Normality resumed on a cloudy weekend

After a torrid few weeks, Britain gets back to what it loves best this Easter - wandering round old buildings in chilly weather

We were squeezing past each other in the narrow hallway of the 1940s prefab when someone's mobile phone started ringing. "That doesn't sound right in a place like this, does it?" came a reproachful voice.

The prefab in question is the most popular exhibit at the Chiltern Open Air Museum, just outside Chalfont St Giles in the Buckinghamshire countryside. It's a wonderful example of a piece of preserved vernacular architecture, which is what the museum is all about.

And yesterday, as Britain settled into its Easter break at the end of an unusually anxious few weeks, who wanted the consolations of history to be disturbed?

Places like the Chiltern Open Air Museum offer balm to the soul at a time when we seem to need it more and more. Scattered over its 45 acres are 30 historic structures, drawn mainly from the surrounding area, which might have disappeared altogether if the museum hadn't stepped in, carefully dismantled them, removed them bit by bit, and then equally carefully put them back together again.

There is a public convenience, dating from the early 1900s, which once provided relief to the people of Caversham. There is a pavilion from a tennis club in Maidenhead, thought to date from 1926. There is an 1826 toll house from High Wycombe whose fate looked sealed a few years ago when a car drove into the front of it. But thanks to the museum, it lives on.

How we British love the past, especially, in 2003, this kind of past - small, domestic, everyday. It's the same fascination that has spawned a rash of TV programmes about property and interior design. In a big, dangerous and confusing world, what matters is not just what's on our doorstep, but what's inside the door too.

The museum's director, Joanna Ruddock, has a theory about it. "This museum is giving people a sense of place," she said as we strolled towards the collection of wooden buildings that make up the museum's Victorian farm. "And in troubled times people look to where they came from for a kind of reassurance.

"I think it gives them a sense of belonging."

Rising visitor numbers to the museum - which Ms Ruddock said bucked the national trend for heritage centres - provide the evidence that when it comes to poking around old houses, especially the kind of houses that ordinary people once lived in, the British are in their element. And provided you had wrapped up warmly enough, yesterday was perfect for doing it.

The Hyett family were just emerging from the Thame Vicarage Room, where groups of children were hard at it decorating Easter eggs. Mr and Mrs Hyett and their 10-year-old daughter and sons aged eight and five come to the museum twice a year. "I think it's important that your children see how life was once lived," Mrs Hyett said. Her eight-year-old said he liked the prefab best.

For Ben Eley, 89, and Rachel Dover, 82, the pleasure of their day out was not in discovering the past but in being reminded of it. Mrs Dover, the daughter of an undertaker, recalled that when she was growing up in London she had slept under blankets which once kept warm the horses that drew coffin carriages.

Not that there was any sense in which Mr Eley and Mrs Dover were trying to escape the present. The war in Iraq had seemed so remote, Mr Eley said. "It wasn't as if it was like the Second World War, was it? Having to go down into the air raid shelters at night."

While unerringly tapping into one social trend, the museum identified another with itsCountry Food Fair this weekend. We left behind the world of Mrs Beeton, with all its nostalgic power, and replaced it with the thrill of Nigella.

Jars of organic sun dried tomatoes with capers, chilli, garlic and oregano - yours for only £3.80. Smoked haddock fish cakes with bacon. Pretty bottles of garlic dressing.

The food fair marquee provided shelter from the wind. "Something hot would be nice," said a man in a wax jacket, rubbing his hands together as he joined a queue where plates of chilli con carne were being delivered to hungry customers. A wine stall was offering bottles of Savigny les Beaune at £11.99 (£30 for three), and you remembered that this was the prosperous Home Counties. The stall-holder apologised as he poured out a sample. "It's a bit cold in here. A bit too cold for this wine."

Meanwhile, back at the car park, boys from Chesham High School were raising money for their "World Challenge" - an expedition they are making to Mexico in the summer. They were charging £3.50 for a car wash, and had plenty of takers. The only trouble was, so much dust was billowing about the dry field when other vehicles went past that they could never get the job done properly. That brought the rate down to £2.

Old prefabs, some nice food, and the spirit of youthful enterprise. Life is back to normal - if indeed it ever went away.