Farm family fun as Temple Newsam’s new play barn opens

The new play barn at Temple Newsam's home farm has opened to the public after works to convert the old cow byre have been completed.

Transcript

00:00Hi I'm Maria Akers, I'm the Senior Estates Manager here at Temple Newsham and I'm here

00:05today to welcome you to a new part of Home Farm. So this is the Home Farm Play Barn which

00:12will be the new entrance to the farm and inside there's exciting things to be found. We have

00:20two play areas in there, one is for children up to about 12 years and a toddler area and we also

00:26have a really lovely little sensory room and it's a project we've been working on now for quite some

00:32time. I think we were first sort of looking at drawings in about 2018 so it's taken a little

00:39bit of time to come to fruition. Obviously some of the rare British farm and animals live here

00:48including cattle, sheep, pigs and my favourite animal goat as well. So really it's a pleasure to come here

01:02and and see the animals and walk around. This dates to 1922 which is actually when the

01:09local authority bought the whole of Temple Newsham. What we've done here is we've brought what's outside

01:16in the farm and the park into kind of an indoor kind of a play area for young people. The building

01:24was in need of some repair and we really felt the farm would benefit from some more indoor space

01:29because it's always been a brilliant place to visit and there's stuff happening all year round

01:33but we were aware that in the winter months it can be a bit dreary, a bit wet and so we wanted to have

01:38some space that was that was always there whatever the weather and hopefully that's what we've achieved.