Category Archives: Education

Boudicca

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Sadly, there is no evidence to show Boudicca did fight a battle against the Romans at Ambresbury Banks, the Iron Age Hill Fort in Epping Forest around 60 or 61 AD. The legend remains an important story to share about the district and how the past is remembered. 

The story of Boudicca became popular in Victorian times as people wanted to commemorate the new young Queen by recalling strong women leaders in the past. Boudicca’s name even translates as the one who will bring Victory. Poems about Boudicca fighting her battle at Ambersbury Banks were written during this period, and this obelisk in a field in Upshire was placed at the point Boudicca was believed to have taken poison, to avoid being captured by the Roman Army. 

This artist’s impression shows what the entrance to Ambresbury Banks might have looked like during Boudicca’s time based on the evidence that has been found there. We know it was a large – just over 17 acres – enclosure with a single bank and a wide ditch – potentially up to 6m wide and 10m deep.  The entrance to it was by a causeway over the ditch.  The sides of the entrance were built up with Puddingstone – in impressive looking natural stone with tiny stones set in what looks like cement but is natural rock. There were 240 blocks of stone on one side of the entrance, skillfully laid without mortar. There is evidence of two sets of post holes suggesting there were inner and outer gates.  These seem to have been one wide gate as there is no evidence of postholes in the middle of the gap.  Traces of cartwheel tracks were found, and some fragments of broken pots in the ditch show evidence of occupation.  However, there’s no evidence dating from the time of Boudicca’s rebellion so Ambresbury Banks was out of use as a hill fort by this time.

As for the debate on how you pronounce her name, well that’s for another time!

Can you guess what this is?

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This object could so easily have been overlooked – it is just a small lump of lead, a soft metal.  However, on closer inspection, archaeologists realised it had the Runic alphabet inscribed on it. We’ll never know who did this, or why – perhaps they thought rather than throwing this scrap of lead away, it would be perfect for practising their handwriting! 

This could be one of the earliest representations of this alphabet from Saxon times and is of national importance. 

It was found at the site of what is believed to have been a Viking Hall, underneath what are now the remains of the cloisters in the Abbey Gardens, in Waltham Abbey.  Pupils learn about this alphabet, how it was made of straight lines to make it easier to carve into stone, wood and metal.  As part of the Anglo Saxon and Viking History Day they translate their own name into Runes to inscribe on the helmets they make!

Some Victorian magic!

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One of our popular school workshops is a local history study about life in Victorian times. The children are always fascinated by the original Victorian objects they get to handle, like the elegantly curved carpet beater and the frighteningly well-worn headmaster’s cane. But one object which stands out for many of the children is our reproduction zoetrope.

You may have seen a zoetrope: a spinning disk with sides which have vertical slits cut into the top. A narrow strip of paper is inserted around the inside of the zoetrope, decorated with pictures of something like a horse galloping. Each picture is slightly different from the one next to it. When the children spin the zoetrope and look down into it from above, they see nothing but a blur of grey; but when they try looking through the slits in the sides, they are amazed to see that the horses have come to life and are galloping around the inside of the zoetrope!

Victorian children must have been even more astounded than our schoolchildren today to see the pictures moving, at a time when even still photographs were a new phenomenon. And the parents of these young Victorians had grown up in a time when the only way to record images of places, people and animals was to literally paint or draw them.

The Victorians made huge advances in science, and scientific toys were popular. The zoetrope’s design used a discovery about how human eyes work: Images captured by our eyes are sent to the brain, where they are joined together to form a continuous moving image. So, when looking through the top of the zoetrope, you capture lots of images of the horse at once, and your brain joins these into a grey blur. But if you look through the slits, your eye can only ever see one horse at a time. Your brain stitches each slightly different image of the horse together, so that the horse seems to be moving.

This is called an optical illusion, because you are being tricked into seeing still images as moving ones! The same trick was later used to make films, which for a long time were made from tapes containing many thousands of still photographs.

Another optical toy which was popular in Victorian times was the kaleidoscope. In my first year at a local primary school, we had an ancient one in our classroom. Over the years, hundreds of children must have enjoyed looking into the eyepiece and seeing the beautiful symmetrical patterns made by coloured glass beads and sequins, reflected in the kaleidoscope’s internal mirrors. It took me some time to realise just how few beads and sequins were inside, only about eight!

The humble spinner was also popular with Victorian children. This was a wooden disc with a pointed stick pushed through the middle. With practice, by quickly twisting the stick around, you could make the disc spin for a considerable time. Even the spinner was a chance to create an optical illusion. Patterns on the disc would appear to change once the spinner was in motion – a spiral would become a series of circles within each other, or a series of red and yellow stripes would merge to become orange.

The Victorians are often portrayed as severe, but there is plenty of evidence that they looked for opportunities to use new science and inventions to have fun and make exciting toys.

The retreats of Epping Forest

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Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Epping Forest has been a refuge for local people who have found peace amongst the beautiful scenery we are lucky enough to have on our doorstep. As lockdown eased, thousands of visitors came each day from further afield to enjoy the forest’s famous beauty spots including High Beech, Connaught Water and Loughton Brook.

Has the forest ever been this busy before, or brought such wellbeing benefits to so many? You may be surprised to learn that the answer is, emphatically, yes!

In Victorian times Epping Forest was spared the fate of nearby Hainault Forest, which was largely cut down during six fateful weeks in 1851. This loss spurred on a hard-fought campaign by local people to save Epping Forest, culminating in the passing of the Epping Forest Act in 1878, to protect the forest in perpetuity. Four years later Queen Victoria dedicated Epping Forest in a special ceremony, “for the enjoyment of my people forever.”

Within a short time, the number of visitors to Epping Forest had soared and forest retreats sprung up throughout the forest to provide affordable food, drink and shelter for the throngs of visitors. The earliest retreat was set up by John Riggs at Brook Road, Buckhurst Hill; followed by two more in Theydon Bois and High Beech, which were run by various members of the Riggs family. These were vast establishments, with Riggs Retreat in High Beech boasting that it could feed four hundred visitors afternoon tea in one sitting.

With the recent extension of railway lines to Loughton in 1856, and to Chingford by 1873, the forest was accessible as a day trip to many people living on the Eastern side of London. Tradesmen also used their horse carts to bring day trippers out to the forest from the East End on Sundays, often decorating the carts with brightly coloured ribbons for the trip.

Throughout the summer months, many thousands of visitors would make the trip to the forest each day, and it became known as the “Cockney Paradise”. As well as family trips out, some retreats specialised in Sunday School outings; and the Shaftesbury Retreat in Loughton provided annual days out to some of the East End’s poorest children, supported by the Ragged School Union and Lord Shaftesbury’s Society. This became a much-anticipated event for the children concerned, many of whom spent the year looking forward to their brief annual holiday from the slums to the fresh air and freedom of the forest, and the huge, tasty pies they were given for lunch.

By the early 20th century there were many privately run retreats spanning the forest villages, with small settlements like High Beech and Theydon Bois each having more than one enormous retreat.  Competition between the different venues was fierce. Each retreat tried to tempt customers in with their own unique offer: At Theydon Bois donkey rides, helter-skelters, swings, a galloping horse roundabout and a hokey pokey stall were on offer. The Princes Road retreat in Buckhurst Hill more humbly advertised “free pure drinking … cricket sets, skipping ropes lent free of charge.”

Gray’s Retreat in Theydon Bois provided a generous sounding children’s tea of bread and butter, fruit cake, lemon cake, a jam sandwich, watercress and good tea for just 9 pennies. If you stayed for dinner, for a penny and a half more you could purchase meat, fruit, custard and still lemonade. And Rigg’s Retreat in High Beech had a unique selling point – a balcony at the front constructed around a large beech tree!

Two world wars and the Great Depression reduced visitor numbers to the retreats, but the steady rise of the motor car was perhaps the main reason for their final demise. Motorists were less likely to make long forest visits and stay for a meal, and as the popularity of the retreats diminished, prices went up, making it harder for other families to afford to visit. One of the original forest retreats remains in the forest today: Butler’s Retreat in Chingford. This has continued to serve visitors refreshments throughout much of the current pandemic, though perhaps in lower numbers than a hundred years ago.

Learning about The Boys: Holocaust Survivors in the Epping Forest District

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The museum reopened on the 17 May 2021 with a special exhibition on The Boys, the young survivors of the Holocaust who came to stay at Holmehurst, a house on the borders of Loughton and Buckhurst Hill from December 1945 to January 1947.

These young people were Polish Jews and had survived the Holocaust.  Most of them were the only member of their family to survive.

This subject is challenging to teach but is also an important piece of local history.  If we focus on the stories of these young people before and after the Holocaust – what their lives were like before the war, and they went on to achieve – there are many important lessons to engage pupils.

One useful resource is the book After the War by Tom Palmer, focussing on the arrival of the Boys in Windermere, in the Lake District, to begin their recovery before they were transferred in small groups to other hostels such as Loughton.  Tom worked with the Lake District Holocaust Project and UCL Centre for Holocaust Education to research and write this story and create learning resources.  The story is a powerful and sensitive introduction to this topic.  We are fortunate that Tom has offered to write a short story to accompany our exhibition; His Name is Ben will explore the story of Ben Helfgott, one of the Boys who came to Loughton and went on to become an Olympic weightlifter.

We have also worked with the Jewish Music Institute and Essex Music Services to create a resource for a music lesson, exploring a traditional Jewish song.  This aims to engage pupils with Jewish life and culture in Poland before the Second World War, providing a context for thinking about the families the young people came from, and what their childhood was like, before the war changed everything.

We hope that these will become part of a permanent resource, alongside a new Holocaust Memorial planned for the district, and help young people learn about this important piece of history, and its relevance to the local area.

History Days at the museum

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We are looking forward to running our new series of history days for schools once the museum reopens! These days focus on learning about history through fun, hands-on activities. Children love exploring the museum, some of which is housed in a fascinating sixteenth century Tudor house, and they often get special access to historic local objects which are not currently on public display during their visit.

The history days are based on topics from the National Curriculum, and each one comprises of three exciting sessions…

Pupils might be Discovering the toys local girl Ellen Buxton played with 100 years ago, using images from her beautiful diary and real old toys from the museum’s collection; or getting hands-on with ancient artefacts to investigate how life changed during the Stone Age.

They could be Exploring behind the scenes in the museum, with a chance to see some of our Roman treasures which are not on public display; or finding out about life in Victorian times using local artefacts from the museum’s stores.

And they might be Creating a clay pot inspired by techniques used in the Neolithic period; or creating a print in the style of local artist Walter Spradbery, to take home.

Whatever they are learning about, the children can expect a warm welcome at the museum and a stimulating and memorable day. We can’t wait to welcome schools back!

If you would like to book a history day for your school group, please contact Catherine Hammond on 07548 145669 or email chammond@eppingforestdc.gov.uk.

Topic Boxes: Making a classroom museum and developing writing skills

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The museum has a range of boxes for hire relating to many different history topics.  Schools have found many different creative ways to use them.  One popular idea is to create a class museum.  Pupils can choose an object to research then write a label on it – but to really develop their skills at writing and presenting information for different audiences, they can also learn the techniques we use when writing labels in the museum.

We start off by doing a lot of research on an object first.  Pupils can start by reading the information on their object in the topic box resource pack.  Information from this might lead them to do further research in books or on the internet.  At this point it will be useful to discuss which websites might provide the most reliable information for research – another museum’s website is likely to have good information on objects.

Now comes the hard bit.  After all that work work, pupils must decide what are the most important things visitors to your class museum should know about their object.  They can’t fit all the information on to their label as that would be too much for a visitor to read.  Remember, visitors will be looking round the museum at lots of objects, so they aren’t likely to read or remember more than one or two facts about each one.

However, this is also the fun bit – pupils are now the expert on the object, so they can decide what they think the most important thing visitors should know about their object. It might be an historical piece of information, a quirky fact, something funny or amazing – you really want to grab visitors’ attention, so they are encouraged to find out more for themselves. Can you think of another good way of grabbing a visitor’s attention?  You can ask a question on the label (see what I did there?!) This will encourage the visitor to talk or think about their object.

We usually try and write no more than 50 words on a label, so pupils can try making that their word limit.  Other important things to include are the title or name of the object, the date it was made and / or used but if you don’t know this you can say so. 

Now think about the design of your label.  You want people to be able to read it easily, when typing them we use a big font size – about 16 points for a title and 14 points for the information about it.  We might use a different colour for the title or make it bold.  There are lots of different font styles you can choose, but we usually go for something plain and simple like Arial or Century Gothic as these are easy for people to read.  If you are handwriting them, then neat and clear writing will work just as well.

If this sounds a bit boring, then you can have a lot more fun getting creative with a poster design for your classroom exhibition.  More on that, with some top tips from the museum’s exhibition design expert in a future blog!

Find out more about the boxes available to hire https://www.eppingforestdc.gov.uk/museum/learning/schools/

Jill Barklem

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We’ve come across some fascinating stories of local people while researching our new school workshop, Local Legends.

Did you know that Jill Barklem, author of the popular Brambly Hedge children’s books, was from Epping? She grew up surrounded by the gently rolling patchwork of fields and forest we are so lucky to have in the District. Jill loved this countryside and enjoyed nature watching.

While Jill was at Loughton High School, now the site of Roding Valley, she developed a serious eye condition and was advised not to take part in games lessons to avoid this getting worse. Instead, she spent her time in the school art studio, allowing Jill to focus her efforts on honing her artistic talent.

Jill went on to study at St Martin’s School of Art in London. Each day she travelled there and back on a packed Central Line train, passing the time by imagining what the small animals of the fields and hedgerows around Epping might be doing while away from watchful human eyes. Something Jill didn’t imagine on these long commutes was that she would one day turn these fantasies into books, and become a celebrated children’s author. Jill said later, “I did not have a very clear idea of my future but assumed I would earn my living by illustrating other people’s books. I certainly never imagined that one day I would write my own.”

After getting married, Jill put pen to paper and started work on her first story about a resourceful family of mice and their animal friends, and the Tales of Brambly Hedge were born. Each book took Jill up to two years to craft, and was filled with extraordinarily detailed illustrations which have an enduring appeal to this day. Jill was fastidious in her research, even trying out recipes at home to check the food featuring in her stories!

Jill’s stories have sold millions of copies, and in 1996 were made into a television series featuring the voices of Jim Broadbent and June Whitfield. Jill died in 2017, but her stories continue to be enjoyed around the world today.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

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This Image is courtesy of the Fox Family

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) takes place each year on 27 January. We remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi Persecution and in genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

The museum will be hosting a special exhibition The Boys: Holocaust Survivors in the Epping Forest District from 8 May to 4 September 2021.  This will tell the incredible story of the young Holocaust survivors, young men between the ages of 16 and 21, who came to stay at Holmehurst, a house on the borders of Buckhurst Hill and Loughton from December 1945 to January 1947 as part of their recovery.  We think up to 30 young men came to Holmehurst, and they became known as the Loughton Boys. 

The Loughton boys were part of the first group of around 300 young survivors who were brought to Britain after the war.  A total of 715 children eventually came to Britain.  They are collectively known as ‘The Boys’ as, despite the mix of genders and ages in the group, the majority were teenage boys.

You can find out more about them and their incredible personal stories of recovery in the new education resource packs available on our website, which include profiles of each boy.

HMD is for everyone. Each year across the UK, thousands of people come together to learn more about the past and take action to create a safer future. We know they learn more, empathise more and do more.

If you would like to take part in Holocaust Memorial Day, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s website has suggested activities you can do at home to mark the day.

The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation, and genocide must still be resisted every day. Our world often feels fragile and vulnerable and we cannot be complacent. Even in the UK, prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all.

Arts and crafts activities

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Week 7 Press flowers

IMG_0075This is a lovely simple activity and you can do so many different things with the flowers once you have pressed them.  You can make cards, photo frames, bookmarks, all sorts of things by placing the pressed flowers on card and covering them with clear sticky plastic or putting them in a frame.  I once found a four-leaf clover pressed inside an old book. The book is over 100 years old, so it was very lucky to survive!

IMG_0077The easiest way to start is to choose a flower that’s naturally quite flat like a buttercup or a daisy.  Pick it fresh but make sure it is dry.  Place the flower between two sheets of paper or tissue, then place this between the pages of a thick heavy book – make sure you ask before using a book in case the pages go slightly wavy.  Put more heavy books on top to press it flat.  Change the paper every 3 or 4 days.  After 2 to 3 weeks the flower should be completely dry and flat.  You might want to use tweezers to lift it out of the book as it will be very delicate.

 

 

Cath, our Education Officer particularly wanted to try pressing the blossom that has brought so much cheer these past weeks, “I tried pressing them flat with my finger, and trimming any thicker bits out, before putting them between paper. I thought it would be fun to press them in gardening books as they are very heavy and I should remember where I’ve put them!”  Don’t forget to share what you’ve done with your flowers with us!

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