Ulster American Folk Park
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The Ulster American Folk Park (Irish: Daonpháirc Uladh-Mheiriceá) is an open-air museum in Castletown, just outside Omagh, in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.
Central to the Folk Park is the boyhood home of Thomas Mellon, judge and founder of the Pittsburgh banking dynasty. Contained within the park are some thirty buildings — some recreations and some are painstakingly restored originals. Some of the two-up, two-down houses in one of the reconstructed streets were transported in their entirety from Sandy Row, off the Donegall Road in Belfast, and other buildings have been transported from elsewhere in the province.
Elsewhere in the site there are agricultural displays and animals, and visitors are offered samples of various local, food such as smoked salmon and bread, freshly-cooked in the cottages they pass through.
The park is open throughout the year, excluding some public holidays.
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[edit] Theme
The museum is themed, with volunteers dressed in period costume, often demonstrating techniques used for day-to-day tasks and occupational skills such as bread making, cooking, arts and crafts, embroidery, spinning and printing and so on. Events are marked which cover the culture of both the New World and the Old World, such as Independence Day and Halloween. Festivals often take place including Saint Patrick's Day, Appalachian, Bluegrass and Irish folk music and dancing demonstrations. Exhibitions are often scheduled to promote cultural awareness, such as Hands Across the Border and textiles exhibits.
[edit] Transatlantic Connections
The Ulster-American theme is highlighted by the layout and the information relayed, such as the fact that over two million people had left Ulster, for North America between the years 1700 and 1900.
The park is split into four sections, including the entrance.
[edit] Research and Education
The entrance itself includes accommodation for up to forty-six people, in a variety of situations, a restaurant, a visitors' information centre and the Centre for Migration Studies (CMS). The CMS has an attached library and offers, in conjunction with the University of Ulster and Queen's University of Belfast, postgraduate and undergraduate courses, as well as tailored and shorter courses; all of which concern the study of Irish migration from 1600 to the present day. The specialist research library contains some 10,000 volumes, over 50 periodicals, maps, audio-visual material, and a collection of primary source documents (the Irish Emigration Database) which is searchable on computer. The Centre is open to visitors during basic office hours, and closed during public holidays.
[edit] Old World
The Old World region is the second area of the park. It includes whole streets of old houses, an old original printing press, a bank, an old police barracks, the old Castletown National School, and two churches.
[edit] New World
The fourth and final part of the park is entered through the third — a full-size replica of an emigrant ship.
The themed atmosphere continues amongst log cabins from Pennsylvania an Boston.
