On 10th and 16th June this year, our most talented Year 8 historians got the opportunity to visit the Guildhall Library near Moorgate Station, in the heart of the City of London. The Guildhall library was established in the 1420's and is one of London's oldest lending libraries. It is still open to the public today, you can become a member and borrow books or use their online resources such as JSTOR.
We visited the library to take part in an information session about the Plague, which the students had covered earlier in the year. The Guildhall library owns numerous books and documents from this time which we had the chance to examine, including the Bills of Mortality which the Assistant Librarian Isabelle told us about at the beginning of the session. We learned how the Plague spread rapidly as medicine wasn't as advanced as it is now and how the people of the time felt that they were being punished.
This was followed by a trip to the ancient crypt downstairs in the vaults for a storytelling session and creative writing with Vanessa, a lively London storyteller. This part of our visit aimed to bring the plague to life for our students. They were asked to imagine that they were an ordinary person (a servant or a Puritan) surviving the Plague and to write from this perspective , read extracts from their work below.
May 1665
Dear Diary,
It is May in the year of 1665 and I worry that God has finally taken action on our sinful city. There are reports that soon it will be everywhere. We deserve this and when the guilty are punished, this will all be over, with only the good people left.
(By Nicholas)
Dear Diary,
Terror has spread thorugh the land. Rumours have filled the streets..the plague is once again upon us. During my free time, I was mixing herbs to help mistress Jane deliver her baby. God bless her soul, 9 and 1./2 months of being with child. If she or the baby caught the plague I wqould never forgive myself. God if she were to die, let me die, give her my lief to care for the baby.
(By Georgia)
And now for some feedback from our students...They said:
"The trip to Guildhall Library was very good. We especially liked storytelling and the question games as we could interact with each other."
"It was so informative and we all learned something."
