RICHMOND SCHOOL STUDENTS TAKE PART IN RESEARCH PROJECT AT GREEN HOWARDS MUSEUM 

Mrs Cheesbrough, Richmond School and Sixth Form College’s new Service Children’s Advocate, provides the following account of what sounds like an absolutely fascinating day at Richmond’s Green Howards Museum: 

“Two students from Richmond School were recently invited to a special research project by Angela Campbell, Service Childrens Champion for North Yorkshire.  

As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day and 110 years since World War 1 began, the concept of remembrance is becoming less relatable for many children. Angela wanted to find a way to address this and felt that it would be a good idea to have a more tangible link to the Act of Remembrance. The aim of the project is to assign real soldiers to each of the schools attending the Festival of Remembrance. These soldiers will then act as the focus for the school.  Richmond School was fortunate to be one of the schools invited to this special workshop. 

Taylor Edmonds, Year 9 student and Izzy Barnes, Year 10, accompanied Mrs Cheesbrough for the day to research a soldier at the Green Howards Museum. They were given the opportunity to use the museum’s archives to research, handle documents and discover more about their allocated soldiers. Our job in school now is to find a way to present this information to the rest of the school. If you visit school in the near future, keep an eye out for the framed photographs of our allocated soldiers, which will be used in a procession at the Festival of Remembrance. 

Both students got fully involved and did an excellent job representing Richmond School. It was also wonderful to see the students given the chance to research their own family history at the end of the day and to talk to them about their own family members and their connection to the military. It is so important to continue to discuss and remember people in the military for the sacrifices they make and the essential work they do. 

The research will be continued this week by a group of primary school children and will all be used in the Festival of Remembrance in Ripon this November.  

Thank you to the Green Howards Museum and Angela Campbell for organising such an insightful day.” 

Thank you also to Mrs Cheesbrough for accompanying the students and most of all to Taylor and Izzy for engaging so positively with the project. We look forward to hearing more about it and reporting back from the Festival of Remembrance later in November. 

Amongst the pictures with this article are a photograph of and a summary of some of the information Izzy and Taylor found out about one of the soldiers they researched – Major Samuel ‘Sandy’ Malcolm Boyle. They did much more research on the day – we’ll be publishing more details as we approach Remembrance Day.