A group of Preston Lodge youngsters visited Beamish living museum yesterday and had a fantastic time learning all about the past through this wonderful interactive attraction. We enjoyed spending time in a Victorian classroom where Seemis was not a problem as attendance was logged in chalk on a board on the wall and children sat 90 to a classroom like sardines in a tin…scared to speak and ruled with a rod of iron. Some of our youngsters found out, to their peril, how a Victorian teacher would address young men who were not in class when they ought to be!

Next stop was a tram ride and a chance to find out how Edinburgh might be if it finally gets back to the future 😉

We moved on to the miner’s village and had a nose around the houses belonging to the members of the community. We got a fascinating insight into the ablutions, diet and sleeping arrangements in a typical mining cottage of the time…

Here we have a member of the mining community showing us how they would make their daily bread supplies. After lunch we moved on to look at the main town centre where we visited the vaults in the bank, the habedasherers, the lodge, a sweetie factory and the Cooperative! In this photograph some of our pupils are being shown bank notes and coins dating back to 1912…before descending down into the bank vaults.

We finished our trip late in the afternoon with a visit to the farm where we were able to spend some time looking at the animals and sit having an orange juice in the sun!