Last night, while others spending an evening at school may have been watching the typical (or less typical) Christmas nativity, I was privileged to attend Stonelow Junior School to see the year 6 give a dramatic presentation for Dronfield 2017: Stories from the First World War.
For the last 12 months, the pupils have been researching the history of their town and it’s people, including some of soldiers who fought in the war. With funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and led by the brilliant Gertie and Paul Whitfield from Whitworks Adventures in Theatre, pupils visited different museums, businesses and organisations. In Feb 2017, I visited the school taking a selection of old Dronfield records, photographs and history books to help the pupils with their research.
Posters created by the pupils to show information found from Record Office sources
Informed and inspired by diaries, letters, newspapers, service records, church registers and many other sources, the pupils brought their local “ancestors” to life with poems, songs, a silent movie re-enactment, imagined postcards and letters and recollections from the past. Remembering facts and figures, stories and feelings, it was a fantastic way to present what they had learned – including a verse of Silent Night in the original German.
I couldn’t help but read the pupils project diaries and see what they thought of the Record Office visit…
![img_0348 Me and Lucy looked at a church catalogue. It had people's personal information. It was really interesting to learn about what names and jobs they used to have... The writing was really weird, it had a lot of swirls and flicks on it... It was quite hard to read but we managed. It was really fragile because it was over 100 years old. We found our school [on the new map] but couldn't see it on the [older] maps because it was just a big field! As a result it was a very interesting day - Chloe](https://recordoffice.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/img_0348.jpg?w=240&h=321)
“… it was a fascinating day I learnt a lot and hope she comes again” – Chloe
“When I was reading I noticed that the writing was squiggly in the log books” – Alexander
“My personal favourite is the church record book. It had in it all the names, birth and their jobs. I felt so privled [?privileged] and excited to find out what jobs were in 1917. The writing kept going column after column and the writing was big and scary but some of it was so fancy”
You can soon see a copy of the book produced as part of the project in our Local Studies collection and in Dronfield Library.