A popular museum used as a filming location is getting ready for a new season, and to welcome rare farm animals. 

Chiltern Open Air Museum in Chalfont St Giles has featured in many TV hits, including Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey and Midsommer Murders.

The 45-acre outdoor site boasts a collection of reconstructed historical houses and buildings showing what life was like for ordinary people living in the area from the Iron Age to the 1940s.

Now the museum is getting ready to open for its 2023 season with a new programme, including 25 re-enactments and special events.

Bucks Free Press: The outdoor playground at COAMThe outdoor playground at COAM (Image: Chiltern Open Air Museum)

The new programme features a Royal Coronation Joust, Gladiator Games and Green Festival in July focusing on sustainable ways of living.

READ MORE: High Wycombe: Carousel Buses PickMeUp bus marks thousands of journeys

Other new events provide visitors a window into historical craftmanship through a series of traditional craft demonstrations, including bronze casting, flint knapping, spinning, spoon carving, chair making, natural dyeing and weaving, and blacksmithing.

The museum team is also getting ready to welcome fluffy new inhabitants - a flock of rare Oxford Down lambs due to move in to a reconstructed Victorian lambing fold and staff will live with them in the traditional shepherd's living van. 

There are currently only 110 flocks left in the entire UK. 

The museum opens on March 18 from 10am until 5pm. 

The museum made headlines last year following a spat with Comer Homes, the developer of nearby luxury housing development Newlands Park. 

Comer Homes owns the freehold of the museum site.

However, negotiations are ongoing to transfer the freehold to the museum, which was agreed as part of Newlands Park planning permission by Buckinghamshire Council.