Rich and poor
This package is designed to be loosely chronological, and teachers are welcome
to take one or two themes to look at through time, from the sixteenth to the
nineteenth centuries. Alternatively, if concentrating on one period in class, then
you may want to look at more topics within that period.
National Curriculum Links
This package ties in to the History curriculum at Key Stages 2 and 3.
History: Key Stage 2
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10. A study of some significant events and individuals, including Tudor
monarchs, who shaped this period and of the everyday lives of men,
women and children from different sections of society.
11a: Victorian Britain. A study of the impact of significant individuals,
events and changes in work and transport on the lives of men, women
and children from different sections of society.
History: Key Stage 3
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9: Britain 1500 - 1750. A study of crowns, parliaments and people: the
major political, religious and social changes affecting people
throughout the British Isles, including the local area if appropriate.
10: Britain 1750 - 1900. A study of how expansion of trade and
colonisation, industrialisation and political changes affected the United
Kingdom, including the local area.
Worksheets
You can either give out these worksheets for your pupils to work through in class,
or teach the information contained in them yourself and just use the suggested
activities with your class. With each worksheet are guidelines suggesting which
worksheets should be done in advance, for instance if certain skills like mapreading are needed before doing the suggested activities on that topic. There are
also linked worksheets that may be useful to work through to extend that topic.
Rich and poor
Tudor and Stuart
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Houses
Prerequisites: How to read maps
Other relevant worksheets: New uses for old buildings; How to date buildings;
Houses (Georgian and Victorian)
This worksheet explores the differences between rich and poor houses, their
size, building materials and furnishings from the standing buildings and
excavations of houses in Buckinghamshire. Many more larger, grander sixteenth
and seventeenth century buildings have survived than smaller ones and the
children will be invited to explore why that might be. As an extension activity you
could get your children to do the New uses for old buildings worksheet to tie in
with the demolition of The Kya in Ludgershall, which wasn’t listed and so was
scheduled for demolition before it was found that it was sixteenth century. An
online activity you can do with your students is to use the virtual reconstructions
of a rich and poor Tudor house on Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past to work out
what kinds of furniture, decoration and people would go inside each. The
reconstructions can also help children write a day in the life of someone who
lived there.
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Dress
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Dress (Georgian and Victorian)
In the sixteenth century there were laws governing what you could and couldn’t
wear according to your rank. These had their history in the medieval period but
were less and less important in the Tudor and Stuart periods and were finally
repealed in 1604. The new trend in the sixteenth and seventeenth century was to
wear what you could afford instead of what was fitting to your rank. By looking at
pictures and artefacts that have been found from this period, the schoolchildren
can build up a picture of the differences between rich and poor people’s dress.
Look at Buckinghamshire County Museum for items of sixteenth and seventeenth
century clothing www.buckscc.gov.uk/museum/m2e/index.htm. You should be
able to find several pairs of shoes, a coif and a purse bar.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme website can be found at www.finds.org.uk.
Look on the Finds database and search for objects found in Buckinghamshire
that date to between 1485 and 1714.
Rich and poor
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Town and country
Prerequisites: How to read maps
Other relevant worksheets: How to date buildings
This worksheet explores life in the town and life in the country from
archaeological evidence. A number of case studies will be suggested. Depending
on where your school is you can look at Buckingham and Thornborough,
Aylesbury and Stone or High Wycombe and West Wycombe. It does not follow
that those in the country were necessarily poorer than those in the towns or vice
versa but life for both rich and poor was different in the towns to in the country
and this worksheet explores that. An extension activity could be How to date
buildings to help with identifying Tudor and Stuart buildings in the town and
village you are studying.
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Education
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Education (Georgian and Victorian)
Few children got an education in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The
monasteries provided an education to some children in the medieval and early
Tudor period. However, after the dissolution of the monasteries many schools
were founded either as separate institutions or attached to cathedrals and
churches. Children attended these schools, had tutors at home, took up
apprenticeships or worked depending on their place in society. To do some
research on Eton College, look at their website www.etoncollege.com.
An extension activity could be to have a small Tudor meal one lunchtime, using
the advice on table manners given on the worksheet.
An interesting online activity would be to find any books published about
Buckinghamshire between 1485 and 1714. You can do this on the free search on
the British Library website www.bl.uk. There are some interesting books on
possessions by the devil, highwaywomen and ghostly apparitions as well as
several pamphlets about the Civil War.
The maths problem comes from a 1581 book by an anonymous author, An
Introduction of Algerisme to Learn to reckon with the penne or with the Counters,
in Whole numbers of Broken. There are more in Elizabeth’s London by Liza
Pickard. Perhaps you could have a whole Elizabethan maths class.
Rich and poor
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Work
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Work and workhouses (Georgian and Victorian); A
woman's work (Georgian and Victorian)
Most people in Buckinghamshire would have been farming in the Tudor and
Stuart periods. However, there were many other jobs, such as lace-makers,
potters, paper-makers, cordwainers, butchers, bakers, millers, maltsters.
Merchants started to make lots of money in this period because society was
becoming more capitalist. There were, however, many landowners who made
their money mainly by charging rent on their property. Others would actually farm
the land they owned.
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Leisure
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Leisure (Georgian and Victorian)
Different types of people enjoyed different leisure pursuits. By the seventeenth
century rich people were taking snuff whereas the commoners were smoking
pipes. There are no snuff-boxes known to survive in Buckinghamshire but many
snuff boxes are held in the Gilbert Collection in Somerset House that you can
either visit or see on the Internet: www.gilbert-collection.org.uk. Try to find some
clay pipes to look at on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website
www.finds.org.uk. To search for markets and fairs in Buckinghamshire in the
(very) early Tudor period, look at the Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England
and Wales to 1516 website www.history.ac.uk/cmh/gaz/gazweb2.html.
An extension activity could be to look at the pubs and former pubs in your village
or town that date back to the Tudor or Stuart periods and try to class them as
inns, taverns or alehouses. The inns will be bigger, often with a large archway
into a courtyard or back yard for coaches, with rooms upstairs for people to stay.
Taverns will be slightly smaller and with no room to house coaches, horses or
people and alehouses will be very small, maybe just one room. The name may
give some indication too, especially for inns and taverns.
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Food
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets:
Rich and poor
Regulations governing dress also governed what food was suitable for different
ranks in the Tudor period. Rich landowners got permission to turn some of their
land into deer parks or rabbit warrens. Fishponds were expensive to run but a
supply of fresh fish for the many fish days would be a blessing to those who
could afford it. In the Stuart period new drinks were coming into fashion, like tea,
coffee and chocolate and coffee houses were springing up in all the major towns.
The poor were still drinking ale most of the time. A sumptuous, but timeconsuming, extension to this worksheet would be to have a Tudor banquet, using
table manners learnt in the Education worksheet above, and making some Tudor
food, possibly not the ones suggested on the worksheet itself, but you can find
Tudor recipes online at http://tudorhistory.org/topics/food/ or in the book by Peter
Brears, All the King’s Cooks.
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Death
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Death (Georgian and Victorian)
How people were buried often reflects how rich or poor they were in life. Those of
high status in the Tudor and Stuart periods tried to get buried within the church.
The poor and criminals were sometimes buried outside the churchyard. This
worksheet will explore where burials of this kind have been found outside the
churchyard and some explanations for this. High status burials are also explored,
such as those of the Dormer family in Wing. A good archive to search is the
Buckinghamshire Photograph Database, which has pictures of many tombs (put
the word tomb into the objects search line):
www.buckscc.gov.uk/photo_database/. Many of the tombs and brasses can be
visited in their churches or chapels, but always check with the parish office or
owner of the chapel first.
Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
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Houses
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Houses (Tudor and Stuart)
Are there any Victorian houses in your village or town? This worksheet can be
used in conjunction with Date your village’s buildings to do a survey of the
village. It also looks at how maps can show where towns and villages got bigger
in the Victorian period. You can use the historic maps on the Unlocking
Buckinghamshire’s Past website to look at your own village or town or use the
Rich and poor
example in the worksheet. Some of the richer houses are also explored. The de
Rothschild family built several of the large country houses in Buckinghamshire,
including Lilies in Weedon, Mount Tabor House in Wingrave, Eythrope Pavilion,
Mentmore Towers, Halton House and Waddesdon Manor. They also built other
houses for their workers and businesses.
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Dress
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Dress (Tudor and Stuart)
This worksheet will look at the evidence available for what people were wearing
in the nineteenth century in Buckinghamshire. Old photographs, pictures,
jewellery and surviving pieces of clothing will be pieced together to come up with
an image of a Victorian man and woman.
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Education
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Education (Tudor and Stuart)
Schooling was much more common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
than ever before and in 1880 it was finally made compulsory to go to school up
until the age of 10. Up to that point children were often sent out to work or, if they
were lucky, take up an apprenticeship. There was a rash of school building after
1870’s Education Act that instructed each district to build enough school places
for all the children in the area.
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Work and workhouses
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Work (Tudor and Stuart); A woman's work (Georgian
and Victorian)
The effect of industrialisation on the landscape of Buckinghamshire has been
explored through another worksheet but in this topic the children will be
encouraged to think about what life was like for people working in the factories
and those whose livelihoods were jeopardised by them. Wycombe Museum has
a great deal of information on the Buckinghamshire chair industry and a selection
of the chairs that were produced. You can find details of their opening times at:
www.wycombe.gov.uk/museum.
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A woman’s work
Rich and poor
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Work and workhouses (Georgian and Victorian);
Work (Tudor and Stuart)
This worksheet will examine what kind of work women were doing in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Buckinghamshire. It looks at their role in
the paper-mills, lace making, straw plaiting and as farm labourers. To search on
the Buckinghamshire County Museum website, go to
www.buckscc.gov.uk/museum/m2e/modessearch.htm. To search the
Buckinghamshire Photographs collection, see
www.buckscc.gov.uk/photo_database/index.htm.
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Leisure
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Leisure (Tudor and Stuart)
More people were able to indulge in leisure activities thanks to better wages and
working conditions for many people. Thanks to the railway, people were able to
go to the seaside and visit relatives more easily. Civic societies established new
parks for the public to enjoy the outdoors. This worksheet will invite your students
to explore these themes through archaeological and historical sources. A map of
the railways in 1961 before many of them were shut can be found online at:
www.joyce.whitchurch.btinternet.co.uk/maps/BR1961c.jpg. Click on the image
and then the icon in the bottom right hand corner to make the map bigger. You
can then explore the map by moving the bars on the right and the bottom of the
page. Compare this map with today’s at
www.nationalrail.co.uk/system/galleries/download/print_maps/uk.pdf. This is an
Adobe Acrobat document. Increase the size of the document at the top to 300%
or more to see it better.
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Death
Prerequisites:
Other relevant worksheets: Death (Tudor and Stuart)
There was a trend for very large monuments to commemorate the dead in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mausoleums were built in the grounds of
country houses to mimic classical structures. As the nineteenth century wore on,
large monuments in churchyards were seen as vulgar and the trend was for
tasteful, unobtrusive monuments. An extension activity could be to do some
grave rubbings in your local churchyard. The students could find the earliest, the
Rich and poor
latest, the oldest and youngest person buried there. Do be careful in graveyards
because the ground in often uneven and the gravestones can be unstable.
Visits
Tudor and Stuart
Church tombs
Many churches have sixteenth or seventeenth century tombs inside, such as St
Mary’s Aylesbury, where there is a tomb to Sir Henry Lee of Quarrendon’s wife,
Elizabeth. If you find tombs of this date on the Unlocking Buckinghamshire Past
website in your local church, this may be the easiest place to visit. Make sure it’s
open by calling the parish office first. Chenies Manor House, with the Bedford
Chapel is open between April and October. See the following website for more
details: www.cheniesmanorhouse.co.uk. See the Wing church website for
contact details www.wingvillage.co.uk/allsaints1. Your pupils could draw the
tombs they find in their local church to form part of a final display to finish off the
topic. The tombs will often have effigies on them in the dress of the time, and this
may help children visualise what Tudor and Stuart clothes looked like.
Gravestones
Perhaps this visit can be done in conjunction with the one above to see tombs.
Pupils could search for sixteenth and seventeenth century gravestones within
and outside the church. You could do rubbings of the gravestones as well. See
the Association for Gravestone Studies website for instructions:
www.gravestonestudies.org. Some of their advice includes finding out whether
gravestone rubbing is allowed in the cemetery, not rubbing fragile stones and
using masking tape to hold a piece of paper over the inscription.
St John the Baptist Hospital, High Wycombe
Remains of St John the Baptist Hospital can be seen on London Road in High
Wycombe. This was turned into the Royal Grammar School but the latter has
changed its location since then. One possible extension activity, combined with a
visit, is to find sixteenth and seventeenth century tombstones in All saints church
in High Wycombe.
Church Loft, West Wycombe
The Church Loft in West Wycombe can be seen from West Wycombe High
Street. The church is up the hill on the street starting from the arch in the Church
Rich and poor
Loft. There are many other sixteenth and seventeenth century houses on the
High Street and one extensions activity may be to do the date your village’s
buildings worksheet in West Wycombe.
Buckinghamshire County Museum
Aylesbury Grammar School was held in the buildings that are know part of
Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury, which is open for visits every
day except Christmas Day and Boxing Day. See the website for more details:
www.buckscc.gov.uk/museum.
Chantry Chapel, Buckingham
The Old Chantry Chapel in Buckingham is owned by the National Trust and open
at certain times for visitors. Boarstall Duck Decoy is also managed by the
National Trust and can be visited at certain times. See the National Trust website
for details www.nationaltrust.org.uk. Waddesdon Manor is the only Rothschild
house that is open for visitors. It is run by the National Trust. Stowe Landscaped
Gardens is also run by the National Trust.
Quarrendon
Quarrendon medieval village and Tudor gardens has both fishponds and rabbit
warrens that you can visit. It is a 15-20 minute walk through fields and over stiles
from the A41 Aylesbury to Bicester road. There is a layby on the north side of the
A41 just outside Aylesbury where a coach could be parked. You will need to walk
back towards Aylesbury to find the public footpath into the fields. Follow the signs
to come to the medieval and Tudor complex. The ponds are to the south of the
ruined church. The rabbit warrens are up on the skyline towards Aylesbury. Sir
Henry Lee had them there so that rabbits could be seen from the house. There is
also a moat here, south of the ponds, proving the presence of a Tudor manor
house here, associated with ponds and rabbit warrens.
Haddenham
You can visit Haddenham village green if you think your pupils may find it easier
to draw a Tudor or Stuart fair after seeing the green. There is parking in
Haddenham at the Village Hall, at the bottom end of Churchway. If you walk
south up Churchway you will come to the village green. The Baptist cemetery in
Haddenham can also be visited. From the Village Hall walk past the row of shops
to the corner where there is a bus stop, estate agents and Indian restaurant. Turn
left down a pathway marked Stockwell. After five minutes you will come to a large
Rich and poor
white building on your right, which is the Baptist chapel, and the cemetery on
your left. If you want to do any grave rubbings, see the website of the Association
for gravestone Studies: www.gravestonestudies.org.
St Rumbold’s well, Buckingham
You can visit St Rumbolds well, which is just to the south-west of Buckingham
but within walking distance. You can find out more about it on Buckingham
University’s website
http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/life/buck/bucktown/rumbold.html.
Georgian and Victorian
Mausolea
Eighteenth and nineteenth century mausoleums are much bigger. You can visit
the mausoleum on Church Hill at West Wycombe. On entering West Wycombe,
take the road signposted ??? and turn left into the Garden centre car park.
Visitors to Church Hill can use this. There are public footpaths signposted up the
hill, or you can take the road that is signposted past the Hellfire Caves for an
easier walk. It is still very steep. Up on the top of the hill is an Iron Age hillfort, in
which a medieval church was later built. This church was partly rebuilt in the
eighteenth century and you will find a graveyard there too. The mausoleum looks
out towards High Wycombe.
Brill Common
Brill Common was quarried for clay for the brick and tile industry. It is very clear
that it has been dug into and can show your pupils the extent of the industry.
There is a car park on the common. On entering Brill you can follow the signs to
find it. The common is very bumpy, so you should make sure that children are
careful when exploring it.
Beech trees in the Chilterns
A good place to visit some of the beech tree plantations is Common Wood near
Penn. You will need OS Explorer map 172 to visit. To search the
Buckinghamshire Photographs collection, go to
http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/photo_database/index.htm.
Lace Museum in Olney
Rich and poor
You can visit the Cowper & Newtown Museum in Olney (in the old county of
Buckinghamshire) for more information about lace-making. See their web pages
at http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/cnm/lace/index.html.
Winslow
You can visit the town of Winslow to see the listed buildings and work out which
is which from the information on the Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past website.
There is parking on Market Square, just off the main Aylesbury to Buckingham
road (A413). Be careful when crossing this road, as there is a blind bend just
next to Market Square. You can take the Date your village’s buildings worksheet
with you in order to identify other Victorian buildings that aren’t on the Unlocking
Buckinghamshire’s Past website.
Resources
Internet resources
Apart from Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past there are many other sites where
you can explore the theme of the rich and poor from the sixteenth to the
nineteenth century.
Tudors
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Museum of London’s Target the Tudors web pages
www.museumoflondon.org.uk/MOLsite/learning/features_facts/targettudor
s/index.html.
An online activity about Tudor houses and what poor and rich people
might have inside them can be found on the National Archives website:
www.tudorbritain.org/life/index.asp.
If you have Quicktime on your computers at school you will be able to
explore this Elizabethan room on the BBC website
www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/society/launch_pan_elizabethan_ro
om.shtml.
A plan of a Tudor house in Ingatestone can be found at
http://renaissance.dm.net/compendium/map-ingatestone.html.
Games where students can dress Tudor (and Victorian) men and women
can be found on the BBC website:
www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/society/launch_gms_costumes.sht
ml.
Rich and poor
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There is also a worksheet on Tudor clothes from the History on the Net
website
www.historyonthenet.com/Lessons/worksheets/tudor_stuart/Tudor_Costu
me.doc
There is a private website devoted to images of Tudor dress that you can
find here: www.uvm.edu/%7Ehag/sca/tudor/index.html.
A transcription of many of the points of Sumptuary Regulations can be
found at http://costume.dm.net/sumptuary.html or
http://renaissance.dm.net/sumptuary/index.html.
Tudor recipes online at http://tudorhistory.org/topics/food/.
See the Wing church website for more details
www.wingvillage.co.uk/allsaints1.
There is another website where people in Tudor history can be researched
www.tudorplace.com.ar/index.html.
You can do a search of monumental brasses on the Internet at
www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/sources/brasses1.shtml#contents.
More information on the history of the Gypsies or Roma can be found on
this website: www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/patrin.htm.
Stuarts
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The Victoria & Albert Museum has a searchable image database and you
should be able to find a late seventeenth century cravat, many pairs of
shoes, James II’s wedding suit from the late seventeenth century, pairs of
stays (corsets), a doll’s waistcoat, petticoats, smocks (undergarments),
stockings and much more. See http://images.vam.ac.uk/.
A gallery of seventeenth century costume can be found at
www.columbia.edu/itc/barnard/theater/kirkland/3136/17th%20Century%20
Gallery
Look at the Time Traveller’s site on Channel 4’s website for interesting
facts about Tudor and Stuart Britain
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/guides/.
Victorians
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There is more on Victorian housing on the Cadbury Learning Zone
www.cadburylearningzone.co.uk/history/cysplash.htm.
Rich and poor
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An online activity to dress a Tudor and Victorian man and woman can be
found on the BBC website at:
www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/society/launch_gms_costumes.sht
ml.
The Museum of English Rural Life is a good place to find information on
smocks: www.ruralhistory.org/the_collections/the_museum/smocks.html.
There is a website explaining what piecers did at
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IRpiecers.htm.
There is more information on children in factories at the History learning
Site www.historylearningsite.co.uk/children.htm.
There are worksheets on Victorian children’s lives available from the BBC
Schools website www.bbc.co.uk/schools/victorians/.
Information about workhouses, including Aylesbury workhouse, can be
found here www.workhouses.org.uk/. Go to workhouse rules on the lefthand side and pick Aylesbury 1831. From there you can scroll down the
page and take the link to 1881 census, showing the staff and inmates.
More information on paper-making can be found on the British Association
of paper Historian’s website www.baph.org.uk.
If you want to try lace-making look at this online lace school
www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/lace.
There is also a site that gives instructions on how to make a straw-plait
greetings card at www.strawcraftsmen.co.uk/project01.html.
The National Archives website also has more information on leisure in
general www.learningcurve.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot05/snapshot5.htm.
Railways
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Some information on navvies is found on the Channel 4 worst jobs in
history website at
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/W/worstjobs/victorian.html#3
and also on the History Learning Site
www.historylearningsite.co.uk/navvies.htm.
There is more about how railways contributed to leisure on the National
Archives site
www.learningcurve.gov.uk/victorianbritain/happy/default.htm.
There are details of Brunel’s life at:
Rich and poor
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BBC History website:
www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/industrialisation/brunel_isambard_0
1.shtml
Spartacus www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RAbrunel.htm
Ukonline http://web.ukonline.co.uk/b.gardner/brunel/kingbrun.html
Brunel 200 www.brunel200.com/index.htm.
Further reading
Page, W (ed.) 1905. A History of the County of Buckinghamshire, Vols I-IV. The
Victoria County History of the Counties of England.
Lipscombe, G, 1847. The History and Antiquities of the County of
Buckinghamshire. Vols I-IV. London: J & W Robins.
These two books are about London, but they give some good insights into life in
towns, leisure, food and drink, education and clothes in the Tudor and Stuart
periods:
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Picard, L 2003. Elizabeth’s London. Wiedenfield & Nicolson.
Waller, M 2000. 1700: Scenes from London Life. Hodder & Stoughton.