On Wednesday, we visited The National Archives in Kew. "The National Archives is ... the UK government's official archive, containing 900 years of history with records ranging from parchment and paper scrolls through to digital files and archived websites." The children were very excited to see both The Doomsday Book and The Magna Carta, both of which we have read about this term in Our Island Story.
We were attending a workshop, organised by another Home Ed Mother, on maps and we spent the afternoon investigating four of London: one Tudor, one Georgian, one Regency and one Victorian. I find maps fascinating and we pored over these, noticing the changes in the number of bridges, the spread of the city, the developments as well as the continuity: St Paul's Cathedral and The Tower of London remaining constant. Victorian London was not so far removed from the London of today, and we were pleased to see The National Gallery and The British Museum, and of course, Trafalgar Square, none of which had appeared until this time. Tudor London was so much smaller and, where there is now the busy-ness of Leicester Square and Charing Cross Road, there was only St Martin's Field, where the church of St Martin's-in-the-Field would one day be built.
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