On Thursday 3^rd of March Year I went to see a section of Horrible Histories at the York Grand Opera House. After Mr. Grant had patrolled the coach’s aisle checking seat belts were fastened we set off. We arrived and took our seats in the theatre. We then saw something about the Ruthless Romans. They presented the Roman facts to us by showing three Roman soldiers coming to take over a farm, then the woman who owned the farm [Ethel] to distract them from killing her made them teach her about Roman ways. They showed us stories of how Rome was created and they taught us about the eight evil emperors that the Roman Empire had. They showed us popular Roman food such as fish’s insides. There was also a section on Roman make-up which proved to be interesting when they told us that Roman woman wore lead on their face to make them look attractive. Finally after a visit to a Roman coliseum the first half finished.
Extract taken from a report by Daisy Forshaw (Year I)

In the second half, we all wore our 3D glasses, and concentrated on our Roman friends. Ethel had travelled to Rome with the soldiers, and we were in the coliseum, our glasses were apparently a disguise, so no-one would know we were English. (I’m not sure that they worked though!!) However, Ethel ended up fighting and managed to conquer one of the gladiators. When the second gladiator was on the floor, the emperor gave the thumbs up signal to kill him, but Ethel didn’t kill the gladiator, instead she got a boat to the sea port. But on her way she met a man, selling heads. This is where the 3D part came in. The head hunter (a real man on stage) had hold of a head and pretended to throw the head, but instead he hid it in his cloak and a head came out of the screen, all bloody and gory!



Classics Trip to Pompeii and Rome

For all of you who were wondering where Mr Grant and Mrs Waugh were on the Friday before half term, they were on their way to Rome with 28 of us.  Yes you heard that correctly, that’s a 1:14 teacher student ratio, how did they cope? The answer lies in forward planning, as we all discovered as soon as we arrived at each hotel, the first which conveniently happened to be in the not-quite bustling town of Sorrento and the second which as far as we were concerned wasn’t really anywhere. But who cares right? We were there for the culture anyway….

Saturday morning we hit Pompeii with Georgio, who immediately established himself as our guide with sarcasm many teachers here would kill to have. Compared to the almost incomprehensible scale of the buildings in Rome, Pompeii was much easier to get our heads around. There was something bizarrely familiar and informal about the town, perhaps induced by the street graffiti(most of which is unrepeatable here, but I thoroughly recommend you google it) and the completeness of the ruins. It wasn’t, however, until we saw the carefully preserved plaster bodies that we fully appreciated the cruel irony, that what destroyed this Ancient town, also immortalised it, preserving it for prosperity to an astonishing extent.

Herculeneum, without sounding blasé about 2000 year old ruins, was essentially more of the same, apart from a stunning sea front mansion which would not look out of place if it were on the pages of Hello magazine as home to Wayne and Coleen. Speaking of prostitutes, for many of us Pompeii also brought our first visit to a brothel complete with some risqué frescoes which made even Mr Grant blush, though he insisted that was just the sun. It was raining. Not only did the dreadful weather expose Mr Grant’s innocence but it also got us to see some Ancient plumbing in action, as the original Roman drainage system still worked.

The next day brought a forced march up Vesuvius, from which, apparently the views are fantastic, but rather typically it was swamped in a muddy fog on that day. It must be said however, it certainly added an eerie atmosphere, especially when we were told that, no, it wasn’t a dormant volcano, and yes, it was still active and due a nice big explosion round about now. Desperate to get away, as keen as we were to be immortalised in plaster cast and stared at by people in 2000 years in their jet packs, we were whisked off to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.It is natural at our age to have a healthy phobia of museums and such like, but this one could have trumped the British museum for statues and had one over on Leonardo for wall paintings.

Monday brought what we had all been waiting for, Rome. And she didn’t disappoint. It sounded impossible, but somehow we managed to take in everything Rome had to offer in just one day, the Circus Maximus, the Colosseum,the Pantheon, the Senate House, the Forum, the Spanish steps, the Trevii fountain, in fact the only thing we missed was the Baths of Caracalla which frankly by that time everyone was exhausted and only three people were actually keen to visit. If one of them was me I think you can guess who the other two were. That whole day in itself was a confusing experience, the scale of the imposing buildings was majestic, it was impossible to believe that these huge monuments surrounded by comparatively ugly and dull modern buildings had been built by a great ancient civilisation.

It was only natural then, that the in port town Ostia, on our final day, there was a huge sense of anti climax in comparison to the magnificence of Rome and the richness of the archaeology in Pompeii. To it’s defence it did have a fairly nice amphitheatre and plenty of headless statues in the museum which you could use in a similar way to those paintings that you can put your head through at the seaside.

It was after all that, 28 pupils and two teachers finally landed at Stanstead. Though we all lacked sleep and by that point patience with each other, we had absorbed so much culture, not to mention pizza, that there wasn’t really room for anything else.

 

The department is passionately committed to education outside the classroom. Our regular trips include Roman York in Year II, Hadrian’s Wall in Year III, and the British Museum in Year IV. There are also very successful weekend excursions to Athens for girls studying Greek.
 

Sixth Form girls are taken to study days and lectures on a wide variety of topics, and guest speakers are also invited to the school. In addition we take groups out to appropriate theatrical productions.