This is a photo of the junction between Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road in London in 1904.

This is a photo of a reconstruction of a celtic village from St Fagans National History Museum. This is what houses would have looked like about 2000 years ago.

How far back in time should we go when we are investigating our local history?

You have 1 minute to discuss this with the person next to you.

Image by Flickr user Camdenphotos and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

Image by Flickr user MuseumWales and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

There is no right answer to this question!

However, whilst we might be able to find out information from several thousand years ago from the local museum or from tracing settlement names, most of our information will come from the fairly recent past.

Image by Flickr user litlnemo and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

Image by Flickr user litlnemo and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

The census is a fantastic source of information. The first census was carried out in 1801 and has been carried out every 10 years since this date (apart from in 1941 due to World War II).

This is a sample of a census return. It gives information about the population including the names, ages and occupations of the people living in each household.

During this unit you will be using a variety of different sources of information to help you find out about your local history. Some will be hundreds and in some cases thousands of years old and some will be very recent, maybe even in the last few years.

Image by Flickr user birdieholsclaw and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

We also need to decide what we mean by ‘local’.Do we mean…

Our school and the area immediately surrounding it?

Our town or city?

Our county?

Throughout this unit we will be looking at our local area at different scales from the area around our school to our place within the county and the UK.

Discuss in pairs which one would be the easiest to investigate and which would be the most challenging.

You have 1 minute.

Image by Flickr user hugovk and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

Image by Flickr user dorvak and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

Image by Flickr user Martin Beek and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.