History Enrichment

13th November 2019

On Wednesday 13th November, year 3 had a fantastic day visiting Morwellham Quay where they learnt all about the life of a miner in the 18th and 19th centuries. Assisted by the wonderful guide, Phil,they travelled back in time to the Victorian era when mining was at its peak in the Southwest.
The children saw the cramped and incredibly basic conditions in which miners would have lived and were able to compare amenities with our modern ones. They also visited the Assayer's cottage which they noticed was much more luxurious than that of the miner's cottage due to the fact that the assayer (who would have taken samples of copper ore from the mines before crushing and heating it to extract the metal) earned a lot more money than other villagers. 
The train ride into the George and Charlotte copper mine gave everyone a real insight into what it would have been like to work underground. The children  realised how dark and how loud it would have been and  learnt about how the miners would have used iron bars and hammers to create holes in the rocks in which they would have inserted gun powder before setting it alight in order to make the tunnels so that they could reach the ore deposits. 
 
To finish off the day, the children were put to work as 7 and 8 year old children would have been back in those days! They had a go at rock breaking - breaking the rocks with hammers to sort the copper ore from the waste rock.
History knowledge certainly brought to life .A huge thanks to our PTFA for funding the coaches to enable this trip to happen.