Year 7 Roman Afternoon - Hurstpierpoint College

For this year’s Roman afternoon, the students were fortunate enough to have Out of Chaos perform Unmythable to the Year 7s in the New Bury. This was an engaging, funny, and thrilling exploration of the ancient myth which truly brought the characters to life and got the Year 7s to the edge of their seats.

After this, they were then lucky enough to receive a visit from Legio II Augusta. They came in the guise of a Roman soldier and a Roman woman; the former of whom brought a fantastic array of weaponry and armour, and described exactly how each item would protect or kill you on the battlefield. We were all enthralled by the cleverness of the pilum, a javelin designed to basically self-destruct once thrown so that enemies couldn’t reuse them against the Romans.

The Roman woman told us about many aspects of Roman life: slavery, how women dressed, toilets and Roman punishments. The talks were completely captivating and pupils not only asked loads of excellent questions but also got to handle the equipment and artefacts in the breaks.

To tie the afternoon together nicely, and to show that there are Romans among us, our very own Contingent Commander Sam Amos and his side kick Luke Redfern transformed our students into Roman soldiers as they practised Roman marching and trail finding.

The feedback from pupils has been great, and we hope they enjoyed finding out what life was like for the characters they study in Latin lessons and read about in books. Clementine Faulkner, Head of Classics