good walking boots. Excellent and knowledgeable staff, friendly too X ☺️🥰 p.s. the museum has no set entrance fee, you make a donation.

After shotgunning Outlander in preparation for my Scotland trip, we decided to check out the Highland Folk Museum. Everything here is a faithful recreation of time way back when - it's amazing to learn the history of each area. The grounds are well kept, and the staff is eager to tell you more. Though they only accept donations, it is well worth your while.

So - in my opinion, plan your visit here solely for the 1700 Scottish village experience and DO NOT plan this as a place to eat lunch!! The tearoom is super basic, just 6 diff types of indifferent sandwiches like tuna, BLT, egg, prawn etc and a soup (which was tomato basil on the day we were there and was hearty and quite delicious). There are also a good variety of drinks but that is it! Apart from the soup, everything else is cold and the dessert quality was quite indifferent too (specifically the lemon curd cake - would not get this from here). That being said, the actual experience of walking thru the village and seeing first hand how people lived in the Scottish highlands from 1700s onwards was quite revealing. We were lucky to visit on a day the re- thatching of the grass roof on one of the huts was happening and the peat fire was on, so could ask a lot of questions from the re-enactors. Breathing in the peat fire was an especially eye opening experience as I realized first hand how breathing in that heavy carbon filled air in that enclosed space would have contributed to an average life expectancy of around 35 years (never mind if you were asthmatic!). I also loved the gypsy encampment and the tradesmen shops from the 1930s thru to the 50s. Apparently the shops were moved here and so they are not just recreations. There's also video and or audio-visual presentation that create an interactive visit, and for the latter, just look for big buttons to press on the wall while the videos run in a continuous loop. Oh also because it's a fairly big outdoor museum, there is a £1 donation which gets you in a truck which drives you around, so check timings for that if you have a limited time. I def enjoyed my visit, but will eat in town or elsewhere before coming here again.

Wonderful place to visit. The displays are interesting. The docents are friendly and informative. A great place to spend 3 or 4 hours. The cafe on site has a selection of sandwiches and a soup of the day; I had a bowl of tomato basil soup with a hummus/ tomato sandwich; delicious. My friend had one of the dessert selections; carrot cake, bar cookie, lemon muffin.

Amazing experience. I especially loved the 1700s area. You can walk into the buildings and get a true sense of how they lived. Our daughter loved the chicken coop and the friendly black cat on the property. Very friendly and helpful staff.

Fun open-air interactive museum about Highland life. They have a 17th century townsite, and a mid 1930s townsite. Craftsmen volunteers dress up and demonstrate activities. Kids loved it. Admission is free. Highly worthwhile.

This is a cute little museum with all kinds of relics about how highland life used to be. Most of it is interesting and like any good folk museum, it makes me glad that things now are so much easier. If you're passing through Kingussie and you have a spare hour, this is a good place to spend it.

This is a perfect place to pass an afternoon in awesome scenery with a visit to bygone times ,highlight is definitely the township Baille Ghearr where some authentic traditional Black houses have been built complete with smouldering peat fires and thatched roofs and actors in garb telling you how the people of the 1700's survived such primitive conditions. There's so much more to see such as the 1937 schoolroom where your child can take part in a lesson with the stern teacher ,there s a working farm , rebuilt church , joiners workshop grocery store with old style sweets for sale and much more. Well recommended

Worth a visit. We spent a fabulous sunny afternoon walking the grounds through the forest, thatched roof houses, joinery, barns, etc. There were reinactors and story tellers to answer questions and provide insight on how people survived in the 1700's. There were unique Scottish breed of chickens wandering the grounds also. A couple of the huts had fires stoked to light them up. Educational for all, but the young kids running about loved it especially.