Whitely Abbey Junior School

Learning

Coventry Atlas as a tool for a local area study.

Stop Press!  We are inviting all Coventry Schools to hold a special assembly on Friday 6th May 2022 for the launch two specially commissioned Horrible Histories sketches.  Here is more information about the historic characters featured in the short films.

LADY GODIVA:  For almost a thousand years, the tale of saintly Lady Godiva and her naked ride to relieve the townsfolk of unjust taxation has been an inspiration to Coventrians. That the story is myth – it did not appear until nearly 150 years after her death – has not diminished its power, nor the likelihood that a distant memory of the real person fuelled it.

Godiva’s origins remain obscure; one later account claimed that she was sister to Thorold, Sheriff of Lincolnshire and grew up in that part of the world. It’s possible too that she had an earlier husband than Leofric, Earl of Mercia. But that she was beautiful and of a saintly disposition all the later stories agree. A fervent follower of the cult of the Virgin Mary, the church that she and Leofric founded with the Benedictines in Coventry, dedicated to St Mary, was only one of many. She was powerful too, with major land holdings in her own right throughout the Midlands. She is the first Saxon woman to be named in the Domesday survey, the Normans’ great registry of interests.

On her death, in September 1067, it is likely that she was buried not in Coventry but at Evesham, where her spiritual mentor, Aefic, had been prior. Yet she lives on as part of this city’s creation myth, her name invoked many times over the centuries when Coventrians felt threatened and in need of a higher power.

MARGARET OF ANJOU (1430-1482) was the Queen of England by marriage to King Henry VI from 1445 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471. In the summer of 1456, Margaret decided that London was no longer safe for her ailing husband, King Henry VI, and chose to move him, and the royal court, to Coventry. Over the years that followed, Margaret was to spend so much time in the city that Coventry was dubbed ‘the Queen’s bower’, a centre of the Lancastrian cause where the queen, with the royal fortress of Kenilworth so close, felt secure.

The royal household arrived on 14 September, greeted with lavish gifts and pageants, comparing the clever and strong-willed Margaret, the daughter of minor French nobility, to the Queen of Heaven. And when she left Coventry the following spring she was accorded a place in the formal procession given usually only to a reigning monarch. In early 1459 Margaret was again in Coventry, with an army at her back, to hold the second of two Great Councils she had summoned in the city, this time to call to account her most powerful enemy, Richard, Duke of York.

At the Parliament held in the city in November of that year, York and his chief allies were declared traitors and ‘attainted’, with their property and lives forfeit to the Crown. It was a ruthless move, demonstrating the abrasive and vengeful side of Margaret’s personality, and from then the tide began to swing in favour of the Yorkists. Margaret would make one last journey to Coventry. After the final defeat of the Lancastrian cause at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, she was captured and brought a prisoner to the city that had once been known as her ‘bower’.

HENRY BEAUFORT, 3rd Duke of Somerset (26 January 1436 – 15 May 1464) was an important Lancastrian military commander during the English Wars of the Roses. He was brought to the council at Coventry, where in October 1456 an effort was made to reconcile the York and Lancastrian parties; but the meeting was disturbed by quarrels between Somerset and Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and by a brawl between Somerset's men and the town watch of Coventry. In 1457 Queen Margaret of Anjou suggested a marriage between Somerset and his cousin Joan, sister of James II of Scotland, but the proposal came to nothing. 

During the Wars of the Roses, young Somerset commanded the Lancastrian troops at the Battle of Wakefield (1460) and the second battle of St. Albans (1461) with great success.  But after the dismal loss at the Battle of Towton (1461), he was forced to flee to York, whence he accompanied Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, along with prince Edward, to Scotland.

IRA ALDRIDGE: In the summer of 1828, the mayor of Coventry, acting on behalf of the people of the city, petitioned Parliament to abolish slavery. The inspiration for their appeal was the manager of the city’s Theatre Royal, New York-born Ira Aldridge, the first person of colour to manage a theatre in England.

As an actor, Aldridge had been persecuted in America for daring to play Shakespeare. Moving to Britain, he had faced racial prejudice in this country too, but was to go on to become the first black actor to play Othello on the English stage. Earlier in 1828, Sir Skears Rew, the owner of Coventry’s first professional theatre, the Theatre Royal in Smithford Street, decided that Aldridge was the man to take charge of a business that had been struggling.

Aldridge promised Coventry audiences performances that began on time and vowed to improve their theatre-going experience. And in his dealings with them he made no secret of his passionate support for the abolitionist cause, clearly making a powerful impression. His tenure at the Theatre Royal only lasted months, before he returned to a stage career that made him something of a celebrity in British and European theatre. But in 2017, 150 years after his death, a plaque was installed in the city’s Upper Precinct, close to where the theatre stood. There to unveil it was another black actor who had overcome prejudice to make his mark in this country, the centenarian Earl Cameron, who as a young man had taken voice lessons from Ira Aldridge’s daughter Amanda.


Explore our educational resources for teachers to be used alongside Coventry Atlas, in PDF, Word and Power Point formats. You can ‘pick and mix’ - there are plenty of ideas for you to choose from!

Coventry Atlas Learning Pack:
  • A learning pack as a tool for a historical and geographical local area study
  • Designed to be used flexibly within the KS2 curriculum, across different topic areas with opportunities for use in KS1 and extension into KS3
  • Teacher’s notes with at least 5 suggested activities per theme – ‘pick and mix’ style
  • Activity sheets that can be adapted
  • Links to further resources

Themes:
  • Theme 1: Investigating maps - interpret maps of different dates
  • Theme 2: Time detectives - what was your locality like in the past?
  • Theme 3: People of Coventry - which individuals had the greatest impact?
  • Theme 4: Celebrate Coventry - turn classwork into special projects

Time Detectives:
Why not use this presentation alongside Coventryatlas.org to discover what Coventry looked like in the past and create lessons that are tailored to your own locality using - 
  • Pictorial
  • Written &
  • Physical evidence

People of Coventry:
Using this presentation alongside collections of specific individuals in Coventry Atlas, students will:
  • Understand local individuals that have had an impact on their locality
  • Assess which individuals have had the greatest impact
  • Understand historical concepts such as cause and consequence in relation to the growth of Coventry’s industries

Discover more learning activities for schools at Coventry's Museums and at heritage sites across the city opening in 2021.

People of Coventry

Images of Coventry's notable people

Open the power point here

Time Detectives

Become Time Detectives of Coventry by comparing old and modern maps and images

Download Power Point here

Coventry Atlas Learning Pack

Explore the Learning pack in PDF format

Open the pack here

Coventry Atlas Learning Pack

Open the learning pack in Word format if you would like to adjust to your own needs

Open here

Explore by theme