School Visits

School visits are currently in abeyance due to social distancing requirements.
However, following the successful engagement of local schools with Landscape, Nature and the Sheep Farming Year a comparable project with an Iron Age roundhouse and woodland crafts theme was planned for 2020. Hopefully this will go ahead in 2021.

If you are interested in a school visit can you please read the information at the foot of the page on which days we are available and how far we can travel. Thank You.

The school visits offered by Rent a Peasant are based on the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum topics of the Tudors and Invaders and Settlers, incorporating the Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Viking periods.

Rent a Peasant are also happy to work with older pupils. The Key Stage 3 National Curriculum Topic Medieval Realms can work particularly well when we meet the school party at a standing monument, such as the Keep in Newcastle upon Tyne (http://museums.ncl.ac.uk/keep). Rent a Peasant can also work in conjunction with institutions, such as the Discovery Museum in Newcastle, to complement static displays and presentations by in house educational staff.

The Tudors have also been presented as a topic at secondary school level.

(Please follow the links to Periods for more information on our approach to each historical period)

Rent a Peasant is one female costumed historical interpreter and can visit your school for a whole or half day.

Rent a Peasant will provide a stimulating insight into everyday living for the period chosen. Objects will be provided for the children to handle. Discussion will be led by question and answer. Hands on activities will be provided. Depending on the period, the activities can include:

  • Stripping rushes for rush lights
  • Spinning wool with drop spindles
  • Lucette braiding
  • Writing with quill pens
  • Grinding flour on the quern
  • Playing with contemporary toys and games

Throughout history, the majority of the population lived and worked in the countryside. The Peasant characters vary through time but always have an agricultural background and talk about everyday life in the past for ordinary people. The session always begins with a range of agricultural implements. This naturally leads on to the uses of these tools, the crops grown, the animals kept and the concept of a largely self sufficient lifestyle.

The presentation can be tailored to fit your specific National Curriculum requirements. Rent a Peasant can cover aspects contemporary to each period studied of literacy, numeracy, sciences, arts, trade, technology, politics, religion and geography. One successful idea, implemented after a Rent a Peasant visit for an OFSTED inspection, was a wall chart made by the children depicting a cow and all the uses that the Tudor Peasants made of cattle. These included oxen ploughing with drawing of the ox yoke; milk for butter and cheese with drawing of butter churn; the hide for leather with drawing of leather mugs; the horns for spoons, combs, mugs.

After a visit, literacy hour can be used to write thank-you letters to Rent a Peasant. Some examples following from a Tudor day at Mowden Juior School, Darlington can be viewed here.

Some schools also use a visit from Rent a Peasant to generate interest in the local press. Follow the link here to view some press cuttings of school visits.

Please contact Louisa Gidney on 01388 731 848 to discuss your requirements.

The charge is dependent on your class size and travelling distance. Rent a Peasant can normally find an option to suit even small schools.

Please, also, bear in mind that school vists are restricted by distance. If you are interested in our approach, but are situated well outside the northern counties of England, you may find a more local service through http://www.classhistory.co.uk

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