HAVE you ever wondered what it would have been like to live in the past? Our class found out when we visited Gawthorpe Hall in Padiham.

Long ago the Shuttleworth family lived at Gawthorpe. They owned a large area of land and employed many servants. During our visit we dressed as some of the kitchen servants and maids would have done in Victorian times and found out about their jobs and lives.

Most of the equipment they used was very different from the sort we have today. The huge shiny kitchen range was black as soot and heated by coal from their nearby open cast mine.

Large iron pans of water were heated on the range, ready to be carried by maidservants to the master's bedroom up the narrow spiral staircase that sweemed to go on for ever. Some of the kitchen utensils were very strange, such as the rotating knife cleaner using brick dust to polish, or irons heated by putting a hot brick inside. And what hard lives the servants had, working from six in the morning until ten o'clock at night, with a day off only once a month.

In contrast, the owner of the hall and his family lived very different lives. Their dining room was very grand and ornate with a minstrel's gallery where music was sometimes played during banquets.

The drawing room, where ladies could "withdraw" after dinner was arranged with beautiful furniture and was even used by the famous author Charlotte Bronte when she was a guest in the house.

Although Gawthorpe is a beautiful place and their servants were treated quite well for the time, I now realise how much life has changed for the better. I would not like to change places with someone in the past and will never dare to say "I'm bored" again.

By Zara Clapham, class 8, St John the Baptist RC Junior School, Burnley.

Pupils Helen Wallace and Jonathan Dean are pictured learning tips on setting the table, from John Thacker, playing butler Francis Wingfield.