Primary Research Trip

For primary research into our study of The Shoreham Army Camp we went to the site and searched for artefacts from the period. Helping us with our excavation was Brian Drury, Jason Russell, Luke and Hamish Macgillivary, who is the curator of Worthing college. They taught us how to perform an excavation efficiently and productively. Put simply we were in a large field called happy valley which is believed to be one of the locations for barracks. Firstly we separated the field into squares on a grid, this helps to make sure that the same place isn't searched twice saving time, also when an artefact is found we can pinpoint its exact location to help us understand more about the camp and infer certain speculations, for example we found a stirrup in only one square, this would hint that there were stables in this area. One of our advisor's Brian had a GPS tracker which aloud him to pin point the exact location of an artefacts discovery extremely accurately. The first item we found was the top of a modern drinks can, this demoralized some of us, however Luke taught us to stay positive. By the end of the day we had found a wide variety of artefacts, a few nails, some military uniform buttons, a stirrup, some larger construction nails, and a latch used on windows.

Focus Group Preparation

WW1 Focus Group                    

Date……………….               Numbers Present……

1. Do you think History is important? Justify your answer.
2. Discuss what you think about when you hear the phrase “World War 1”.
3. Discuss what you know about WW1
4. Do you think the first world war has had any effect on your life.
5. When you watch a program or read a book about WW1 what do you expect to find?
6. Analyse the following images for a few minutes. (Answer the next three questions 1 image at a time.)
7. Describe what you see.
8. How does this image make you feel?
9. What do you think the purpose of this image was?
10. Do any of you know of your ancestors lives in WW1, if so share what you know.
11. Shoreham was home to thousands of soldiers from all over the world during the war, a focal point for the commonwealth army with a railhead, seaport and airport in a strategic position on the south coast becoming the location for forming the 24th Division. Did you even know it existed?
12. How does it feel to know that such an important part of history is on your doorstep?
13. This focus group was put together because i'm making a documentary about shoreham army camp. What would you expect to see from this kind of documentary?
14. What do you think the soldiers did for entertainment?
15. If you could a soldier at the camp one question what would it be?

Question 6 References