This morning, Simon and Elise from Beamish Museum came to visit us ahead of our educational visit next week. We looked at photographs of Whickham in Victorian times and talked about the changes in our local area of the last two hundred years. We didn't know that there was once an island in the middle of the River Tyne called Victoria Island that had a pub on it that you could get a ferry to until the island was taken out to allow big ships to pass to the North Sea. 
Simon and Elise brought a selection of fascinating artefacts for us to explore to help us develop our understanding of life in Victorian times and then we spent time investigating the 1891 census. This was a perfect follow-up from our work on historical sources last week and a superb introduction to our next lesson about the Industrial Revolution. The workshop also gave us a taste of what we have in store next week on our visit to the museum.