Pupils find lots to learn about down in the woods (From The Bolton News)

Pupils find lots to learn about down in the woods

5:40pm Thursday 9th July 2009 in

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YOUNGSTERS stepped back in time to discover what life was like when locals lived off the land.

The teenagers, pupils at Withins High School, Breightmet, are creating a website about the history of Seven Acres Nature Reserve, with staff at Lancashire Wildlife Trust, in a bid to encourage more people in Bolton and beyond to use it.

Seven Acres is now a popular recreational spot, as well as a haven for wildlife that includes roe deer, kingfishers and foxes.

But the site has previously been farmland, an area for coal mining and even an area for charcoal burning.

So James Hall, senior project officer at Lancashire Wildlife Trust, organised a trip to the Middlewood Trust in the Forest of Bowland, so the students could learn the skills of a woodlander.

He said: “It is often difficult for young people to understand the lives which people will have lived in the past in their local area.

“By getting a hands-on experience of what it would have been like to work in the woods for months at a time really helps to demonstrate what their lives would have been like and how it compares with our present day lives.”

The activities included making stools out of logs, preparing and lighting a charcoal kiln and cooking food on an open fire. Natasha Waugh, aged 13, from Breightmet, said: “I was so close to wildlife and got to feel the good and bad points of working and living in the countryside.”

Zoe Bromley, aged 14, also from Breightmet, said: “I think that the trip was really interesting as we got the opportunity to learn about wildlife and how woodlanders lived at Seven Acres. I enjoyed making the stools.”

Stacie-Louise Casey, also aged 14, from Breightmet, added: “I enjoyed the area where we stayed on the field trip because I learned lots of stuff about how people used to lived in the woodlands.”

The whole £25,000 project is being funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Foundation.