History tells stories about people, places and things to help explain to young people of any age why the world is as it is as they grow up and begin to question it.
Schools will choose different periods and settings and topics to cove during different Key Stages, but all of them are pretty well guaranteed to be rooted in actual places that can be visited, explored and enjoyed.
It has been a curious fact that for many years primary classes have studied the Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods, while secondary school syllabuses have been more engaged in post-medieval periods. For a while secondary courses involved a great deal of ‘topic work’. While this discipline still exists, the recent examination syllabuses have returned to an emphasis on historical periods and links.
But all periods and topics provide fantastic opportunities for school visits. We are so lucky that so many general and specialist museums and visitor centres exist in the UK. The problem is not a shortage of possibilities but how one sifts through the available opportunities to make choices.
The Historical Association website carries information about course, conferences, study tours, and the Association has published ‘The Historian’ magazine for many years. Handsam is also happy to help, please contact us on 03332 070737 or email [email protected].
Most venues will have teaching materials and activities geared to students’ different ages and aptitudes whether at primary or secondary level. All of them will set out to develop students’ ability to understand, analyse and evaluate key features and characteristics of historical periods and events studied.
Some venues will be easy to identify because they fit neatly with the period and topic being studied but others may offer new possibilities, not least to the teachers themselves. Teachers need and deserve their own stimulation.
Over the next four years there will be an upsurge in visits to the First World War battlefields. Because of this there will be an increase in companies offering visits and requirement for battlefield guides, especially in northern France and Belgium. There are bound to be discrepancies in guides’ knowledge and experience. Close research into the credentials of the company you are contracting with, and the company’s guarantees about guides, will ensure that your group will not be disappointed.
Main organisations:
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Inclusion: NASEN
Thought of visiting?
Roman Vindolanda and Roman Army Museum at Hadrian’s Wall
Viriconium, Wroxeter, Shropshire
The Jorvik Viking Centre, York
Offa’s Dyke Trail and Chirk Castle
The National Trust for Scotland
Clan Donald Visitor Centre, Isle of Skye
Bosworth Battlefield Visitor Centre
Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin
Exeter Cathedral Education Centre
The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
The Mary Rose Museum, Portsmouth
East Anglia Railway Museum, Colchester
The National Tramway Museum, Matlock
Heritage centre at Llanberis, bringing back to life the inheritance of the North Wales slate industry.
Dinorwig Quarry closed in 1969. Today, rather than fashioning wagons and forging rails, the workshops tell a very special story: the story of the Welsh slate industry.
Part of a monastic building, perhaps the abbot's lodging, of Benedictine Abbotsbury Abbey. St Catherine's Chapel is within half a mile.
St Catherine's Chapel
Set high on a hilltop overlooking Abbotsbury Abbey, this sturdily buttressed and barrel-vaulted 14th-century chapel was built by the monks as a place of pilgrimage and retreat.
Carisbrooke Castle is best known as the place where King Charles I was imprisoned.
The Cathedral Church of SS. Peter and Paul is the Roman Catholic cathedral in the Clifton area of Bristol.
The church was built in the 1840s to a neo-Gothic design by architect August Welby Pugin, famous for his work on the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. It was paid for by halfpenny donations from the poorest community of immigrants on Tyneside, and was enhanced in the following decades by bequests from the Dunn family: the Dunns are remembered in several windows.
The Cathedral of Saint Mary the Crowned is the central point of Catholic worship in Gibraltar.
Birmingham Orthodox Cathedral (also Dormition of the Mother of God and St Andrew) is a Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Birmingham.
Situated in a prominent position in London Road, Arundel, West Sussex, England the cathedral overlooks the ancient town of Arundel on the west bank of the river Arun, where the valley opens out into the coastal plain.
Located in the historic former Cambrian Mills, the National Wool Museum is a special place with a spellbinding story to tell.
Wool was historically the most important and widespread of Wales's industries.
Start Point is one of the most exposed peninsulas on the English Coast, running sharply almost a mile into the sea on the South side of Start Bay near Dartmouth. The Lighthouse, sited at the very end of the headland, has guided vessels in passage along the English Channel for over 150 years.
Explore the amazingly varied history of Maidenhead at this Heritage Centre with lots of hands-on activities for families.
The permanent Story of Maidenhead exhibition with Roman Dress-Up and other regular family activities is supplemented with five free exhibitions a year in the Sammes Gallery, so there is always something new to see and do.
The Winding House Museum is a bold, glass-fronted structure that has been constructed around the former Elliot Colliery winding house
Penlee House has been converted to create a first class gallery and museum set within an attractive park. It specialises in showing the area's unique, rich cultural heritage incorporating the historic collections of Penzance Town Council, Penwith District Council (now incorporated into Cornwall Council) and Newlyn Art Gallery.
At the very heart of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site sit these two great beam engines, originally powered by high-pressure steam boilers introduced by local hero Richard Trevithick.
Preserved in their towering engine houses, they are a reminder of Cornwall's days as a world-famous centre of industry, engineering and innovation.
Sarehole Mill is one of only two surviving working watermills in Birmingham. The existing building was constructed around 1750, although there was known to be a mill here as early as the Tudor period.
This early 19th-century house nestling between a wooded ridge and parkland is possibly one of Wiltshire’s best kept secrets. An ideal place to have a quiet picnic and to get away from it all.
Glastonbury was once an island and water rises and falls from it’s heart in profusion. Full of mystery and symbolism, two springs rise within feet of each other at the base of the Tor - the holy hill of Avalon. One, tasting sweet with calcium, leaves a white trail. The other, tasting metallic with iron, leaves its mark in red.
Experience the stately grandeur of this stunning 18th-century mansion set in a beautiful wooded landscape park ideal for family walks.
Castle Coole is one of Ireland's finest Neo-classical houses, allowing visitors to glimpse what life was like in the home of the Earls of Belmore.
Lulworth Castle, built in the early 17th Century as a hunting lodge, became a country house at the heart of a large estate. Thomas Howard, 3rd Lord Bindon, built the Castle in order to entertain hunting parties for the King and Court. The Howards owned it until 1641 when it was purchased by Humphrey Weld, the direct ancestor of the present owners.
Grace Dieu Priory was an Augustinian priory near Thringstone in Leicestershire. It was founded around 1235-1241 by Roesia de Verdon and dissolved in October in 1538. Guided walks take place throughout the year.
Ghosts at Grace Dieu Priory
Stratford Armouries is a truly unique museum set in 75 acres of rolling Warwickshire countryside.
The galleries house a range of world-class exhibits that will amaze the whole family.
We are a commercial archaeological and heritage team offering a competitive, high-quality service across the Midlands. We are pragmatic and client-centric and we work on behalf of our private and public clients to achieve their required outcomes.
The Bushcraft Company offer residential school trips with a difference, taking students into the wild and giving them real back-to-nature experiences they will never forget.
A 15-year-old boy fell 60ft over the edge of a cliff whilst on a geography school trip, miraculously only suffering minor injuries.