Year 7 | Fishbourne Roman Palace

Salvete! Year 7 enjoyed an informative and fun classics trip to Fishbourne Roman Palace, the largest Roman villa ever discovered in Britannia, on a scale rivalling the palaces of Rome itself. The children attended two workshops, on domestic life and military matters, where they had the opportunity to handle original 2000-year old artefacts and archaeological finds from the palace and surrounding Celtic villages, and which debunked much of our perception both of the Roman invasion of Britannia, and the situation preceding it. The mosaics are among the oldest in the country, and impressed us all by the sheer skill of the craftsmanship and beauty of the result: a game of mosaic bingo gave the pupils a sense of the variety and quality of the designs and their links to Greco-Roman mythology. The reconstructed Roman gardens also taught us a lot about how the Romans used plants, and the contrast between their attitude to nature and that of the farming Celts. The weather was on our side, and the picnic on the mounds allowed the children a good run-around in the sun too before returning just in time for exeat!