Year 1 visited the Florence Nightingale Museum in St Thomas’ Hospital today. We were surprised to find that our tour guide was Florence Nightingale herself! She told us about her early life, her family, her time in the Crimean War in 1854 and her life’s work modernising nursing.

We helped her retell her life story with fantastic performers in Year 1 stepping up to play her family, her friend Sydney Herbert (the Secretary at War) and his wife Elizabeth Herbert. We all helped her transform the filthy Scutari hospital she walked into during the Crimean War which included scrubbing the floors, limewashing the walls, and removing a dead horse from the sewer!

The museum had lots of her personal belongings which we got to explore, including her medicine chest, clothes, her famous lamp and her lunch box – we even got to meet her pet owl, Athena!