We arrived into school on Monday morning very excited…it was the morning of our trip organised by Mrs Black and our Creative Connections school from Omeath. We boarded Alison’s fun bus and off we set to Armagh. We sang, we played eye spy, we chatted to our friends and our journey went quickly. On arrival our connected school had already arrived and were waiting for us in the Archbishop's Church, such excitement and what a welcome we received. Our guides at the Palace Stables spoke to us whilst we enjoyed our school snack. We then split into groups and off we went on our adventure. Mrs Ebbitt's group first went to visit the ‘Butler’ who was very interesting. He explained his position within the household, how he got paid five times more than the cook (even though her workload was much greater), he played a game where the children had to guess what the item was and what it was used for, then they had to guess what part of the household the item belonged to. We were very interested in the wooden toys the boys and girls used to play with. We had lots of fun with the Butler. Then we were off, we went back to the Arch Bishops Church, our guide explained the different seating/standing arrangements. It was very interesting.
Our next stop was outside, we went down a lot of steps into a very long tunnel how exciting! The guide explained that the servants used this tunnel to carry the food from the kitchen to the ArchBishop's table. The servants had to whistle, because if you could whistle you couldn’t eat the food you were carrying! We visited the smoking room where the food was preserved. We then visited the ice room again for food preservation, the kitchen and the highlight was the visit to the classroom where we were greeted by the school teacher.He lined us up and spoke to us as if we were his actual class from 1896! We are very glad we go to Moat Primary!
Before we boarded Alison’s bus home, we enjoyed lunch with our new found friends. What a wonderful day out, enjoyed by each of us!
