Getting ready for the Summer Season
The Shetland Amenity Trust have been busy over the past month getting ready to open key sites for the 2019 visitor season. Sumburgh Head Lighthouse, the Crofthouse Museum, and Old Scatness Broch and Iron Age Village are all re-opening for the summer season. Shetland Museum will also move over to its summer opening hours of 7 days per week.
Dr. Ian Tait, Curator at Shetland Museum and Archives said, “All of our sites contain irreplaceable historic artefacts that are of great importance to Shetland. We put many of these into storage when we are closed over the winter months to ensure that they are well cared for, preserving our heritage for future generations. The teams at each site have been working hard to prepare for re-opening, cleaning and maintaining the sites, and getting artefacts back on display.”
The Sumburgh Head Lighthouse and Visitor Centre was the first of the seasonal sites to open. It opened on 30th March with a blast of the foghorn closely followed in the past weeks by the return of our most popular seasonal visitors, the puffins.
As of this Sunday the Shetland Museum and Archives will move over to summer opening hours, opening 7 days a week until the 6th of October. It is then the turn of the Crofthouse Museum at Dunrossness which will open for the season on Tuesday 30th April. The Crofthouse is a popular attraction in the south mainland and provides a fantastic insight into life on a 19th Century Shetland smallholding. The Crofthouse Museum will be open 6 days per week this year, closing on Mondays (although can be opened for advance group bookings).
The final site to open for the season will be Old Scatness Broch and Iron Age Village on 14 May. The Trust are keen to get it open more often this season and have been working with local Tour Guides to help make this happen. The site will be opening for 4 days a week this season on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
Full details of all Shetland Amenity Trust sites and opening times are available online at www.shetlandamenity.org/discover.
