Eden Camp Modern History Museum has been awarded the Best Educational Day Out 2023 in the Global 100 Program.

This award provides a benchmark of the very best of industry leaders exemplary teams and distinguished organisations. The award also recognises all the hard work put in by those businesses that are truly leaders within their chosen areas of specialisation.

Summer O’Brien, Eden Camp’s Collections & Engagement Manager, said: "We’re thrilled to have won this prestigious award that recognises such a vital part of our museum.

“With the development of the Collections & Engagement Department over the last few years and our dedication to educational workshops and resources, we are so proud to win another education-related award!”

For the past three years, Eden Camp has been dedicated to enhancing the educational support offered to both schools and families. With the migration of the archive to a digital platform offering a free resource, to creating and hosting activity workshops themed around the KS2 syllabus, the museum is on a mission to boost accessibility to history through various mediums aimed at the younger generation.

Summer added: “We are constantly looking to the future, and ensuring we engage with the next generation of keen historians. Our school parties thoroughly enjoy their visits and with developments in the pipeline both on site and online, we will continue the hard work that won us the award.”

Originally a prisoner of war camp, Eden Camp was built on an agricultural plot on the outskirts of Malton in early 1942, by a small contingent of army personnel who had travelled from Castle Douglas, Scotland.

The camp’s location on Eden House Road earned it the name ‘Eden Camp’ and its first residents, 250 Italian prisoners were escorted from Oldham and marched through Malton to their new home. Once settled, they began work on constructing a larger and more permanent camp.

At its peak, Eden Camp’s 45 huts were supplemented by a large area of tented accommodation and could house around 1200 prisoners at any one time. The Italian prisoners gave way to German POW in the summer of 1944, with the successful Allied invasion of Normandy. The German prisoners, like the Italians before them, were mainly put to work locally in agriculture and they lived in the huts at Eden Camp until 1948, when they were finally released, 3 years after the war had ended.

It is these original huts that were purchased by local businessman Stan Johnson in 1985 who created, within the original Camp, the Modern History Theme Museum.

The huts have been re-equipped to tell the story of The People’s War, the social history of life in Britain from 1939 to 1945 with the sights, sounds, and even smells of life on both the Home Front and the Front Line.

For more information visit Eden Camp's webpage: https://www.edencamp.co.uk