Pupils go

back in time

Year 3 pupils from Golden Grove School-Ysgol Gelli Aur had a chance to go back in time last week.

They spent the day reliving the Iron Age era with a visit to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park's facility at Castell Henllys.

Travelling to the north of the county by conventional means, the pupils were met by a representative of the Iron Age settlement.

Dressing in Iron Age like clothes, the pupils went back in time before climbing the hill, a defensive feature, to the site.

A 'welcoming' party sprang out to defend their territory by taking prisoners of the group. Persuaded otherwise, the children were instead taken to be put to work for the benefit of the families living there.

They were divided in to groups before being set to tasks of willow weaving, bread making and building a new wall for a compound. The latter task involved getting very dirty hands as the pupils took hands of mud, which in the day would have been mixed with cow manure. The 'workers' were given a tour of the various round houses and other structures on the site.

The visit was a great chance to learn about life in early Pembrokeshire and to appreciate the hardships that our fore-bearers would have faced in the daily struggle for survival.

Having proved themselves to be worthy hard-working people, the pupils were allowed to leave to return to daily modern life, but not before they had their faces painted to represent the people worshiped at the times by the residents of the hillside encampment.

Headteacher Les Johnson said: "We have a long association with Castell Henllys, the pupils gain a great deal from the visit, travelling across Pembrokeshire seeing other parts of the county to appreciating how people lived during the Iron Ages."

The visit will be followed up in class with the pupils doing comparative work on buildings of the past.