Immanuel School visits Havering Museum

Havering Museum enjoys welcoming the primary and secondary schools across Havering for fun and engaging sessions about local history. During November and December Havering Museum organised three sessions with Immanuel School in Romford exploring the Museum’s collections and key events throughout local history.

In the first session the students explored the Havering Museum galleries studying the unique and interesting objects and how they related to the development of the area.

In the second session the students were able to handle objects. This included replica Victorian Toys with the pupils using their historical enquiry skills to solve the mystery of how they were used. As well as, handling blacksmith tools from Havering-atte-Bower.

In the third session the students learnt about the Victorian Flood in Romford. They discovered after 14 days of continuous rain in August 1888 the banks of the River Rom burst flooding the entire town of Romford. In some places the water was over six foot high. Over 30,000 casks of beer were swept away from the Romford Brewery, some as far away as Southend Pier. Thankfully, no one was killed by this Great Flood.

During the session about the Victorian Flood the pupils were asked to think about how they would have felt if they were caught by the flood – imagining their possessions had floated away and their livelihoods lost -creating a poem or short story. One pupil, Paul Ajayi, summed up his feelings of the flood by writing the following poem:

If you are interested in booking a school session at Havering Museum contact the Museum Educator by phoning 01708 766 571.