Introduction.

The history of Sheldon is best taught to young children as a number of stories, using the life-size working model of the district as the chief visual aid, supplemented by as many large illustrations and models as possible. A suggested method is to use a Time Machine, which takes two children of the class back in time to earlier periods. Each story, introducing suitable adventures if desired, will illuminate the physical and man-made landscape and social conditions of the chosen period.

For the first story, the Machine can travel slowly, so that features of the present landscape vanish at intervals - flats, factories, houses, shops and schools, airport, railway, church, roads, fields, until the virgin landscape of heath and forest, marsh and meadow, s left, ready for the first wanderers to hunt and gather over it - small, dark people, with skin clothes and stone weapons, no permanent homes, few arts, leaving no trace of their presence here.

A few finds of implements of Bronze Age date were made on the site of Mackadown Farm (corner of Mackadown Lane and Tile Cross Road), when the buildings were demolished some years ago. This might suggest that the site chosen by Saxon settlers for their first village in the district, had already been found satisfactory by Celtic folk : but there is not enough evidence to justify more than a reference to pre-Saxon movement across the area, and the first story should take the time-travellers to the site at a period of known settlement.

This booklet was written for use at Blakenhale Junior School and each story begins on that spot : other schools can readily adjust the introductions to suit their own locations.