Before the half-term break, renowned archaeologists Julian Richards and Claire Ryley, based at Shaftesbury Abbey, came into school to work with all of our key stage 3 (years 7 – 9) pupils. They all completed a huge ‘indoor dig’ and pupils learned about how to look for clues to learn about the past. They introduced pupils to ideas about how archaeologists use things they find underground to get information about historical people and told us how we would be part of a big archaeology project called ‘SAVED (Shaftesbury Abbey – a Voyage of Exploration and Discovery)’.

On Friday 14th June, all key stage 3 pupils travelled to Shaftesbury Abbey to take part in a variety of medieval activities including making tiles, making soap and mixing herbal concoctions, meeting a medieval nun, a historical walk, stone carving, exploring and more. Pupils from Yewstock each made a clay floor tile, these will be placed alongside hundreds of others made by pupils from other schools to create a new temporary floor to represent that which existed in the Abbey 1000 years ago! Pupils learned about the history of Shaftesbury Abbey and it’s people, King Alfred the Great and the Viking invasions, and also about how Yewstock School would visit again in July to take part in a real life archaeological excavation. On 12th July, we will all visit again to work with Julian, Claire and the team to dig for relics which may have been unseen for more than 1000 years!

Everyone enjoyed the day so much and we cannot wait to go back to the Abbey to get stuck into some genuine archaeology.

Oliver Turner
Head of Key Stage 3