Foxton Locks offers an excellent learning environment that extends beyond the classroom and helps schools deliver learning opportunities to inspire in a creative and authentic way.
Learning
The Humanities Curriculum allows students to explore how people's lives have been effected by change, circumstance and progress.
The museum has over 200 years of waterway history to give students a direct insight how the local environment has undergone dramatic changes throughout both world wars and the current climate.
Humanities areas of focus:
Local narratives of past and living memory
Historical concepts of community and change, cause and consequence.
Differences between local, national and international history
Significant people within own locality
Some suggested starting points for you to explore with us:
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The impact of industrialisation of 19th century on local communities from canals, railways and roads. How our local geography was changed.
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Children through time, the working child, child poverty and education.
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History of local people; e.g. Chief Engineer Gordon Thomas, lockkeeper George Duran.
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Political campaigner for changes to working children George Smith.
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How trade built our towns. The expansion of places like Market Harborough with the arrival of the canal. How local businesses developed because of imported goods.
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The part the waterways played in both world wars in Britain and abroad.
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The role of Idle women, the workforce who kept the canals running during WW2
Our navigable waterways have been home to hundreds of people and saw their busiest use during the industrial periods of the early 1800s. Men, women and children made their living on the water, transporting essential goods across the length and breath of the country. Without their efforts, Britain would not have become the industrial leader of the world, delivering vital raw materials to keep the factories working and transporting their wares to be sold around the world.
Illustrations from 'The Clothes of the Cut' by Avril Lansdell.
During the expansion of the waterways in the 18th century there were up to 100,000 people living on canal boats, 40,000 of them were children. Boatmen were employed by companies to work their boats and had previously lived on the land in small cottages. However, competition from the railways in the 1850s saw their wages cut and to survive, whole families took to living on the small cramped spaces of the narrowboats. Wives had to learn the trade and also work the boats, their children missed any form of education and were often used to walk the horses. All their treasured possessions went on the boats too, plates, patchwork quilts, brasses and birdcages. The narrowboats that had previously been just working barges, now became brightly painted homes. Regional variations of the painting styles led to the roses and castle patterns we see today.
Explore the history of Life Afloat in more detail and the fascinating reality of how circumstances changes over 200 years of navigable water ways.
To find out more about Humanities on the waterways and explore what workshops we can provide please contact Foxton Canal Museum: learning@foxtoncanalmuseum.org
