4th Class School Trip to Town , May 11th 2010

On Tuesday, May 11th, 4th Class visited The Natural History Museum, the National Gallery and the Georgian No. 29 Fitzwilliam St.  We managed to arrive on time at the Georgian House, after only one circle of Fitzwilliam Square. It was a hectic day, and it would be easy to confuse proboscis monkeys with Proscenium arches afterwards, but here are some of the main memories:

“The doll’s house was my favourite. It was 200 years old.”
“There was a figure of a girl made out of wax. There was also a children’s bed that you could push side-to-side to get the baby to sleep. There were 88 steps on the staircase.”
“They dressed really differently too; they wore petticoats, wax make-up and had puffy hair and big dresses.”

“The dining room was cosy and warm, but I would not like to live there.”
“I liked the bell-system because of its ingenuity. It connected to the main room by cords. In the basement, there were a number of bells that could b e rung from any room,. They used a rope instead of a lever. Each bell sounded different to identify it.”
“There were two doll houses, one with 4 rooms, the other with 2. There was a stander for the baby to practice walking. The play room was a the top of a four-storey house.”
“The washing machine was the oldest one made. It was a wooden stick with three sticks at the bottom. You put it in a bucket of cold water with the clothes in it, and kept turning it around.”
“I like the exercise thing in the master bedroom with the spring that made the seat go up and down.”
“In the Dead Zoo, I saw big spider crabs and lobsters. I wouldn’t like them crawling on my face. One crab’s body was red. The lobster had huge claws.”
“In the galley, we saw funny, serious, weird, new and ancient pictures. We even saw a painting of people in their nude. We saw a painting that had been stolen twice, and hidden under a mountain. There were paintings of a sister laughing at her brother getting whacked with a wooden spoon.”

“The most cool thing I saw was the big-nosed monkey. Its nose is the sizer of a jumbo sausage. It was all hairy.”
“I like the painting off the artist’s wife in the gallery. While the main bit is dark, their clothes are exceptionally bright and flowery. I really like the mirror, as it showed the wife and daughter. It was painted by John Lavery. “
“My favourite thing was the park, because we got to play, and we were all pushing each other down the hill. We played bulldog…I liked when all of us sat down on top of the hill and had lunch.”

D7ET Archivist, May 18, 2010