Beyond the Classroom

Courtesy of the Lincolnshire branch of the Young Historian Scheme, a member of the Historical Re-enactment Workshop will be bringing 'life in a seventeenth-century kitchen' to Gainsborough Old Hall as part of this year's activities for the Scheme's History Day. The event to take place on November 5th will be one of many to be staged across the country in an attempt to stimulate children to take an interest in their local past.

Helen Abbotts, who normally works as part of a team of people who inhabit country houses for a day, will on this occasion be doing the job on her own, re-incarnated as a seventeenth-century house-keeper. Making use of children from schools from all over Lincolnshire, she will go about her duties centring around the kitchen. Part of the end result will be some of the children serving all the other pupils a meal. The idea is to give them a taste of history – though it is not yet certain whether they will be serving real food or plastic imitations! It depends on the logistics.