As another British summer arrives, the imploration on every parent’s lips is the same: I need rainy day activity ideas!
We’re constantly on the lookout for interesting outings, especially as our teenager and tween are long past enjoying soft-play. We recently visited the Milestones Museum in Basingstoke and discovered a great afternoon’s outing that’s educational to boot. We were invited to visit by Hampshire Top Attractions, which features some of the best days out for families in the region.
Why visit the Milestones Museum
The Milestones Museum is an indoor street landscape that tells of life in Hampshire in days of yore. It features actual objects, vehicles and replica shops from history to provide a walk-through historical experience. Helpfully, it’s housed in a massive warehouse-like structure in a modern leisure park (nearby is a drive-through McDonalds, cinema, indoor skydiving, ten-pin bowling and more) with plenty of parking.
There is loads of room to walk (or run) around, innumerable exhibits to admire and some interactive activities — a perfect antidote to that cooped-up feeling. While the ceiling overhead is corrugated metal, the finish on the buildings is admirable: not cardboard cutouts but genuine brick buildings.
What to see at the Milestones Museum
They have an old bus you can clamber on, living rooms showing the styles of ’50s and ’60s (check out that television!), shops — some of which you peer into, others which you go into — vintage cars, vintage bicycles, an Edwardian-style pub and much more.
What we loved
The pub and the sweet shop are experiential shops — you can order a drink or buy a ration card and old-fashioned penny to “buy” sweets that were only available during wartime rationing. It was also, not coincidentally, one of my daughter’s favourite stops.
“The sweet shop was like a real olden-day sweet shop,” she said. “Everything was in jars, and we had these ration cards. We handed the ration card to the lady. The lady ripped the ration card and gave us some sweets. I chose lemon sherbet,” she said.
Another big hit was the Penny Arcade. I could have spent an hour here, trying out the old-fashioned games and diversions — everything from fortune-telling machines a la Zoltar to What the Butler Saw-style risque photo flip machines (ooh la la) to games of skill. (Scroll to the bottom to see my video of some of the machines.)
There was also an exhibit of huge animals, built from Lego. “The mammoth was made out of something like 2 million pieces of Lego,” my daughter marvelled. On our visit they had stations set up for kids to play with Lego and build their own; the museum regularly features activities to get kids engaged.
My husband deemed the experience “incredibly authentic”, the teen boy declared one of the games “intense”, and I loved admiring the vintage artifacts and advertisements.
What we didn’t love
There is an audio tour that, while packed with interesting information, was overly long. The kids abandoned it in the first room, I abandoned it in the 3rd room because I was falling so far behind them in exploring. I’d love to see a snappier version that hits the highlights as you move through.
The setting could also benefit from some external light — skylights or windows — to make it feel more like a street scene and less like a warehouse.
I’m on the fence about the mannequins the museum has dotted around, engaged in “ordinary” old-time activities. You round a corner and come upon them like I did with the, uh, gentlemen pictured above and they are life-like enough to give you a start. Kind of cool. Kind of creepy.
But these points feel a bit nit-picky. We really enjoyed our afternoon at the museum. There is also a gift shop with an interesting array of related merchandise and a cafe. It’s a fun activity to education children about the time before iPhones (gasp!) — you needn’t even wait for a rainy day to enjoy it.
We were provided a family ticket to the Museum. All opinions are my own.
The details
Milestones Museum
Leisure Park
Churchill Way West
Basingstoke RG22 6PG
Adults: £8.95, children 5-15 £5.25, under-5s free. Family ticket £26.75
New to Hampshire and new to home education so will be visiting this place based on your review.
I’ve been there too – partly because Grandad visited it and kept going on about it (he likes a trip down memory lane does Grandad!). I loved the fact there’s space to move about freely, and that despite it being a museum it doesn’t really feel like that. My kids were also drawn to the sweetshop. It seems there’s been some additions since we last went, and now my eldest daughter has studied a couple of historic periods at school, she might also enjoy that aspect of it more. It’s really not far for me (I live near Reading), so this post had jogged my memory!
Vanessa, you hit the nail on the head: lots of room and doesn’t feel museum-y (although we like the regular kind too). Thanks for commenting!