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An amazing collection of shoemaking heritage including a curious machine that creates poetry in latin! The Alfred Gillett Trust has much to offer visitors but is not yet fully open to the public so Heritage Open Days provides a valuable opportunity for the team to share their stories. And in a year where we celebrated 'Astounding Inventions', that poetic machine stepped straight into the media spotlight!

A Hindu place of worship in a modern building, beautifully decorated with traditional designs, welcomed many eager visitors over Heritage Open Days for the first time this year. Careful planning to engage a large new team of volunteers, ranging in age from 11-70+, meant they could spend more time with visitors enriching the experience for all.

The most northerly town in England was one of the first pioneers of Heritage Open Days. Its ongoing success as a festival hub is down to the work of many volunteers, working in partnership and willing to try new things. Since 2018 a multi-generational steering group has coordinated the brilliant progamme of events, drawing on its rich history to transform the town for a weekend, helping people see it in a new light.

Beverley is an historic town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, a quiet, little known gem of a place that for the past 4 years has burnt extraordinarily brightly as a festival hotspot. This is thanks to the work of a brilliant local coordinator at Beverley Civic Society, who partners with the excellent long standing Hull programme to create an annual East Riding HODs hubbub. Plans were well underway for another great year in 2020 and then COVID-19 came along, but that was not going to stop this amazing team.

A world class archive with an extensive, and surprisingly diverse range of material in its collection, sits beyond a humble driveway in a small Hertfordshire town. Due to the sensitive nature of the site and its work the doors can only be opened to the public for one day each year - Heritage Open Day! The festival not only allows the public a rare opportunity to see behind the scenes but it also gives the expert staff the chance to share their work and see its impact on the people who access the collections they have so painstakingly restored and researched.

This oasis of historic gardens with four glass houses amongst its many attractions saw 6,000 visitors in one day for HODs 2019. Part of the festival community for over ten years, it is consistently among the most popular entries on our event directory. 

Blickling's striking Jacobean Hall and beautiful gardens are a classic entry on stately homes 'to visit' lists, but with an estate covering 4,600 acres of woodland, parkland, and farmland there are many other stories it can tell. For the past few years the team have been using HODs as a chance to highlight different aspects of Blicking. For 2019 they focused on a new river restoration project - delighting visitors with a weekend of special walks exploring the history and ecology of the river as it meanders through the estate.

This former mining colliery is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and the oldest known rope hauled railway system in the world. The team have been running Heritage Open Days since 2017 and it's become a 'firm favourite' in their events calendar. For 2021 alongside their usual brilliant tours and talks our Edible England theme gave them a whole new line of inspiration. In just three months they converted part of this industrial site into a thriving community allotment.

Over 10 years this local society has been developing a fantastic, creative hub of festival events. Their History Rock Snake really captured people's attention locally this year, while online they have 'visitors' as far afield as Australia with their series of films, which can showcase places and stories inaccessible any other way.

How do you engage people with a busy 1,352ft long historic bridge, rising over 300ft above a gorge, which is in constant use?! This Trust has been doing just that, hugely successfully, for ten years. Working in partnership with a range of experts currently involved in maintaining the structure has given the team a new angle this year and made them even more of a highlight for visitors.

This beautiful historic theatre in Cheshire not only knows how to pull in the crowds for a show, but how to engage visitors with its history! Their backstage tours with a local historian are always popular but this year they expanded their repertoire to reach an even wider audience with two new events: a pantomime costume workshop, and a spooky escape room created in collaboration with young adults.

No cars but LOTS of people - Dorchester's Open Dor event for Heritage Open Days 2019 was a huge, sunny, success! 16 organisations and 76 volunteers worked together to showcase a town made famous in the works of author, Thomas Hardy. People queued round the block for a chance to go behind closed doors while a range of special talks, tours, and a public street art project gave everyone a chance to do and learn something new.

We all need a little help from our friends... for the Friends of Friendless Churches this means coming together to restore beautiful historic buildings to their place as community hubs. As a small charitable organisation with a wide remit and limited resources, Heritage Open Days provides an all important platform for them to share their work and reach out to potential new friends.

The Friends group of a small local cemetery organised one of the biggest press highlights of the year. The Friends have worked in partnership with the local heritage group to run Heritage Open Days for a number of years but this time they researched ways they could connect with the national festival theme, and the result was a real 'CemeTreat'!

Traditional skills don't have to be lost in the past. To demonstrate this Heatherfield Heritage's eclectic team (including painters, carpenters, mechanics and much more!) took a punt with an online offering for their first Heritage Open Days. Overcoming challenges they created a series of bitesize videos showcasing the stories and craft behind the arts of our inland waterways, with a lighthearted touch that proved popular.

A three year restoration project gave Hereford Cathedral a special new space to share with visitors, and Heritage Open Days provided the test ground for them to explore different ways to engage audiences with it. 2020 was going to be a spectacular celebration of the project finish until COVID-19 put plans in doubt. Keeping access as a key value though the end result was even more valuable with twin strands offering visitors online and in-person experiences.

This beautiful Historic House in Northamptonshire offered that little something extra over their first Heritage Open Days, which drew in the crowds. Inspired by our work with Icon they ran a Conservation Unlocked event with experts in stained glass, gilding, books, and textiles to showcase all the different conservation work done at this beautiful site with a world class collection.

Leeds is a vibrant city, full of grand Victorian architecture, testament to its industrial past, but there is so much more to explore. Helping people do just that Leeds Civic Trust have been coordinating events for Heritage Open Days for over 20 years, curating a popular programme of walks, talks and tours. This year, as the pandemic threw events into doubt, the team threw themselves into learning new skills to ensure everyone could continue to discover the city's stories just in different ways.

This cultural and community development organisation leads one of our most creative and diverse festival hubs. In addition to using the festival platform to showcase their work in preserving, documenting and celebrating the history of Milton Keynes, they also coordinate the wider local festival network on behalf of the City Council.

A stunning Palazzo building houses the extraordinary library and archive of Lloyd's Register, covering over 250 years of marine and engineering science and history. Charlotte Ward, Education and Outreach Coordinator, took the chance to open up the site and collections in a new way over Heritage Open Days in 2019.