Investigating the life and legacy of Sir Robert Hitcham @ St Michael's Church - Upper KS 2

On Friday 6th September our school were all able to worship together at St Michael's Church. After the service, Years 5 and 6 spent some time looking in detail at Sir Robert Hitcham's tomb and reading about his life and legacy. The children were all amazed that our school still carries Sir Robert's name several hundred years after he founded our school. The primary school is the oldest of the three schools in Framlingham and we are reminded each school day of his coat of arms which is our school badge and can be seen on our sweatshirts. The children spotted the school badge on the vibrant stained glass window near Sir Robert's tomb and had some very interesting discussions about why he was so passionate about education.

In class, the children had also been identifying the key facts and information about Sir Robert's life story and the history of our school.

 Here are some of the children's questions:

" he must have really wanted other people to have an education and inspire them"

"he must have cared about people as we also have the Hitcham's Alms Houses"

"imagine wanting to help people and build schools"

" Now I can see why we have Pembroke Road as Sir Robert Hitcham studied at Pembroke College at Cambridge University. I would like to visit it."

" I wonder why he chose Framlingham Castle to buy as there might have been others for sale at the time. He was not born in Framlingham so what did he like about Framlingham Did he want to use the castle buildings as a school?"

"  did he have a favourite subject and did he always want to be a lawyer and M.P.?"

"Did he have a diary and can we see it?"

We will continue to try to answer these questions in our learning and the teachers have also got to do some extra research to attempt to answer some of the very detailed questions asked by the children. The pupils worked us hard too!