Transport montage Ship, Balloon, Train, Car 1899. Catalogue Ref: COPY1/153 f479
London & North Western Railway Co rail map, 1899. COPY1/148 f127
Let’s take a look at a Victorian map and decide where to go on our trip to the beach.
The following ‘tasks’ are suggested activities which you can choose from or adapt to make them suitable for your students.
Further information:
Working-class men and women worked very long hours for little pay at the start of the Victorian era. Conditions did improve during the century though. For example, the Ten Hours Act of 1847 limited women and young people to working a maximum of 58 hours a week.
In 1871 the Bank Holidays Act established the first ever paid bank holidays in Britain. This, combined with the massive development of the railways in the second half of the 19th century, opened up new possibilities for leisure and relaxation. For the first time, families could experience a day at the seaside as train travel offered a fast and cheap way of getting there.
Many seaside towns grew up because of the railways. Places like Skegness and Bournemouth changed from small coastal villages to thriving seaside resorts during the 19th century and visitors flocked to towns such as Brighton, Blackpool, Llandudno and Scarborough.
Sarah Bernhardt with friends on the beach 1881. Catalogue Ref: COPY1/54 (117)
Children playing in the street Turnham Green, 1891. Catalogue Ref: COPY1/406 (149)
You may not be able to visit The National Archives with your students, but you can literally immerse them in the world of historic documents, paper and parchment. Start your session by wrapping your students in large sheets or rolls of paper. Allow them to pull the paper tight around themselves, scrunch it up and imagine they are entering the Archives.
The following ‘tasks’ are suggested activities which you can choose from or adapt to make them suitable for your students.
Going back in timeFurther information:
The Victorian era saw a huge rise in the population of Britain – from around 14 million in the 1830s to 32 million at the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901. In that period, more and more people moved from living in rural to urban areas. By the beginning of the 20th century, three-quarters of the population lived in towns and cities.
Travelling outside one’s local area just wasn’t possible for the vast majority of the population owing to lack of free time, disposable income and practical transport options. However, this was to change with the coming of the railways in the second half of the 19th century. This, combined with improved working conditions for many people, meant that an escape from the city for a day trip to the seaside could become a reality…and the start of a much-loved British tradition.
Experience all the fun and excitement of a day out at the seaside in Victorian times without leaving your classroom. We’ve selected some of our favourite Victorian photos, posters and prints from The National Archives’ huge collection of images. You’ll find below lots of suggestions for sensory activities that you can easily do in your classroom. They’ll help you use our images as a starting point to bring all the sights, sounds, smells and experiences of the Victorian seaside to life.
We recommend you follow the six sections below in order, but you don’t need to use every image or do every suggested activity. Just choose or adapt the ones that are most suitable for your students. There are sensory activities, signed videos, sound files and ideas for further discussion – hopefully something for everybody. You may even come up with some ideas of your own for activities based on our images. If you do, we’d love to hear about them!
This resource is suitable to students working up to KS2 and following an informal, semi-formal or formal curriculum.
National Curriculum links:
History – The Victorians Download the activity pack (399MB)
Stories inspired by letters from the past
In the spring of 2020 The National Archives Education Service released a themed collection of historical documents entitled: ‘Workhouse Voices: What did Paupers say about the Poor Law’
The collection represents a small sample of the letters that have been identified and transcribed as part of ‘In Their Own Write’, an Arts Humanities Research Council funded project, 2018 to 2021, which uses letters from paupers and other poor people, and other material such as petitions, sworn statements and advocate letters written on behalf of paupers to investigate the lives of the poor between 1834 and 1900.
To celebrate the release of the collection we challenged students to write a short story of no more than 450 words inspired by these documents. We asked for realistic characters, good background detail on the workhouse system, a sense of location, interesting language, description and dialogue which reflects the time.
We received over 350 entries across our three age categories, Key Stages Two, Three and Four, and enlisted the help of author Sharon Gosling to judge our finalists. Sharon is the author of many children’s books including The Diamond Thief, The Golden Butterfly and The House of Hidden Wonders, all set in the Victorian period making her the perfect guest judge for the competition.
Contained within this eBook are the shortlisted stories – twenty five finalists, five from each category. Sharon has kindly given feedback on each story which can be found at the beginning of each section before the winning three stories and the two runners up.
Each of the winners will receive a £25 book token, a copy of Sharon’s latest book and a goody bag from The National Archives shop.
Katie Fox – a teacher at George Green School – created this powerpoint resource which she has kindly allowed us to share to inspire your own Creative Writing activities using our Workhouse Voices Themed Collection.
This is a personal petition written directly by the prisoner George Hey who admits being guilty of embezzlement [theft from his workplace] in 1 January, 1845, Catalogue ref: HO18/149/41
A letter of response by the committing magistrate, William Ballantine at the Thames Police Office about Robert Brown to the Home Office, 2 August, 1838, Catalogue ref: HO 17/121/54