Beamish, a 350-acre open-air museum in County Durham, offers visitors a complete escape from modern life, complete with a coal-fired fish and chip shop and a traditional sweet shop.
The "living" museum uses reconstructed and relocated historical buildings to immerse guests in exhibits spanning from an 1820s settlement to a 1950s town.
Digital Detox at the Museum
In-character staff never use screens, and the patchy mobile signal across the site means visitors are effectively forced to talk to one another, creating what many call an enforced digital detox.
This allows guests to fully unplug and immerse themselves in the Edwardian experience, away from social media and notifications.
Traditional Food and Drink
Jubilee Confectioners, the village's 1900s sweet shop, offers handmade pear drops, cinder toffee, and 'black bullets', with staff boiling sweets from scratch using century-old recipes and brass pans.
Davy's Fried Fish Shop, in the 1900s Pit Village, cooks fish and chips over coal-fired ranges using beef dripping, avoiding modern fryers and vegetable oils.
Food content creator Robbie visited the site and shared a viral video, saying: "This is the fish and chip shop trapped in time - one of the last in the world that uses coal to heat the original 1950s fryers, with fish and chips cooked in beef dripping."
He added: "The sweet shop makes candy by hand, the bakery makes the same cakes as a century ago. There's no mobile phone reception up here so people actually have to talk to each other."
Visitor Reactions
The viral clip drew thousands of comments, with one viewer calling the coal-fired meal the "best fried fish you will ever eat in your life".
Others praised the digital detox, with one commenting: "Wonder if no mobile reception is a specific tactic. What a world with no mobiles and social media." Another joked about Googling how to move to the village permanently.
