Touring the town with Beeston’s youngest residents…
We like a bit of history at The Beestonian. Our history chap Jimmy never fails to hand in excellent content about Beeston’s back story, and we like to think that we’ve helped a little bit to bring that to life. We even devoted our last issue to the subject, and that caught the attention of some teachers who –wisely–also happen to be Beestonian readers.
“Dear people who make the Beestonian,” they wrote “Here at John Clifford School we have a wonderful group of pupils who would really like a walk around Beeston to see some of the historical bits, which will hopefully engage them in a lifelong curiosity in civic history. Can you help?”
Well, we walk it as we talk it here at The Beestonian so we logged into Google Maps, purchased a new compass and devised a route. And on a sunny autumn afternoon, we met up with thirty fact-hungry five + six year olds at West End and took them on a tour of the town.
No boring recitation of dates and detail though: this is an age group where ancient history is the London Olympics and a tram-free Beeston. We thought it best to try and bring the history to life. And that’s exactly what happened, from the moment Robin Hood (our Bow Selecta columnist Tim Pollard) leapt from behind a tree to yelps of surprised delight. Shouting out favourite fruit in Hallams followed; appreciation of the fantastic new street art, then adopting Bendigo boxing stances outside the pugilist-monikered cafebar, then clambers over the Beeman and a trip to our community shop.
The kids were wonderful, well behaved, funny and flattering (I’m looking at you, six-year old lad who, on being asked to guess my age, took a punt on ‘28?’). A huge thanks to the teachers, volunteers and parents who accompanied us on the trek and got us all safely from stop to stop without a single child being lost (we think).
Our town is full of stories and overlapping layers of lives. We think that getting to know some of them makes our town a richer place to live – and starting that process young is no bad thing. Grab a compass and a few back issues of this fine publication, and we’ll see you en-route.
MT