Fionn 1 – Archaeologists for a day!

Fionn 1 recently took a trip back in time with a visit to the Dublinia Exhibition near Christchurch in Dublin.

On our arrival to the exhibition, we quickly observed our surroundings taking note of the flying buttresses and Gothic windows on Christchurch Cathedral that we had discussed a day earlier in class. Our history notes were suddenly gaining a pulse with these real life examples!

Inside the building, we were met by our tour guide dressed in medieval clothing and slowly we were beginning to slip back in time as we climbed aboard a Viking warship and listened to the myths and mysteries surrounding the Vikings and their legacy.

The next stage of our tour took us up to the second floor of the building where we found ourselves in the middle of a busy medieval fair with many different stalls to visit and we even got to play some old medieval games – very different from our modern day Wii! We tried on chain mail worn by medieval knights and could not get over the weight of it. Many of us are never keen to take a trip to the doctor but we certainly would not liked to have visited the medieval doctor who cured an earache by placing a clove of garlic in a patients ear or solved a toothache by removing the tooth with a pliers and no anaesthetic! Ouch!

As we wandered down the narrow medieval streets we stopped to throw things at the baker who was in the pillory for selling stale bread to the people of the town. I don’t think he will sell stale bread again!

Life was certainly difficult during medieval times. People lived in fear of catching the plague. Once caught, large black boils began to appear on their body and within a short period of time the person passed away. As we passed a reconstruction of a scene from the Black Death, we couldn’t help noticing the large black boils on the bodies that were piled up on a cart and the coughing sound effects that echoed around the room on this part of the tour. Needless to say we were eager to move on.

To complete our tour we got a chance to carry out a ‘dig’. We each put on a hard hat and high visibility vest which clearly stated ‘History Hunter’ on the back and got to experience what it would be like to an archaeologist on a dig. We grabbed a trowel and a brush and quickly began brushing away the layers of sand for any old items we could find. There was great excitement when someone discovered a sword and an old jaw bone of a wolf! We gathered up the artefacts we had found and returned to the lab where we discussed what time period each of the items came from and what they were used for with our guide.

After a long day of fun and excitement we were starving and of course no school trip would be complete without a stop at Supermac’s on the journey home! This was a time to chat and enjoy each other’s company and have a laugh.

Finally, we would like to thank our teacher, Ms. Gallahue for organising the trip. We all really enjoyed our day and picked up lots of interesting pieces of information. Our trip was such a success that we are already looking forward to the next one!