buildings that constitute the Town, itself a short walk from the Pit Village, the Colliery, the Farm and the gentrified Pockerley Hall. Across the cobbled street, a Cooperative and a motor dealer also bring Victorian and Edwardian Britain alive with well-briefed, costumed staff escorting visitors down from trolley buses and trams.

The Sun Inn closes every day at 4pm – it’s a pub with no regulars, but thousands of visitors – so I’ve got bags of time to sup my way through three beers from the Stables Brewery, brewed (at risk of labouring historical references) only 40 chains distant. Beamish Hall (3.8% abv), a traditional best bitter with toffee and green apple notes, is a belter of a starter. Silver Buckles (4.4% abv) first reveals grapefruit aromas then biscuit flavours, while an ascent to the dark and mysterious Bell Tower (5.0% abv) finds a complex ale swirling with whiffs of chocolate and coffee. Food is a drove of pork pies inside a glass-covered cake stand. Thankfully fresh, not Edwardian.

In a previous life, The Sun was the Tiger Inn in Bishop Auckland before being rebuilt, stone by stone, on its present site in 1985. It is small, two-roomed, and utterly delightful. Porcelain jugs gleam, brass rails shine, and mirrors advertising John Walker & Son Kilmarnock Whisky shimmer, while a portrait of jockey Fred Archer peers across to ten-stone-ten bricklayer and bareknuckle boxer Tom Sawyer, who would fight anybody at any weight. Antlers from a variety of beasts and display cases of stuffed birds fill remaining spaces alongside Jake’s Bonny Mary, a whippet with nine handicaps to her fleet-footed credit in races as far apart as Newcastle, Carlisle and Cowdenbeath.

“Is it 1913 prices, then?” asks a customer, rather more in expectation than hope. Starch-collared, waistcoated staff run a sweep during busy periods as to how many times the question will be posed. At the Co-op hardware store, brown-overalled workers play a similar game with “fork handles”.

A coal fire tinkles in the pub’s Family Room and also in the Select Room where you’d pay a bit more for discretion and upholstery, although the public bar’s beautifully sculpted benches are surprisingly comfortable. 

Bell Tower appeals as I scan the news – Sheffield Wednesday top Division One and Lord and Lady Knaresborough “have arrived in London for the season”. Blayney’s whisky is 24 shillings a gallon. At that price, put me down for 1913.

*The Sun Inn, Beamish Museum, County Durham DH9 0RG (0191 370 4000 www.beamish.org.uk)