Year 3 travelled to London to visit two iconic City features – the Bank of England and St Paul’s Cathedral. Mrs Forster had so much fun accompanying them and reporting on their adventures:
“We travelled by coach and the children chattered happily on the way. A diversion due to a road closure gave us an expected view of the Tower of London and Tower Bridge to add to our City sights seen and then we alighted from the coach at Cannon St. Station and walked through eerily quiet streets (no traffic because of the closed road) to the Bank of England Museum.
After navigating the security and bag check (just like going to the airport!) we went through the impressively high-ceilinged stock office, which is how the Bank of England would have looked 200 years ago. The next stage of our tour took us back 300 years to learn about the founding of the bank in 1694 to raise money for the government to fund the war with France. Private investors raised £1.2million in 12 days, which would be the equivalent of almost £2billion today.
We moved through the museum seeing interesting artifacts like a coin balance and a £1million bank note from the 1800s to the highlight of the day for many, including me, a real gold bar that we took turns trying to lift! At 13kg (but only the dimensions of couple of packs of butter), it was surprisingly heavy. There was time to explore a gallery of banknotes and experience being in a gold vault before the final part of the exhibition, all about our modern economy.
By this time, the children were feeling hungry, so we left the Bank and walked to St Paul’s Cathedral, amongst the city workers dashing out to grab lunch on Cheapside. We were lucky to have a dry and mild day to picnic in the Churchyard with the pigeons and before entering the cathedral through the crypt and starting our epic step count!
First, 38 steps up to the floor of the cathedral where we admired the wonderful space and vaulted ceilings. Another 257 steps took us all up to the Whispering Gallery, 30 meters above the cathedral floor for closer inspection of the gilded dome above. For some of the children, the vertiginous view back down made this far enough, and they stayed in the gallery with Mr Tunnell whilst Mrs Tejura and I took a group another 119 steps to the Stone Gallery. Here, we were outside the famous dome on a circular balcony with a panorama of the London skyline, before forging on to the very top, 528 steps and 85 meters up from the Cathedral floor at the Golden Gallery. It was a long walk back down! When we got there, we were approached by one of the cathedral clergy who encouraged us to get the best perspective of the dome by lying on the floor – it really was a fantastic way to fully immerse ourselves in the inspiring architecture.
It was a day packed with learning opportunities. We all learned fascinating facts to support the history and maths curriculum, bringing money and finance to life and we were able to develop our learner powers. Our self-guided tour of the Bank was fueled by curiosity and collaboration and there were many resilient squirrels on our cathedral climbing expedition. Finally, Mr Tunnell, Mrs Windett, Mrs Tejura were very proud of Year 3 for their enthusiastic participation and fantastic attitude throughout the day. We hope they enjoyed it as much as we did!”
