Overview

Peterborough Museum is built on the site of a Tudor mansion, Neville Place, built by Sir
Humphrey Orme, a courtier to King Henry VIII. Part of this original building is visible today down
in the museum’s vaults. We offer a half day or full day visit.

• Visit Neville Place
  • Go down to the vaults of the museum and walk inside part of the original Tudor
    building. Meet the ghost of Sir Humphrey Orme the younger and receive a local
    perspective on a significant national event.
• Dress like a Tudor
  • Get up close to some of our Tudor portraits and, through questioning and close observation, discover what these portraits tell us about the sitters and the Tudors. 
• Meet a Tudor Barber Surgeon 
  • The Tudor period was a time of very nasty diseases and even nastier cures. Travel back to 1574 learn how your own Tudor ailment might have been cured. Each class will take a pomander back to school and may even be able to use the museum's 'Medicine through Time' garden to collect the necessary herbs.
• Discover Tudor Peterborough
  • With a Tudor costumed guide, go on a guided tour of the city following a Tudor map of the city. Look out for evidence of Tudor Peterborough and imagine life in a different time.

National Curriculum links: History, English, Science.

Learning objectives:

In this 'Tudor day', pupils will:

• Explore a historical site that is significant in the locality.
• Discover how several aspects of national history (the reformation, the plague) are reflected in the locality.
• Study an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066.
• Experience through role play, an aspect of social history, such as health from the romans, Tudors to the present.
• Discover how we can find out about the past by studying portraits.
• Discover what portraits can tell us about the lives of significant historical people in their locality.
• Show an understanding of aspects of Tudor life and be able to note change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance.
• Understand how past knowledge of medicinal herbs has been useful in developing modern drugs.
• Understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.
• Participate in discussions, role-play, improvisations and debates.

Available as a half day or full day.

Please also see our Tudors: Monks, Monarchs & Medicine session which is a dual-site visit with Peterborough Cathedral.