Welcome to the New South Wales Schoolhouse Museum of Public Education.
We're a museum that protects some original school buildings built in 1877, 1893 and 1910.
The rooms have been faithfully restored back to how they were when they were first built.
This is our 1877 school room. It is warmed by firelight and furnished with beautiful Australian red cedar and pine furniture.
Those long desks you see are called long toms and children sat at bench seats.
At the time, all the school work was written up on the blackboard for the day.
Children sat at the desks and they used slate boards and pen and ink to complete their work.
The next room that we're looking at is our 1910 room and here the students sat at dual desks made of timber and iron. Arranged in rows they said facing the blackboard.
That blackboard is actually the wall painted black. This room was also lit by fire light to keep it warm. There was a fire in each of the rooms.
Adjoining that room is another room that was used as an infant's room. It's furnished with lots of displays of how school used to be and objects the children used at school.
We also have a wooden demountable building and that room is set up as a room from the 1950s and 1960s.
Students still had timber desks and they were still arranged in rows but this time they weren't screwed to the floor so they could be rearranged if necessary. Sometimes these rooms were used as craft or sewing rooms.
The New South Wales Schoolhouse museum holds a wide and varied collection of objects relating to primary schooling between 1870 and 1970. Objects include student work such as handiwork as well as their exercise books and copy books.
Other items in the collection include text books such as early readers, objects that students used in their learning as well as early technologies used for printing and writing as well as for their learning.
As a living museum the Schoolhouse Museum is open for school excursions where students can experience aspects of days gone past and carefully examine objects within the collection.
Look at our website for further information -https://www.schoolhousemuseum.org.au/
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