On Monday 29th January 2018, the children of Year 2 mysteriously travelled back in time to 2nd September 1666 to experience a very special event in the history of London...the Great Fire.
We all came to school dressed, not in school uniform but in clothes similar to the ones they wore in 1666. One of us had magically transformed into the celebrated diarist Samuel Pepys, complete with curly wig!
We couldn't risk a fire in our classroom, so we went to the hall which had been transformed with shops and businesses from 1666. There we met our guide to the city who told us all about the activities that we were going to do. These included making wax candles, weaving, sewing, leather working, making button mouds with clay, writing with quill pens, making perfumed bags and medicine bags to protect us from the plague...and of course the favourite activity of some of our more blood-thirsty children, the barber surgeon where we got to chop off arms and legs, extract teeth with pliers and to drill holes in heads to cure headaches.
While all this was going on, rumours of a fire began to circulate and children were needed to pass leather buckets full of water to try to put out the fire. Eventually we tried to pull down houses with fire hooks to create gaps to stop the fire spreading, but nothing worked due to the strenght of the wind and the intensity of the fire burning the crowded wooden houses.
Luckily we heard that the fire eventually stopped as the wind died down and gunpowder had created sufficient gaps so the fire had nothing left to burn.
In the afternoon we had to search in trays of sand to find out which businesses had stood in different spots and we learnt how artefacts help us to understand what has happened in the past.
We all had a great day, including the teachers who got to join in with all the fun. Thank you to all the parents who helped us and to the Company 'History off the Page' who led the day and brought all the exciting equipment that we needed.
Take a look at our photos. Can you work out what we were doing in each one?
