Heikkilä Local History Museum
Heikkilä and its courtyards tell the story of rural life in the old days and offer a peaceful oasis in the middle of the city. The lands were farmed from at least the 1500s until the 1920s. The main building was built in the late 1700s. In Heikkilä, you can get a glimpse of what life in a wealthy peasant household might have once been like. Among the buildings in the museum area, the original farmstead comprises the main building, a barn and a farmhands’ cottage, as well as the farm labourer’s cottage located a short distance away.
Heikkilä’s journey to become a museum began in 1955, when the then Kerava Chamber of Commerce acquired ownership of the original farm. The local history museum was run by volunteers until 1986, when it was taken over by the City of Kerava. The museum was initially run and operated by the Kerava Society local association, which also moved buildings from the surrounding area and collected artefacts for the museum. In one of the buildings, the people of Kerava themselves created a representation of life in the old days.
Heikkilä Local History Museum is open in summer, in connection with events and for groups by appointment. The garden is open all year round for self-guided exploration.
Map locations
- Main building
- Loft storehouse
- Farmhands’ quarters
- Preserved oak
- Household storehouse
- Ali-Heikkilä’s main building
- Potato cellar
- Outdoor cellar
- Hay barn
- Pigsty / sheep barn
- Cowshed
- Carriage shed
- Martti Saaristo Park
- Smithy
- Farm labourer’s cottage
- Woodshed
- Preserved pine
- Shoreline of Ancylus Lake
1. Main building
The site of the Heikkilä farm has been inhabited since at least the 1500s. At that time, the settlement in the area of present-day Kerava was divided into the villages of Ali-Kerava and Yli-Kerava. Heikkilä is one of the six houses in the village of Yli-Kerava, which are mentioned by name in the land deed of the crown bailiff in 1543.
The Heikkilä farm was a family farm from the 1500s until the early 1920s, meaning that one and the same family inhabited and cultivated the land. At one time, the farm’s land covered a large part of the centre of Kerava, the Sampola district and part of Kaleva. Heikkilä achieved tax exemption by arming and maintaining a man and a horse for the crown’s army on two separate occasions in the 17th century. At different times in its history, Heikkilä functioned as a tax-exempt holding for a farrier and for an innkeeper.
In 1769, the Heikkilä farm was divided into two parts, Yli-Heikkilä and Ali-Heikkilä. The Yli-Heikkilä branch of the family then took the surname Helén and the inhabitants of Ali-Heikkilä took the name Helenius. The main building of Yli-Heikkilä, now the local history museum, was built in the 1770s when the farm was divided.
In style, the main building is a traditional Uusimaa twin-room farmhouse, with a log frame clad in vertical boarding. Today, the main building is open during museum opening hours and offers a glimpse of what life in a wealthy peasant farmhouse might have been like in the past.
The main building of the Yli-Heikkilä farm in the early 1950s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
2. Loft storehouse
The loft storehouse built in 1776 is one of the original buildings of the Heikkilä farm. It has two storeys and an open gallery. The building contains three rooms on the ground floor and three on the upper floor arranged side by side.
The loft storehouse was used to store food and other household provisions. During the summer, the farm’s younger generation, the farmhands and maids could sleep in the loft storehouse, providing extra space and freedom to offset the cramped living conditions of winter.
The loft storehouse of the Heikkilä farm, viewed from the courtyard, in 1955. Photo: Väinö Kerminen, Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
3. Farmhands’ quarters
The farm’s male servants lived in the farmhands’ quarters, which were built in the 1770s and remain in their original location. Over the years, they also served as rental housing and a sauna.
The farmhands assisted the master of the house for wages in various tasks, including fieldwork, forestry work and carpentry. The mistress of the house was assisted by the female servants of the house, the maids, who worked in the kitchen and barn and on textiles. A prosperous farm like Heikkilä had several farmhands and maids working at once. They were usually hired for a year at a time.
Workers, day labourers and farmhands at the Heikkilä farm, standing by the cowshed wall in the late 1800s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
5. Household storehouse
This log building was moved to the museum area in the summer of 1957 from the grounds of what was then the Kerava Youth Prison. It formed part of the group of buildings belonging to the Marjomäki croft and was the first building to be transferred to the museum area.
The household storehouse was used to store food, textiles and other household goods. It stands in the service yard, the section of the yard enclosed by the outdoor cellars and the household storehouse.
The barn of the Marjomäki farm and other farm buildings, 1956. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
6. Ali-Heikkilä’s main building
According to sources, this is probably where the main building of Ali-Heikkilä once stood.
In 1769, the widow of Tuomas Juhonpoja, the then master of the house, remarried after he died. While Tuomas’s son was a minor, the duties of master had passed to Tuomas’s brother Juho Juhonpoja. Having two masters in the house was an untenable solution, so the matter was settled by splitting the estate in two. Yli-Heikkilä was left with a new master, and Juho Juhonpoika moved to run the other half, known as Ali-Heikkilä. The premises were located in the same courtyard until the 1910s, when the main building of Ali-Heikkilä was demolished.
The courtyard-facing façade and courtyard of the Ali-Heikkilä main building, circa the 1910s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
7. Potato cellar
A replica of a country cellar was built on the original site in 1978.
In the late 1700s, a new food crop arrived in Finland: the potato. In the 19th century, the potato played an important role in Finland, especially during the winter and spring months when fresh vegetables were hard to come by.
Potato harvesting, probably on the Irjala family’s plot in Savio in the 1920s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
8. Outdoor cellar
The original building of the Heikkilä farm. The exact year of construction is not known, but it may date back to the early 19th century. The outdoor cellar is located in the cool north-east corner of the courtyard, in the shade of the main building. The surrounding shade of trees has also kept the cellar cool.
Carrots, turnips, swedes and other root vegetables, as well as garden produce such as apples, were stored in the cool conditions of the outdoor cellar.
Artturi Heinonen, a teacher at Ali-Kerava Primary School, in the school garden at the turn of the 1910s. Apple tree saplings in the foreground. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
9. Hey barn
The grey log barn with a shingled roof was moved to the museum site from Sipoo in the 1970s.
There were hay barns in Finland as early as the Middle Ages, but hay cultivation only became widespread in the 1880s. Before that, hay for cattle and horses was gathered from natural meadows.
Members of the Kerava Society inspecting a barn at its original site in Linnanpelto, Sipoo, in the 1960s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
10. Pigsty / sheep barn
The building, which was built as a cattle shelter with a pitched roof, was moved to the museum site in 1977 from the Timonen plot along Sarvimäentie in Kerava. On its original site, the building was also used for mangling laundry.
Heikkilä’s large barn, stable and pigsty were once located in this yard, which was called the farm’s cattle yard. The cattle yard was open, warm and bright. The cattle yard was used to transport cows and horses to pasture, and for sheep and chickens to graze freely during the summer season.
The Heikkilä farmyard and outbuildings, circa the 1910s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
11. Cowshed
Heikkilä was a prosperous farm and also had a large cowshed at one time. The cowshed was located on this site and the old stone foundation is still visible in the landscape. The building was demolished in the early 1920s.
Heikkilä’s cattle grazing on the pasturage bordered by the Porvoo railway line and the Porvoo road at the turn of the 1800s and 1900s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
12. Carriage shed
A carriage shed once stood on this site, where the farm’s vehicles, such as carts and sledges, were kept. It was also known as the vehicle shed.
In 1969, a new building based on the old one was built on the site of the original demolished shed. However, it was destroyed in a fire in 2024. The around 200 museum objects stored in the building were rescued.
The Kerava Workers’ Association Band performing in front of the carriage shed during the local heritage festival on Kerava Day in 1987. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
13. Martti Saaristo Park
First Lieutenant Martti Saaristo (1911–1990), who had been active in the Kerava Society since its establishment in 1955, served as a volunteer curator of the Heikkilä Local History Museum from 1957 until the 1980s. Under Saaristo’s leadership, the museum evolved into the complement of building and grounds it is today. He collected farm objects for the museum’s collections and actively introduced the museum, especially to local schoolchildren from generation to generation.
The Martti Saaristo Park celebrates his work to preserve Kerava’s local history. At the edge of the park, facing Heikkiläntie, stands a handsome protected pine tree.
Martti Saaristo with his wife Sirkka on a Kerava Society outing in the 1960s. Photo: Kalevi Lankinen, Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
14. Smithy
The building, which served as a blacksmith’s forge, was moved to the museum site from Sipoo in 1976. Before industrialisation, peasants and farmers in rural areas needed the services of a blacksmith. Heikkilänmäki must have had a farrier at some time, but there may not always have been a blacksmith. Yli-Kerava probably had a common blacksmith for the village.
Blacksmiths made scythes, sickles, horseshoes, hinges, shovels and other tools used in agriculture.
The smithy in its original location in Sipoo in summer 1975. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
15. Farm labourer’s cottage
A building on its original site. A farm labourer was a person who lived on his own and worked for the master of Heikkilä during the day. Part of the farm labourer’s wage was made up of food provided by the employer.
The interior of the farm labourer’s cottage in the museum’s old permanent exhibition in the 1960s or 1970s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
16. Woodshed
The buildings were moved from the edge of Helleborg Hill, now Aurinkomäki in the centre of Kerava, in the 1970s. The buildings were part of the cottage of a landless cottager. At the time of the transfer, the cottage was occupied by the elderly Villehard Helenius.
The set of buildings also included an outdoor toilet, which was destroyed in a fire in 2024.
The farm labourer’s cottage, woodshed and outhouse in the 1960s or 1970s. Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
18. Shoreline of Ancylus Lake
“This shoreline was washed by the waves of the Baltic Sea’s predecessor, Ancylus Lake, about 8,000 years ago.”
So reads a metal plaque attached to a stone that was installed in the early 1980s and can be seen beside the forest path. Around 8000 BC, the area that is now Kerava formed part of the archipelago of the post-glacial Ancylus Lake. Traces of this ancient shoreline can still be seen in different parts of the city, including here.
Commemorative plaque for Ancylus Lake. Can you find the stone by the path? Photo: Kerava Museum Services Sinkka.
