Beamish

As part of our Victorians topic we visited Beamish open air museum in Durham to experience first hand what life would have been like for children during the reign of Queen Victoria. Some of us were sent down the mine (and were shocked at how low the tunnel was and how dark it was when all we had to see by was a small oil lamp) whilst others were sent into the engine yard. Afterwards we all had a look around the colliery building and couldn't believe that the lifts used to send miners deep underground looked so different to elevators today. None of these shocks were anything compared to what we had in store for us when we traveled back in time to 1897 - the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee - and had to go to school where we were taught our three Rs by a rather strict school mistress. After all of that hard work, we got to experience some Victorian playground games such as hopscotch and hoop rolling. Finally, we had a look around a town from the end of Victoria's reign and the start of Edward VII's where we visited a few shops and saw a protest by the suffragettes demanding votes for women. Some of us chose to sing the song we had learned from Oliver! when we were looking around the town too!