Beamish Museum's seasons of heritage

TWO new exhibits in the 1900s Town are now open - JR & D Edis Photographer’s and W Smith Chemist.

The building which houses the shops is based on a listed property on Elvet Bridge in Durham City.

JR & D Edis Photographer’s has a side-lit studio window and props including a bonnet, pipe and child’s toy boat, where you can have your photo taken in costume in front of a hand-painted scene of Durham Cathedral.

Photographers would have opened later than chemist’s shops with the advancement of technology, so the studio will have a newer feel to it than the business next door.

The wallpaper is a copy of a pattern that was available to buy from the Co-op in 1907 from a catalogue in Beamish’s archives. The mahogany panelling and fireplace is in an art nouveau style. There is also a restored gas chandelier.

Next door, W Smith Chemist has a dispensary and aerated water sections.

As well as making pills using moulds, visitors can watch Codd bottles being filled with flavoured syrups, available to take home.

Flavours range from sarsaparilla and blood tonic to kola (spelled the traditional way), lemonade and raspberry, based on archive recipes.

Visitors can have a go at making a balm, based on a chemist’s formula. People will be able to buy balms and see the chemist making up prescriptions.

Frank Atkinson, the museum’s founding director, earmarked Hardcastle's Chemists on Finkle Street in Stockton in the early 1960s for preservation and the interior was bought for £50 in April 1962. The shop was set up at Beamish Hall as part of the A-Z of Beamish exhibition.

Beamish has the contents and fittings from at least three chemists’ shops. As well as Hardcastle’s, and Hallaway’s in Carlisle, the best known is John Walker's, of Stockton.

After the invention of soda machines in America (in 1810), the technology was exported to Britain and companies such as Bratby and Hinchliffe's made relatively cheap soda plants, which carbonated water to make it fizzy, using carbonic acid (made from mixing chalk with sulphuric acid).

Small chemists bought the machines to imitate the mineral waters that were available at spas like Harrogate and Bath and sold them as being medicinal.

Gradually, they experimented with other flavours and the big soda companies developed. Vimto was invented in 1908 in Manchester, originally as a tonic water. Soda water was supposed to be good for you, but it was also an alternative to alcohol so became popular during the Temperance movement.

In 1872, Hiram Codd of London invented and patented a bottle which was made with a marble inside it; the bottle was filled upside down, and the marble was held against a rubber ring by the gas pressure of the carbonated drink, so when you stood the bottle up, the marble stayed sealed at the top.

To open the bottle, you had to hit the marble, this became known as “Codd’s Wallop”.

Beamish would like to collect a Codd bottle from every village in the North East.

Visitors will be able to see a Bradford gas engine, from Windermere Terrace in North Shields, which would have powered the soda pump.

There will also be a Codd bottler, which Beamish has on loan from the Museum of Bath at Work.

The chemist is decorated in an older style than photographer’s, looking as if it has changed little since the 1880s, and in parts will appear even older - the replicated building was originally built during the mid-Georgian era.

This means that the interior has heavy, dark, wooden shop fittings with a reclaimed hob grate.