History
You can find history on the first floor of the Clapham Building, where we have three large classrooms, a sixth-form seminar room and a reading room as well as our School archive. We expect history to be rigorous and fun and our historians to be self-starting, broad-minded and incisive.
Young historians are exploring and cataloguing our School archive in the Diggers club. All Year 9s complete a study of the battlefields of the Great War, focusing on Old Lesyians. GCSE historians challenge accepted historical truths in the popular 'Upside Down Society'. Older historians hear visiting speakers, attend film nights in the department and write articles for their own magazine as part of the Barker Society. Ambitious historians tackle anything from prehistory to postmodernism in the Hellfire Club.
Year 7 onwards
Studying medieval history in Year 7, early modern in Year 8, or early 20th century in Year 9, you are developing the healthy cynicism of the historian and scholar. GCSE history is popular because we study the 20th century in Europe, Russia and the United States.
Sixth Form
Sixth form historians tackle a wide range of periods from British History including the Normans and Angevins, the Swinging Sixties and even the Blair years. In deliberate contrast we also look at events such as the Crusades, the French Revolution, the Civil Rights movement or Cold War Germany. In the Upper Sixth, all historians write a dissertation on a historical question of their choosing, overseen by a specialist teacher of that period.
Staff
Mr N Born MA (Hons)
Mr Ben Barton BA
Mr James Fawcett MA
Mr Richard Tillett MA