“This is Where I Live”

As part of the ‘Count Your Blessings” project, the children of St.Mark’s C of E school top class became researchers and detectives, looking for clues from around them,  searching for memories and stories hidden and not so hidden in the extraordinary landscapes of the Morwenstow Parish.

To start the project, a mysterious box full of clues arrived at their school, which they had to discover the answers to.

The storms and gales dictated where we went and what we did, so we explored the children’s immediate surroundings, collecting things and describing them in poetry and by the qualities we discovered in them: an itch of bramble, a hospitality of apple trees.

They also worked with zoologist, Peter Macgregor, collecting evidence from the plants and the creatures that grow and live around them.

The class then invited thirty members of the community to a Tea-Party. We spent time learning how to question, what questions to ask and how to record what we found out. We wanted to build a picture of how things have changed, what endures and which things were precious to the guests and the children about where they live.

28 adult members of the community attended the Tea Party hosted at the school by the children…

You’d have to have been there to have seen the mutual delight between the generations and heard the level of chat. Some guests hadn’t been to the school for 65 years and brought the photographs to prove it.

We were able to collect more memories, written and oral, and more photographs as well.

What the children learnt can be seen in their marvellous boxes and poems. They all know why the cliffs at Morwenstow used to move when someone sneezed, and what happened to Wild Thyme and the Big Blue as well as how many people worked down at Coombe and how the fields where ploughed before tractors.

We printed 250 copies of a set of 4 postcards from the children’s images and poems.

These were distributed both at the school and at the community celebration.