Menu
Home Page

History Walk Commission

Our school has been commissioned to create a series of interactive walks based in Redditch which people will be able to access on their smart phones. How exciting! Check out the blog on their website.

We thought about where we go for walks, times we might go and reasons for going for a walk. This linked back to our Geography from Year 3!

We also thought about how adults use smart phones, and how map apps can help for getting from one place to another.

One place in Redditch with a lot of history is Forge Mill Needle Museum. There is an interesting stone built into a wall there. Who was EM and what happened to them in 1816?

Redditch is famous for needle making. We used drama to briefly see the person the stone is a memorial to. His name was Edward Matthews and he was a pointer. What did that mean? How did he die? More drama revealed that he died when his pointing stone exploded!

 

We created timelines to show how needle making developed over time in Redditch, then looked more in depth at how needles were actually made in an 18th Century needle mill. 

 

The more we are finding out about needle making, the more we are finding out how hard life was for the workers in the mills. Could we survive life as a needle worker? Could this be something we could include on our interactive walk?

Life working in a needle mill was hard! The jobs were dangerous and they worked long hours. A foreman would watch over their work to make sure they were doing it properly - they didn't want to make a mistake and lose their job! Men, women and even children would work in the mill.

 

We recreated a needle mill in the classroom. Take a walk through all the different parts of the mill and see the jobs being done there. Can you spot the foreman in charge of each area? Can you see the workers, the engineers and the children keeping it all clean? I wonder if you will notice the owner of the mill walking around and checking everything?

Hill Needle Mill

Top