Activities

Yard Works Activities Teacher Notes

Activity 1. – continuity and change.
One way of using this part of the site is to look at continuity and change. Use the plans of Yard Works and present day Ordinance Survey Map, downloadable from the Ordnance Survey website, or photographs to look at the change of use. You could start from the 1808 plan, or you might prefer to start in the present day and work backwards. Very little remains of the Yard Works site today. It is now the site of a retail park. By studying the plans for 1808, 1913 and 1950 you can trace changes of use over nearly 200 years. If you have a colour printer and acetate slides that you can use in your printer you could print off and project in your classroom the three plans and current map and plot changes to the site.

You might also look at individual buildings and see what different uses they have had. Or you might look at facilities - which plan shows a works canteen for instance or other improvements for the workers? You might look at the individual processes - spinning or weaving for example. Use the 'Cotton' section of the timeline, and the 'How Cotton Cloth was made' section to look at a spinning shed, for example, in 1808, 1913 and 1950 and see how the process has changed. The photographs and the database will also help here.

You could locate photographs that show change in one building or process and 'Copy' and 'Paste' those into a sequence - perhaps in chronological order, perhaps not - and ask your pupils to date the photographs using evidence from the Yard Works activity or other parts of the website. Ask them to explain why they have dated them the way they have, what clues in the photographs they used to reach their conclusion.

Close this Window