On Tuesday 11th November DivisionII visited the Town House Museum and Trues Yard in Kings Lynn to learn more about life at home in Victorian Times.

We were joined by Mrs Bray, Mrs Wildbur, Mrs Flux and the scullerymaid.

The children began with a tour of the implements in the Victorian Kitchen of a Middle Class family; the tour was lead by the scullery maid.

The Children were then put to work doing the daily washing!

Here they are grating the soap and using the wash board and then the dolly to wash the clothes. 

The next step was to put in the blue rinse and then use the plunger.

Now to rinse in cold water .

Finally put the garment through the mangle to get rid of any excess water before hanging out to dry over the Aga

Now for a little bit of ironing. 

I am not sure but I think one of the items may be getting slightly burnt!!

And now time for school.

After a very hardworking but informative morning we walked through Kings  Lynn to our next stop, Trues Yard.

Trues yard gave the children a glimpse into what it would have been like to be rather poor during Victorian times; even poorer than the scullery maid!

When we arrived at Trues Yard we ate lunch in the tea rooms, not i hasten to add a Victorian lunch; this was very much a modern day pack up!

 We were then split into two groups to look at the life of the fishermen in Kings Lynn during Victorian times and two Victorian Cottages. 

The cottages were both incredibly small and gave the children a sense of how cramped it would have been living in one of these cottages in Victorian times. Each of the cottages had only one room downstairs and one room upstairs yet both had large families. The first cottage contained a family with nine children and in the second lived a lady who had seventeen children; we don't think they all lived there at the same time! The children were also fascinated in the second cottage to find that there was a GHOST called Charlie ! 

 Here we are outside the cottage after hearing of the GHOST!!! 

  Here we can see the down stairs room that would house all 11 people in the family. The floor is stone so that when the father came home from work with his catch he would throw it down onto the floor for the children to sort before they would clean up for the evening. 

And then upstairs to bed! Here there are only Six children in the bed  but the family had 9 children who would have slept in the bed. Division II thought this was excellent fun but I'm not sure the fun would have lasted longer than the five minutes they were laying there! The parents would sleep on the floor and if there was a  baby she would sleep in the drawers. The children were fascinated by the chamber pot kept under the bed as you can imagine, but were disgusted when they found out that it would be emptied out of the window!