Adventurers' Class News!

Thank you for visiting our class news page, here you will find information regarding events and trips as well as any class news such as celebrations and achievements.

Spring Term

Autumn Term

What did the Romans ever do for us?

This term our history topic is the impact of the Roman invasion of Britain.

Underpinning the prospect of the invasion of Britain was the Romans’ innate belief in their right to conquer non-Roman peoples; they were confident that the gods had gifted them the known world and that it was their right and duty to rule it all in their ‘civilised’ manner, a pretext shared by many ambitious imperialists over the millennia. Apart from the glory of adding to a vast empire, the main reason for invading and conquering Britain was to exploit its natural resources - minerals such as gold, tin and iron - and its cattle.

We travelled to the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro for workshops and a view of the museum’s exhibits.

We were split into two groups. While one group would be fashioning oil lamps from clay, the other would be investigating the artefacts to be found in a typical Roman villa. Then the groups would swap activities.

Before we started shaping our own lamps, we were shown examples of oil lamps, some of which were over 1,700 years old. Most of the lamps were of a standard design, resembling small covered jugs. Often, these had various images impressed into the surface of the lamps. In others, however, the whole of the lamp was sculpted into a representation of an animal, sometimes realistically rendered, sometimes mythically. We gave our imaginations free rein, and our results were sometimes delightfully… whimsical.

In the workshop about a Roman villa, we were able to look at some artefacts found on a site in Britain. The artefacts were linked to particular rooms in a villa: the kitchen, the atrium (the principal room of a domus) and the bedroom. We also saw some coins from the early years of the first millennium CE.

After lunch, we had the chance to have a wander around the museum, enjoying its extensive collection of minerals and say hello to a local celebrity – albeit one from the seventeenth century. In the entrance hall of the museum was a portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller of Anthony Payne, the Cornish Giant. Anthony was born in Stratton and reached the giddying height of 7 feet 4 inches (about 223 centimetres).

We would like to thank Mrs Lamble and Mrs Langford for accompanying us on our trip to the museum.