Exploring West Yorkshire: A Historical and Geographical Perspective for Year 9 Athenaeum
Members of the Year 9 Athenaeum enjoyed hearing about the historical and economic geography of West Yorkshire in preparation for their upcoming visit. Mr Beattie the School Archivist and Geography teacher presented the places the students will be visiting and placed them in historical context; the Five Rise Locks at Bingley for example, demonstrated both a high degree of engineering skill and the importance of the Leeds-Liverpool canal in the economic development of the region.
The students gained a sense of the changing fortunes of the county with the rise and fall of the textile industry and coal mining, to the resurgence of Leeds as a financial and tourist centre. This mixture of the old and the new was also evident in the discussion about the Utopian Village of Saltaire, where the old mill buildings now house one of the largest collections of David Hockney’s work.
This year the students will be staying in a Youth Hostel in Malham and Mr Beattie was able to incorporate the importance of the Yorkshire Dales into his summary.
The session equipped the students with a meaningful sense of context ahead of their visit.
