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The Folk of Gloucester occupies three listed sites on lower Westgate Street, opposite the Church of St. Nicholas. Nos. 99 & 101 Westgate Street are a timber-framed property originally built c.1500 as merchants' houses and shops. No. 101 is known as Bishop Hooper's Lodging, based on an albeit unsubstantiated claim that the former Bishop of Gloucester spent his last night there before being burned at the stake in 1555. Next door, the part timber-framed No. 103 was originally built c.1645 as a townhouse for a local surgeon's daughter. Set back from the road on the east side is the pin factory annex. Originally built in the mid-16th century as a timber-framed barn, the annex was remodelled in brick in the 17th century and converted to a pin factory c.1743, around the same time that Nos. 99 and 101 were linked together as a single property. Later in the late 18th century the pin factory was extended by the addition of a third floor.

In 1933, Nos. 99 & 101 were restored by the city council as part of a conversion to the Folk Museum. No. 103 served as the Museum of the Gloucestershire Regiment (now the Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum in the Docks) and was later also restored to became part of the folk museum. To the rear of the site, a garden is flanked by modern annexes.

The council closed the museum in 2019 on cost grounds, and in 2021 the property was transferred to the Gloucester Civic Trust. The museum exhibits remained Council property and have been removed, and although there is still a museum element under the new management the property is now a community heritage venue with a cafe and regular events. As part of the maintenance program that will help see the properties through their next half century, the Victorian affectation of painting Tudor properties black and white was rolled back and the buildings were painted in historically authentic colours.

The photos in this gallery were taken September 2020, during the transition of the properties from Council to Gloucester Civic Trust when the Folk was briefly open to the public as part of both the Heritage Open Days festival and the Gloucester History Festival. A few exhibits left over from the council museum days were still on display, most completely on the top floor of the pin factory annex. In a reconstruction of a kitchen on the ground floor, the original timber gates of the south gate, removed from Southgate Street c.1781 when the ancient gate was dismantled to improve traffic flow, can be seen.

The fabric of the properties is an absolute gem, a fascinating piece of historic Gloucester in all its unevenly floored, intricately roof-beamed glory. Of particular interest is the view from a top-floor room, walls criss-crossed by timber framing, looking out the window at a five-century view – from the 15th-century tower on top of the 11th-century Cathedral, through the 12th/13th-century Church of St. Nicholas and back to the 15th-century of Dick Whittington's – that has, with the possible exception of the 18th-century brick re-fronting of the originally timber-framed Whittington's, changed very little over the last five centuries.