YEAR 6 DRESS UP AS VICTORIAN CHILDREN AT THE WORKHOUSE, SOUTHWELL

  • 13 years ago
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Abbotsholme school workhouse experimentAt Ranby House School Year 6 history this year has involved looking at Victorian life. Whilst reading about events that happened more than 170 years ago is all very well there is nothing quite like going back in time and experiencing it for real!

Ranby House don’t actually have a time machine, but a trip to the Workhouse at Southwell run by the National Trust is certainly the next best thing.

Southwell Workhouse was founded back in the 1840s by a local clergyman and funded by the parish. When Year 6 visited it recently not too much had changed since those early days!

The National Trust staff, predominantly volunteers, were dressed in period costume and treated the children as genuine, bona fide paupers. The Ranby House pupils were dressed in workhouse uniform and were treated just as though they had fallen on bad times. The boys and the girls were segregated before meeting the Master and Matron who spelled out exactly what was expected of them. They were then taken under the wing of some adult paupers who knew how to play the workhouse system and gave them the benefit of their wisdom and experience.

The pupils had a tour of the dorms; they saw the work rooms and were told about the jobs they would have to do. The children then had a ‘proper’ Victorian lesson with benches, slates, rote learning, the 3 ‘rs’ and a severe looking school mistress in shawl and bonnet.

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