Upon moving into our new little village in the wilds of the English countryside, Rugger girl wanted to investigate the village church. We took this further by investigating Normal life in general, ecclesiastical architecture and how a Norman way of life started to change the rural landscape of Britain.
Further investigation of our local church led us to discover that it has a Humility Door! Rugger girl was very impressed by this.
We studied all the different aspects of Norman Village life and made a model out of plasticine of what our village might have looked like in Norman times. There's the church (we added a spire when looking at how, latterly, we changed the Norman churches), a dock pond, pigs foraging in the woods, large areas of unfenced ridge and furrow farmland, the manor house complete with walled garden, the river running through the village and the little houses lining the main road.
As part of our architecture studies we looked at Norman arches and the beautifully carved arched doorways. We considered how important the Catholic faith was to people at that time and how that is reflected in the buildings. We studied the layout of a Norman cathedral and then reconstructed our own out of Lego - based loosely on Lincoln cathedral.
We visited Melton Mowbray church - one of only five churches that is laid out with naves and aisles as a cathedral would be. Rugger girl commented upon this straight away! We didn't know why at the time, but later research revealed that it had been built as a potential cathedral back in Norman times before it was decided that it should be Lincoln that holds the cathedral. How different our landscape would have looked had they chosen Melton!
We finalised and consolidated our learning with a visit to Lincoln cathedral itself. We found the imp, looked at and discussed the Magna Carta and it's importance (a little side discussion for the day as the Magna Carta is held at Lincoln)