Today we went on our school tour to Florence Court House.
First we had to go by bus and we were very excited to be
travelling on a big bus. When we arrived we were told we would have to change
as we wouldn’t be able to work in our school clothes. “But how can we be working,
we are on our school tour!”, exclaimed one of the girls.
We had to dress up as a servant!
We were tasked with preparing for the huge important event
that was taking place, Baby Anne’s christening.
Second class were going to be
very busy indeed.
When we arrived at the front door, we were welcomed into the
front hall. This was impressive as it had a huge fireplace and a table in it. There
were also statues of some of the people who used to live in the house. The head nanny brought us into the dining room where we were
going to have to serve people their dinners.
Next we had to travel down to the dark basement and into the hot,
smoky kitchen where we had to begin making the christening cake. We had to grind
up the ingredients, weigh out the ingredients, sieve the flour, prepare the tray
and make the tea! It was hard work already.
Look what also had to be prepared for the dinner!
After that it was time to scrub the potatoes and sort out the
fruit and vegtables………….it was dirty, messy work but it had to be done
otherwise the dinner would not be ready on time and the guests would not be
happy.
Following this, the laundry had to be done. We washed, dried,
ironed and hung the clothes out on the line. We were very lucky that the sun
was shining and it was a hot day, otherwise I don’t know how we would have got
the laundry done on time.
Just when we thought we were finished, the nanny told us we
had to dust the house down, shine up the shoes and polish and sort the cutlery.
We saw some very interesting pieces of cutlery. There was a butter knife, a
coffee spoon, a jam spoon. There was even a fish knife!
When all the hard work was over, we eventually got a break and
it was time to play some old games. We thought these were very interesting.
However, the teacher soon arrived and she was really, really
scary. She was also very strict. We had to walk with our hands by our side and
answer her using the phrase, “yes ma’am”. This was very strange. We were not
allowed to talk and had to sit with our arms crossed at the desk. The teacher
pointed to a message on the blackboard, which had a message written in CHALK. “Children
should be seen and not heard”, we thought this was very mean but the teacher
explained that this was the way it used to be in old times. The teacher also
told us some other news that really shocked us. She told us that if you broke
the rules, then the punishment was severe. A child would have to hold out their
hand and get the cane five times!!
The nanny told us that girls used to start work in the house
at the age of 8 years old. Their job would be a scullery maid. They had to send
all their money back home to their family and they would only get one day a
week off. That must have been really, really tough work back then.
Finally we were able to go to the playground to relax after a
hard day at work and at school. We were able to have fun in the sun as we
played on the swings and ate our delicious ice cream.
What a fantastic day we had at Florence Court House but the
girls said they were glad they didn’t live back then as the work was very long
and difficult!
