Attingham Park receives prestigious Sandford Award

Attingham Park, the National Trust property on the outskirts of Shrewsbury has been awarded the prestigious Sandford Award for Heritage Education for the fourth consecutive time.

The award is given to heritage sites for outstanding contribution to heritage education and is awarded by The Heritage Education Trust.

Lead judge Karen Wiseman said: “At Attingham there are many indoor and outdoor opportunities for learning. The staff and volunteers all care deeply about teaching and learning, and work hard to deliver valuable and memorable school programmes. A school outing to Attingham is not to be missed!”

During the last year Attingham welcomed over 6,000 pupils who took part in various indoor and outdoor programmes as well as self-guided visits to the estate. With the new academic year starting the property is looking forward to welcoming more pupils and schools from Shropshire and beyond.

Jodie Furniss, Family and School Engagement Officer at Attingham added: “We are absolutely thrilled to receive the Sandford Award once again. It is a real reflection on how hard our staff and volunteers work to prepare and deliver such fun and interactive education programmes for the large number of local schools and colleges who visit us each year. Places in receipt of the award are assessed every five years, and Attingham has held the award since 1992!”

Attingham Park offers a range of interactive and hands on educational programmes throughout the year which explore the National Curriculum subjects. For example History is delivered through the ‘Homes in the Past’ programme and ‘World War II at Attingham’ gives the pupils a real taste of life years ago. The hands-on approach is also adopted for the subjects of nature and science through the Wildlife programmes where pupils can enjoy a woodland walk, Deer Park ride and nature activities such as pond dipping. Recently several self-guide visits have been developed for schools and educational groups who wish to ‘build’ their own visits around a particular time periods or themes such as the Stone Age, Roman Britain and change over time in the local area.