Schools' Use

We have included a few ideas for using the Digital Image Archive in the classroom: we welcome further ideas and suggestions from the teaching community. If you would like your suggestions, lesson outlines, or pupils' presentations included here, please email us.

Wherever prices are mentioned with the photos, use this link to work out the current value (not just to convert shillings to modern money!) Needs extra time to download, but well worth the wait.

 

Key Stage 2 History

Focus: Victorian England

The timeline reinforces and tests chronological awareness and ordering. It can be attempted as a starter activity without prior knowledge, to use skills of deduction. It can also be used at the end of the topic to test knowledge.

Warrington Museum has a school loans service which will be of use in teaching the Victorians at KS2

These links are to pictures you could use as a focus for discussions using a projector and whiteboard :
Church Street - Victorian children
Cockhedge Mill - how people worked (read the worker's description)
Houses - the difference between ordinary people and better-off people
Food and shopping

Key Stage 3 & 4 History

Focus: growth of towns and industry

These links can be used as starter activities:
Cockhedge Mill - note the age of the women; the location unguarded drive belts; implication for noise levels & safety; discuss why the photo was taken ie not when the machines and workers were in action. Note the workers' description of this mill.
Tannery workers- the men are scraping decayed flesh off the inside of animal skins imported from Argentina. The tougher outside skin was then tanned to make leather, using substances such as ammonia, urine, cattle dung and distilled oak bark. Discuss health and hygiene implications, safety (are they wearing gloves? what else would you expect your employer to give you)

These will introduce the idea of work being hard, dirty and dangerous - and the fact that people had little choice but accept these conditions. However many employers kept workers happy in other ways - see Crosfield's.

As a homework or individual activity, make a bar chart to explain how Warrington grew in the 19th century using the population figures available here.

Focus: Housing and health

In Warrington as in most towns workers' houses were not connected to mains water or sanitation before the later 1800's / early 1900's. Houses like these grew up, crammed into what is now the town centre. Epidemics were seasonal events but newly-imported viruses caused widespread panic, especially as their cause was not understood.

Later in the 1900's scientific advances led to better understanding of the causes and transmission of disease: hospitals, health awareness campaigns and public baths were among the results.

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