Reimagining the Restoration

Reimagining the Restoration was a project using original research on Samuel Pepys’s diary to present new perspectives on life in the 17th century. London Museum and University of Leicester created teaching resources featuring children, women, people of colour and D/deaf people at the time of the Great Fire of London.

The project aimed to give teachers new ways to teach the Great Fire, give learners a sense of place and ownership over their history and to spark interest in the 17th century. The project’s principal investigator was Dr Kate Loveman, University of Leicester.

In November 2022, we invited three London primary schools for D/deaf children to the museum to take part in a full day of activities. Like getting hands-on with 17th-century objects, working on mixed-media artwork and learning about the early history of British Sign Language (BSL).

Every pupil got a chance to learn something new about life four centuries ago. The pupils talked about historical events, wondered what life would have been like and considered how London has changed since 1666. For some, it was their first time visiting a museum.

Following their museum visit, each school took part in workshops on the Great Fire and D/deaf history. Working with two arts educators, we delivered workshops between November 2022 and January 2023 on art, history and identity.

Pupils learned about a 17th-century D/deaf artist and discussed the lack of surviving paintings of D/deaf people. They created their own portraits to make their mark on history, including their likenesses and small added details to highlight their identities, interests, cultures and aspirations.

Many of the pupils use BSL, but in the 17th century this language had not yet developed. Pupils learned about old fingerspelling alphabets and tested how practical they might have been for everyday life, like spelling their names and school names.

In one school, pupils used their own experiences as D/deaf people to design a D/deaf-friendly 17th-century house. They decided that the house needed big windows so they could sign clearly, a special plaque to let firefighters know that D/deaf people lived there and even a working D/deaf-friendly doorbell.

To highlight the lives of D/deaf people in the 17th century, the project produced a new full-colour comic book about three D/deaf Londoners alongside a BSL-interpreted video. The comic includes representations of 17th-century signing inspired by historical sources.

The comic is accompanied by resources aimed at primary school learners that encourage them to explore D/deaf history and have conversations about how life has changed since the 1660s. Some of the characters from the comic can also be seen in the KS1 animations, allowing teachers to easily combine D/deaf history with work on the Great Fire.

The project produced classroom resources covering the Great Fire, to give teachers new tools for teaching. These were designed based on a KS1 teacher focus group, with the aim of providing easy-to-implement resources that work either in a series or on their own.

In addition to activity sheets, three new animated videos provided the perfect visual introduction to life in the 1600s, Samuel Pepys and how London was rebuilt. The resources are accompanied by detailed teachers’ notes to provide context and ideas for lessons.

The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant ref. AH/W003651/1)