THE dedicated volunteers of the Museum of Dartmoor Life brought history to life last week as part of the national Heritage Open Days.

Volunteers led guided tours through the museum under the auspices of ‘Glimpses into Dartmoor Lives’. Visitors encountered the sorts of people who lived and worked on Dartmoor in the Victorian period. The characters included the tin miner, blacksmith, railway worker, farmer and Victorian cottage dweller.

Museum manager Andrew Thompson said: ‘The events were really good.

‘Our volunteers guided people around the museum and created a series of stories based on incidents in the life of real people. So we had a Dartmoor cottager, a wheelwright, a miner, someone in the woollen trade, that sort of thing.

‘Everything got a really good reception from people which is great. I think it is an interesting and innovative way to bring the museum to life and it definitely is something we will look at doing again in future. We think we could create something similar to present to groups like the WI, U3A and others to draw them here.’