Museum serves up a tasty treat for visitors

A FISH and chip shop starts frying today to give thousands of museum visitors an authentic taste of the past.

Davy's Fried Fish Shop in the pit village at Beamish Museum, County Durham, uses the last coal-fired frying range to have survived on Tyneside.FRY UP The opening of Davy's Fried Fish and Chip shop at Beamish Open Air MuseumThe Winlaton Mill chippie was built in 1937 by the brothers' grandfather John, and their parents Isabella and Robert took over the business in the 1950s. The family always used beef dripping for frying, and that will continue at the Beamish shop, which will be serving seven days a week.It was used until 2007, when the Davy family's fish and chip shop in Winlaton Mill in Gateshead closed.Brothers Brian and Ramsay Davy were guests at a preview frying at Beamish, where the first portion of cod and chips went to museum director Richard Evans.CAPTION(S):Richard Evans said: "No picture of pit village life in the North East is complete without a fish and shop."

FRY UP The opening of Davy's Fried Fish and Chip shop at Beamish Open Air Museum