Pupils from Oaklands Community Primary School in Yeovil have been discovering more about Somerset’s traditions and festivals. They’ve been working with archivists from the South West Heritage Trust on the project which took place between January and March.
The Project
Year 5 students from Oaklands spent the day at the Somerset Heritage Centre. After enjoying a behind-the-scenes tour the students researched Somerset traditions, festivals and celebrations using original documents from the collections. They were organised into groups to research different traditions covering the Minehead Hobby Horse, Punkie Night and Wassail.
Archivist Esther Hoyle, visited the students at school in December, before their first visit to the Heritage Centre in January. The students used what they learnt during their visits to create display boards about Somerset’s traditions which will be available to see at the Somerset Heritage Centre.
The Students Said…..
The original documents were “confusing because the handwriting was different, small, cursive and messy, like looking at a different language”. [Minehead Hobby Horse group]
They also looked at black and white photographs, “you need to look closely, because it’s not obvious in black and white”. [Punkie Night group]
Places like the Somerset Heritage Centre “are important because you need somewhere safe to put all the old documents”. [Kitty and Gracie-May, Punkie Night group]
The Display
Once the project was completed the students returned to the Heritage Centre at the end of March to see their work go on display.
“It was brilliant to see how engaged the students were with this project. They were clearly very proud of their work on display,” said Sam Astill, Chief Executive of the Trust.
Oaklands School also received their own copy of the boards for display at their school.
According to the Minehead Hobby Horse group these boards will inspire children at school “to learn about Somerset, but even people who aren’t from Somerset will find them useful. It’s important to learn about different cultures, so people can learn about where you live and the history of where you live. Even the Year 1’s might get interested in history and want to know about these festivals”.
The Students Said……
The students were interviewed about their most important discoveries during the project. Elliot’s most important discovery was ‘shillings’, because he learnt about old money and how it was written down. Maks’ most valuable discovery was that ‘they used swedes not pumpkins’ on Punkie night. Anopa’s favourite discovery was the rhyme ‘Give me a candle, give me a light, if you don’t you’ll get a fright.’ Eli’s most interesting discovery was about the Minehead hobby horse tradition, ‘it wasn’t a living horse!’. He also learnt that the people under the Hobby horse ‘had a scratched nose when they took it off’.
The students thought they might have enjoyed attending some of these events, ‘squibbing sounded good, but not the Hobby Horse, that sounds painful, to be kicked.’ [Eli, Minehead Hobby Horse group]. Eleanor talked about a horse-riding festival she’d been to with a game where participants rode around the course on their horses collecting slime in their cup as they went, the person with the most slime won the challenge. She wondered if a horse would eat all the apples at a Wassail [Eleanor, Wassail group].
Funding
The project is part of the Museums and Schools programme, funded by the Department for Education and managed by Arts Council England.