To support Year 3’s learning of the Tudor period in our history topic, we spent the day at Eastbury Manor in Upney. Following a short walk and a journey by tube, we arrived at the stunning Tudor home where the Sisley family once lived. We looked at the architecture of the building and found out how the bricks were made as well as why there are more chimneys than fireplaces and what shape the panes of glass used to be.
Once inside, we found out more about the family and how the house was used by them as well as the eight servants that worked for them. Parts of the building are hundreds of years old (having been built when Elizabeth I was on the throne) and we all walked up the spiral wooden staircase that the servants would have used on a daily basis to find ourselves in the attic where exposed wooden beams show how the structure is held together. We were challenged to walk across the wooden floor without making a sound – very difficult! As the boards expand in the damp weather, they were particularly squeaky!
Handling replica Tudor artefacts was also part of the day and we had to work out what some artefacts were used for and by whom as well as the materials they were made from. As the home would have once been surrounded by farmland, many of the utensils they would have eaten with or drunk from were made from cows’ horns! Some of the year group also learnt a dance that guests at one of Henry VIII’s banquets may have danced whilst others discovered how the Tudors dressed. All of the children made very convincing Tudors and thoroughly enjoyed the trip back in time.
