Topic summary

Activity 1 - Introducing transport

Provides a brief introduction using a gallery of photographs, postcards, paintings, prints and maps to give children an overview of transport in the Victorian period. Transport covered includes: canals, stagecoaches, omnibuses, taxis and other hired conveyances, ferryboats, trains, sailing ships and steam ships, trams, bicycles, and motor cars.

Activity 2 - Travel Times

Working with extracts from an 1830s diary (text with audio), pictures of different forms of transport and a map of West Sussex children will discover what it was like to travel on foot, by cart and by coach. They will gain an understanding of the road conditions and the amount of time taken to cover relatively short distances.

Activity 3 - Coaches and Trains

Using extracts from an 1843 guidebook and a book describing coach travel (text with audio), an 1853 railway timetable and photographs and paintings, children will learn about the advantages of rail travel: more frequent services, more passengers per journey, cheaper fares, shorter travel times.

This activity includes an additional theme that could be used as homework or a short classroom task:

• 3a-Getting around town
  
  Working with pictures of horse-drawn buses, taxis, other hired vehicles, and a bus timetable, children will learn about the development of urban transport and how it integrated with the railway.

Activity 4 – The railway debate

By putting themselves in the place of different Victorian people, some of whom they have met in previous activities, and debating whether the coming of the railway has been good for them, children will gain an insight into the changes brought by the rapid expansion of the railway.

Note
At some stage during the teaching of these Activities, it would be useful to have a class discussion about sources. How could we find out about transport in our local area in Victorian times? What sources of information could we use? Possibilities will include: libraries, museums, and the internet, especially websites with local content such as West Sussex Past Pictures.