Year 6 had a long but interesting day today on their visit to County Hall. We began bright and early by walking down to the station and catching the train to Preston. As part of this term’s Citizenship activities, we spent the morning with Mr. Mynott, who took us on a tour of County Hall before showing us into Lancashire County Council’s council chamber to learn about what the council do and who can be a councillor. We learnt about the way councillors make decisions and even had a go at an electronic vote ourselves. We also liked sitting in the councillors’ seats and using the microphones when we wanted to ask a question.

After lunch, we went over the road to the county’s Archive Department, where we had the opportunity to explore the strong rooms which hold thousands of important historical documents related to Lancashire. We were shown some of the archives related to our own school and St. Paul's Church including baptism records from when St. Paul’s Church first opened in the 1800s and some very interesting registers and log books from “Scotforth National School” from the 1860s to the 1890s. We learnt that the building we now know as Scotforth School is actually the third location of the school!  We also got the chance to look at the oldest document in the archives from 1115 (which was written in Latin) as well as a document signed by Elizabeth I from Tudor times and a letter sent to a Lancashire nobleman the day after the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, telling him all the latest news from London.