Y1AR visited the Traditional Heritage Museum in March 2008.   We went to find out about the past, to see what shops, homes and different work places used to be like.

In the past we discovered that similar types of goods were sold in little shops, unlike now when so many things can be bought in one building e.g. the department store or supermarket.

We discovered shops that we don't have any more, like the basket shop where baskets were made not only for shopping, but also for putting babies in.

The Horn Shop used horns from different animals to make handles for cutlery.

We compared an old office with Mrs Drayton's and Mrs Grayhurst's office at school.  In the past typewriters and dippy ink pens were used, rather than computers, biro's and felt tipped pens.

Washing clothes was very different in the past, as there were no automatic washing machines, dryers and electric irons.

First we had to grate the soap into a tub of water.  Next a 'posher' was used to mix in the soap and create bubbles.  The washing was added and a 'dolly' used to move the washing around in the tub to get it clean.  A separate tub of water was used to rinse the washing.

The clean washing was put through a mangle by turning a handle; this squeezed all of the water out.  After the washing had dried it was ironed, not with an electric iron, but with one that needed to be heated on the fire.  We didn't use hot irons , but we did pretend to iron with an old fashioned cold iron.  We found out that old irons are very heavy! 

We had great fun pretending to wash in an old fashioned way, but it must have been very hard work.