St Mary's Calne
Linking to the theme of ‘People who changed the world’ for this Academic Enrichment Week, the History Department decided to focus on the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel by going to a museum dedicated to his life’s work and the wider industrial revolution.
On Wednesday 7th February, the History Department took the MIVs on a trip to the Steam Museum in Swindon. This was once the mighty centre of the Great Western Railway, strategically sited by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 1830s, due to its location halfway between London and Bristol. The industrial complex that grew here over the next hundred years became the largest in Europe, employing 12,000 people and producing the high-tech transport that changed the way people worked and lived all over the world. All of the girls had this amazing story explained to them by our brilliant guide Catherine, who walked the group around the museum before letting the students explore the exhibits themselves.
The girls of MIV had great fun negotiating the reconstructed GWR factory floors, listening to workers being scolded, watching the injured being treated by workplace medics and attempting to make their own carpentry designs. However, it was the opportunity to see the real locomotives, sit on Queen Victoria’s royal carriage, drive a locomotive simulator and change railway signals in a reconstructed signal box, that really made the day special. The impact of the Industrial Revolution on technology and society was brought vividly to life.
Mr Adrian Stoten, History and Politics Teacher