Learning about Anglo Saxons

On Tuesday Pre-Prep went on a trip to the Chiltern Open Air Museum, an outdoor museum in Chalfont St Peter which tells the story of the unique history of the Chilterns through buildings, landscapes and culture.

The Museum’s mission is to rescue threatened historic buildings from the Chilterns and to preserve them for future generations. They have re-erected 35 rescued buildings to date, spanning 2,000 years of Chilterns architecture and including a reconstructed Iron Age roundhouse, built using data from an archaeological dig near Dunstable, and Medieval and Tudor barns.  The Museum’s Victorian buildings include a working Victorian farm, toll house and forge, a tin chapel, vicarage room and newly-rebuilt wychert cottage.  From more modern times, their collection includes a 1940s Prefab, Nissen Hut and a Furniture Factory from High Wycombe.

For their visit the girls were focussing on Anglo Saxon life and they enjoyed a range of activities including: creating Anglo-Saxon brooches using metal sheeting and small glass beads; writing with runes on a clay tablet; handling replica Anglo-Saxon artefacts displayed on the Lord’s table; writing in Latin with quills and ink, practising the writing techniques used by monks in early Anglo-Saxon England; handling straw and using a hammer to experience creating roof thatch for Anglo-Saxon dwellings, and exploring and playing some of the games played by Anglo-Saxon families including solving Anglo-Saxon riddles. The girls also learnt about the properties of clay and the history of brick, before having the opportunity to make their own bricks.