CHILDREN at Greenmount Primary School stepped back in time to experience life in a Victorian workhouse.

Pupils from year 5 at the school in Holhouse Lane visited the National Trust’s Southwell Workhouse in Nottinghamshire.

The trip, to the austere building which was built in 1824, had been organised as part of a topic on the life of the Victorian poor.

During the visit, the children were dressed up as poor Victorian inmates of the workhouse and took on the identity of a child who would have been present at Southwell, finding out where they slept, ate and cooked as well as learn about the rules and punishments.

Dave Geeson, Year 5 teacher said: “The trip was a fantastic success. The children got to experience first-hand what daily life in the workhouses would have been like and how certain people had no choice but to turn to workhouses for help.”