Eden

A couple of weeks ago I had to travel up to Yorkshire. I travelled down the day before, and as I had a few hours spare I visited a Museum called Eden Camp. Consider this  review, if you will.

Eden camp was set up in 1942 as a POW camp, it consists of all the old huts turned into a series of galleries each focusing on one aspect of warfare.

Some of the German POW ID cards that were saved from the camp.

It does focus on other aspects of warfare having a couple of huts turned into regimental museums or focusing on other conflicts, but the vast majority of it is about the Second World War. One thing that is a bit perplexing to me is you have a logical start point (Hut 1), and progress takes you through the following huts in sequence, each covering a later period. Then it offers an alternative start point of Hunt 24, which is proudly entitled 'Museum inside a Museum!'.  This starts at Hut 24, and progress takes you through the following huts in sequence, each covering a later period.
Yes I did just copy and paste, as although the exhibits are different it really is covering the similar ground.
The silly thing is the huts cover similar ground, but don't cover exactly the same items, and their exhibits are sometimes different. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Huts are laid out to conform with GCSE history syllabus as well, but this a logical idea for the museum to make itself sellable. One thing that I really did notice was the cost. I arrived at just after 1500, the museum closed at 1700 (although the staff started their close down routine at about 1600), and it was still full price to get in. That price was pretty steep as well, coming in at £10.50. Some museums are free, or offer reduced costs to enter after 1500.
I got round everything in about 90 minutes, but I wasn't stopping to read I was just ambling around taking the occasional picture of stuff I thought you'd find interesting.

One of the main selling points of the museum is in several huts they've converted the hut to a diorama of the events they are talking about. For example in the Blitz section they have a bombed out house:

Or a house that has just been hit by a incendiary bomb, with ARP types dealing with it:

The dummies involved in these are bloody terrifying! Equally a lot of them are pitch black, especially if moving from bright sunlight (as I was) into a pitch black room. The floors are sometimes uneven as well, although all obstructions have gentle ramps up to them.
They do have somewhat of a sense of humour, in the U-Boat walk-through:

And from the D-day section:

There are some interactive activities to keep the inquisitive mind going:

If you lift up the Friend or Foe tabs it will tell you if you are wrong, or what the plane is.

But these activities are not common.

They did have some larger external exhibits, and this is where the museum felt the cheapest. As several of them seem to have been brought simply because its vaguely militarily themed, even though some of them are not really connected to the subject of the museum.

12-pounder QF naval gun

WE.177B nuclear free fall bomb.. because reasons?

Captioned as a WWII British Bofors 40mm... yeah ok, it is a Bofors 40mm under all that junk, but its not a British one that I can see.

Yeah...? No! Now the museum looks like you don't know what you're talking about, which casts doubt on everything else in your museum. Equally the Museum has this Really irritating habit of sticking 'Eden Camp' on each of their large exhibits. Which again makes the place feel cheap and desperate.

Oddly their best exhibit was hidden out the back of the Admin buildings, mainly because they hadn't had time to 'restore it' and end up calling it a Sherman Firefly or somesuch. As it wasn't 'restored' You're able to get right up to it.

You'll note the engine bay is missing along with all its automotive parts, and you can actually see into the fighting compartment.

Anyway, the following are just some of the fun or interesting stuff they had supporting the diorama's you could walk through.

Their Churchill Crocodile

That's what 6in of armour looks like. The inside is in a terrible condition though, as it is semi-open to the elements.

The following section of pictures are from the Blitz display and I think they're quite interesting. The first shows a 1kg magnesium based incendiary bomb 15 seconds after it was ignited, the second is after 45 seconds.

15 Seconds

45 seconds

Anyway, that's all, next week we're back to normal with an article as usual.