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When Year 2 leaves the classroom at lunchtime it is the twenty
first century but when they come back in it is the 1860s and they are
at the end of Brunel's Clifton suspension bridge, watching his workmen
building it.
 Click
on the image for an enlargement
The questions should flow naturally; How was the bridge built? What
tools are being used? Why was it built? Why was it special? What did
the people of Bristol think of it? Is it still there today?
Go back to the present day, to Bristol and they can see the bridge,
still imposing itself on the landscape.
With a good photograph and an overhead projector or interactive
whiteboard you can project images in a darkened room big enough for
your pupils to feel that they are walking into the scene. On the whiteboard
you could zoom into just one person or feature.
Give your pupils an interesting photograph and a magnifying
glass and let them be history detectives investigating the past.
Use local photographs of places they are familiar with and they
will be instantly hooked. Add some other sources and give them an insight
into the way that ‘real’ historians reconstruct the past.
These two images are both of the Black Gate in Newcastle; one
taken in 1864 and one in 2000.
• Show pupils the modern photograph first and make sure they
all recognise where it is. Let them tell you what they know about
the building today. 
• Give them the old photograph and ask them to look at it in
detail. Is it the same place? How can they tell? What is
still the same? What is different?
• Tell them that it is dated 1864. What evidence is there to
support this in the photograph?
• What do they think the building in front of the gate was used
for and why do they think this?
• Check this in a trade directory.
• Why do they think this building was demolished? When was it
demolished?
• Find out by looking at a series of maps starting as close
to 1864 as possible.
• Have the sources confirmed that the photograph dates from
1864? What evidence have you found?
Bring out the difference between things that can be proved using
evidence and things that we can only deduce. Relate this to how historians
work.
Find out more about a building and the people associated with
it.
What does the photograph tell us?
What does the advertisement tell us?
- - Search the Images
of England web site using the search terms; shop, High
Street, Banbury,Oxfordshire and read the description for numbers
85, 86 and 87. Is this the same building? How can you tell?
- Is Betts cake shop still there? If not use later trade
directories to find out when it closed. Are there any people
in Banbury who can remember it and tell you more?
- - Search the 1901 census to
see if you can find out more about the Betts family. Did they live
above the shop?
- Putting the information from the sources together write a short
history of Betts cake shop in the form of a Power Point presentation
All of these ideas can be adapted for your own locality.
Find your photographs on Images
of England or ViewFinder
. Both of these online picture libraries provide teachers with
free access to images that can be displayed on a whiteboard or overhead
projector or copied into a worksheet or power point presentation
.Click here for information about
sources. Click here for information
on finding sources for your area.
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