Year 5 Victorian Day at Coldharbour Mill.

This week Year 5 have had the opportunity to visit Coldharbour Mill in Uffculme. The mill certainly lived up to its name as it was rather chilly in places as we toured around learning about the working conditions in 1865.

We had two aspects to our visit which included a digital tour where each child had a headset and device and visited various rooms within the mill and discovered how the machines were developed and other interesting facts. The other part involved a drama role-play where the children applied for a job at the mill and learned about what that would entail, including collecting what they used to fix the dye from the work-house and that some of the dyes were poisonous (made from arsenic) so they would need to be careful handling the green items.

Mr Robson, the Mill manager subjected the children to various tests such as dashing to the wall and back in order to evaluate how fast they could run and whether they could work underneath the machines running back and forth without being hit. The girls were advised that they would need to keep their hair hidden or cut it off for safety and they were all subjected to a rigorous academic grilling for times-table and spelling.

Overall the children had a wonderful experience and learned a lot in readiness for our current topic as well as feeling very grateful that they are not living in 1865, applying for jobs in the mills.