Fredriksdal Museum & Gardens

Fredriksdal is 36 ha Skansen-type open air museum devoted to the social and architectural history of Skåne located in the grounds of a mansion built by Fredrik Coster in 1787 which passed into the possession of the Trapp family. The site was given to the city of Helsingborg in 1918 by the artist Gisela Trapp (1873-1958) on condition that it should be used for an open air museum.

Fredriksdal includes both rural and urban buildings. The oldest farmhouse, from Lillarydsgården dates from the seventeenth century. Industrial buildings include an octagonal Dutch-style tower windmill from Ringstorp built by a Dane, Fredrik Kamph, in 1803, and a water-powered stamping mill of the 1860s which crushed bones to be used in manufacture of superphosphates. A water-powered saw mill also dates from the nineteenth century, and there is a range of glovers’ workshops. The museum includes a 2-8-2 tank locomotive once used on the state railways that was built in Helsingborg by the firm of Knut Falk, and a vertical-boilered 0-4-0 locomotive built by Wimshurst Hollick & Co of Regent’s Canal Dock, London, that once shunted in the harbour.

The museum keeps many native Swedish animals and its botanical garden has more than 40 plant environments from different parts of Skåne. Other sections depict the history of forestry. Fredriksdal celebrates Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas and stages an annual festival to mark the flowering of roses.

The museum also manages as an outpost the Pålsjö water mill of 1824 located in beech woods on the northern edge of the city.