Summerlee Museum

It's always nice when you find an unexpected gem on your travels - Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life is one such surprise. The museum is built on the site of Victorian Summerlee Iron Works and the Hydrocon Crane Factory.

There are some good exhibits to visit around the site, and houses depicting how things were from the late 1800s up to the 1980s. We were surprised how many of the items in the houses we recognised, either from our own youth, or from our parents or grandparents homes.

There are plenty of mechanical artifacts to look at, and for the brave of heart a trip into the old mine. The visitor centre and shop were excellent, particularly the shop with a good array of low priced items for children, which is always a bonus when taking young children out who simply "must" buy something!

The grounds of the museum were nice to walk round too - the whole museum is one of those places where you have to stop, read some of the information boards and imagine back to how times were before we began living a very pampered lifestyle. To top things off the museum is free to enter, which is amazing in this day and age!