Children at Beech House infant school recently celebrated Bolton School’s 100th and 500th anniversaries by dressing up in clothes from decades across the past 100 years.
The costumes were varied, with every decade represented by at least one child. The 50s, 60s and 80s were the most popular decades, with girls in poodle skirts and boys dressed up as greasers, ‘Flower Power’ outfits and ‘Space Race’ astronauts. Popular musical trends from throughout the decades were represented, including punk, glam rock and the styles of Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Bob Marley among others.
Victorian-era outfits also harked back to the earliest days of Bolton School, before the boys’ and girls’ schools in Bolton were jointly endowed and brought together by Lord Leverhulme in 1915.
All children paraded their outfits on stage in morning assembly and talked about their chosen decades over a celebration lunch.
A History Alive workshop for years one and two transported pupils back to an 1877 schoolroom, complete with an authoritarian schoolmistress and stringent rules. This gave the classes an insight into the Victorian period to kick-start the week of activities themed around the school’s history.
The children also researched the history of Beech House as their half term projects and created an interesting display about the school’s past. The children shared information using posters, models of the buildings and interviews with past pupils.
