VISITORS to Colne Valley Museum this weekend will be invited to look, learn, taste and buy as volunteers celebrate the museum's 40th birthday demonstrating traditional baking skills in the Victorian kitchen.

And there’s an additional bonus – it’s all for free!

Lots of weighing out on the old brass scales and mixing with wooden spoons in the earthenware pancheon bowls will give visitors to the Cliffe Ash, Golcar museum an idea of a baking day of 150 years ago – and who remembers the joy of licking out the bowl after the cake had been mixed?

The resulting delights, such as old-fashioned ginger snaps, Robin cake (a local favourite) and Mrs Pearson’s Mint Pasty will all be available to taste in the museum cafe or buy to take home for tea.

Volunteers have created a Special Recipe Book to celebrate the museum's 40th birthday featuring recipes which are ‘special’ for some reason – family favourites handed down over the generations, or recipes that may have ‘gone wrong’ but turned out all right in the end.

This collections of recipes will also be on sale raising money for the museum’s Realising the Dream project – owning the whole row of four weavers’ cottages (the museum presently occupies three of them) and expanding the museum into the fourth cottage and shop.

The row – known locally as Spring Rock – was originally built in 1845 by the Pearson family, and with massive local support the museum was able to purchase the end cottage and adjoining shop, thus bringing the row back under single ownership. Money is now being raised to refurbish the premises and incorporate them into the museum.

This small independent community at Golcar, in the heart of Pennine Yorkshire, run entirely by its volunteers, depicts the life of the cottage textile worker. Volunteers specialise in preserving traditional heritage skills and provide a life long learning opportunity to people of all ages and all walks of life.

Despite being told by the professionals “Museum interpretation is a specialist art which should never be tackled by amateurs on a shoestring budget,” the small group of enthusiasts planning to preserve a weaver’s cottage in the Pennine township of Golcar ignored the doubting Thomases, and 40 years on the museum is still growing.

The Biscuits and Buns event will take place today and tomorrow from 2 to 5pm – and admission is free.