Your information, once verified and sorted, will be added to the Time Traveller's Guide in a format suitable for use by heritage detectives.  The Time Traveller's Guide is being developed on our sister web site for heritage detectives.

 

If you have any questions, ideas or suggestions we shall be happy to hear from you.

The Heritage Knights are on a quest and need help. They hope to persuade your school take part in the Pershore BIG Heritage Quest and help create a Time Travellers Guide to the market town of Pershore and the area round about?

 

The guide is needed to help Arthur de Caldicot, a thirteenth century time traveller on a quest to discover what, if anything, he would recognise if he were to time travel into the area today.  He particularly wants to know if there are still Benedictines in the area and do people still go to market in Pershore?

 

This is a task for heritage detectives! The heritage knights have a plan to ask children from local schools to use the clues in the Treasures Box to explore their local catchment area to see if they can find anything they think Arthur might recognise and then to plot their suggestions onto a local timeline. They will need to present what they find to the Heritage Knights so that it can be collated into a guide that a time traveller like Arthur would find useful. Students from Pershore High School will be invited to use the information to create an app for mobile phones so that 21st century visitors can also enjoy exploring the area too.

 

To start things off ambassadors from participating school in and around Pershore will be invited to Pershore Abbey on July 3rd 2013 to discover more about the Pershore BIG HERITAGE QUEST. They will find out about the life and times of Arthur de Caldicot and practise the skills of a heritage detective. One year later in July 2014 the Heritage Knights will again be in Pershore Abbey this time to receive the material for Arthur’s Guide and to celebrate the completion of the Pershore BIG Quest.

 

INFORMATION FOR TEACHERS

Special Guest at the launch

The children will have the opportunity to meet and talk with an award winning author.  Kevin Crossley-Holland President of the Schools Library Association and creator of Arthur de Caldicot, hero of the ‘Arthur’ trilogy, will be in Pershore Abbey on July 3rd to introduce Arthur and his world.

 

What the children will do on the quest.

Young heritage detectives will learn the skills of the heritage detective as they go on a quest in their parish church and local community.  They will investigate local wonder points, find out more about them, and then make wonder cards to put on a parish timeline. This will tell them whether Arthur might have seen it.

There will be support from adults and the local community.

Adults in the community will be readty to help children discover the answers to heir questions so that they can make their wonder cards.  Some very interested adults will also be making timelines of aspects of life in and around Pershore to feed into the story of the area.

There will be support and help from the Heritage Knights

There will be occasional workshops. Additional resources for teachers and an Information Library will be available online for teachers from September 2013. 

Why Pershore?

The Pershore area is rich in history and heritage, it is a place where patronage and land ownership have contributed much to local distinctiveness. Within Wychavon there are 2500 listed buildings of which 80 are ancient parish churches. The BIG Quest will put the spotlight on these buildings and introduce a generation of local school children to their local heritage in a new and exciting way.

More about the project

The Pershore BIG Quest is a community cohesion project involving community and church volunteers who enjoy sharing a love of history and heritage with children, their teachers, parents and friends. The Quest will be supported with online resources and occasional workshops. Administration will take place online.

Project Management

The Pershore BIG Quest is managed by the Go West Heritage Knights under the direction of Sandy Marchant, Go West Projects Director. The methodology employed was developed during the Stories from the Stones pilot funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund in 2005. It was developed further, in readiness for the Pershore BIG Quest, with the help of Norton-juxta-Kempsey First School in July 2012.

 

Go West is an association of volunteers who use the history and heritage of church and countryside for the benefit of the local community. They have their roots in the Chaplaincy for Agriculture and Rural Life in the Diocese of Worcester. For this project Go West Heritage Knights are working in partnership and have received funding from the Worcester Diocesan Board of Education. Go West received a grant from the Wychavon Community Fund in 2012.

 

Everyone who takes part in the Pershore BIG Quest will discover more about the distinctiveness of the place where they are growing up and going to school. Every participating school and parish will be constructing a new Parish Chest, a CD of local history information which they can keep and use in the future and the Pershore area will have a new attraction to offer visitors.

 

Sandy Marchant

Go West Projects Director.