ABSTRACT
This article describes how children of 7 to 10 years of age can acquire certain historical skills through oral history work, and suggests that the practice of oral history may have qualities that make it particularly suited to the development of these skills. Two classes, one of 7-8 year olds, the other of 9-10 year olds, were involved in a project that looked at the history of their inner London school and focussed particularly on the school’s evacuation to Wiltshire in 1939. Although the work stretched over five months, it was not continuous-Christmas and other priorities intervened-and most of the work was concentrated in two months in the spring of 1983.1
Fox Primary School is a local authority maintained school with some 350 pupils, drawn from a wide range of ethnic, national and social groups. There are perhaps more professional parents than are typically found in inner city schools. The building, which dates from 1937, is the third which has housed the school. The school was originally founded as a charity school by Caroline Fox in 1842, and taken over by the London Schools Board in 1876 and rehoused in a new building at the Netting Hill end of what is now Kensington Church Street. This building was demolished in a street widening programme, and the school was moved to its present site, just south of Notting Hill underground station. The local area has changed considerably over the period: there have been particular social changes since the early 1960s that have meant that few of the ex-pupils are still in the immediate locality. Nevertheless, we were able to compile a list of expupils, some of whom were at the old school building in the 1910s.
