St Fagans open air museum is located a 20 minutes drive from Cardiff City centre or just over half an hour on the number 32 bus which runs every hour from the bus station. We opted for the bus however we soon realised when we arrived that we wouldn’t be able to spend the full day at the attraction as the last bus back was at 14:55. I believe there are other buses that run from outside of the museum grounds but we weren’t aware of that at the time so maybe something to consider depending on your timescales. The bus was £2.50 each way for adults and contactless is accepted – just don’t forget to tap out when you get off!
The museum first opened in 1948, inspired by the open air folk museums of Scandinavia. Its aim is to preserve aspects of rural life and heritage crafts (e.d cider making and saddlery) so they don’t die out. The museum is free to enter and tells the story of Welsh life through its buildings, each of which has been painstakingly dismantled and transported to the museum from its original location.
We bought a guidebook for £5 which includes a map and a page dedicated to the history of each building. The main entrance building includes a small gallery which contains artefacts from different periods of Welsh history. We learned about pivotal events in Welsh history including the Aberfan landslide disaster and the flooding of Capel Celyn.
Once outside the buildings are quite spaced out so there is a lot of walking to do. The buildings are not really in numerical order so you may want to plan a little bit if a route to make sure you see everything as we did a lot of doubling back on ourselves to pull in things we had missed. We have no excuse since we did have the map to refer to – we just didn’t plan very well.
Visitors can go inside many of the buildings and most have a member of staff inside who can answer any questions and tell you more about the history of what you are seeing.
In my opinion one of the most interesting things about this place was the fact that some of the buildings are still working buildings. We walked into the clog-maker’s workshop to find a clog maker hard at work.
The Oakdale Institute has working toilets for visitors to use. Upstairs you can watch a short film which shows the work involved in moving it from its original located and re-erecting it at the museum in 1995. Social Institute such as this were the centre of community life in industrial and mining towns and offered support to unemployed families as well as an opportunity to educate oneself in the library. There was a room with newspapers from the time and just outside you could sit on a bench that played clips of voices talking about what life was lack for the miners and their families.
There were several cafes and shops dotted around including a cafe that sells gluten-free fish and chip. This was unfortunately closed when we passed as it was a little too early for lunch, but great to know we would be catered for if necessary!
Highlights for us were the row of terraced houses from Rhyd-y-car, their interiors decorated to reflect different time periods, and the Vulcan Hotel which was lifted from very near to where my daughter currently lives in Cardiff. The Vulcan is actually a working pub and opens to serve drinks for a limited time each day.
There is a small row of shops that Dr Who fans may recognise as being used as a location in the episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood with David Tennant’s Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha. One of these shops does actually sell a range of souvenirs and refreshments for visitors to purchase.
There is so much to see here with around sixty buildings to view so this is just a very small sample of everything we saw. A very enjoyable day out and I would definitely return as there were a couple of things we missed. In particular the castle area was closed and we ran out of time to see the other buildings in that area.
Very pleasant place to walk around, well spaced out with plenty of opportunities for refreshments, toilets and a quick rest if needed. We visited on a fairly quiet day so I imagine there would possibly be queues to get in and see each building on a busier day.
compass and coaster 
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