Explanatory writing – What was the impact of the growing popularity in Torquay?

Start with whole class comparisons between the Harbour Map of 1806 and the pictorial source, Torquay from the Pier Head from 1832.

Pupils should notice how the harbour has developed and the building that has taken place, both near the harbour and on the hills behind the town where villas were built for the wealthy. Pupils could make individual comparisons at computers in a suite or consider the two sources projected onto a white board. It might be convenient to paste the map into a word processor, print and enlarge it to A3 in order to facilitate comparisons.

Generate some categories into which effects might be organised – such as housing and other building, facilities for the visitors, jobs which might be generated by large numbers of rich visitors.

Then invite pupils to explore these two sources again individually or in pairs as well as look at Hot and Cold Baths, Watering Places on the Exe and Dart, Lords and Ladies and Pigots’s Trade Directory. The latter is a more challenging source and you may wish to direct certain pupils to this. Different groups could be directed to particular sources in order to feed back their ideas to the whole class subsequently.

Pupils might gather ideas into a simple flow chart or spider diagram. Some could be asked to categorise effects e.g. social, economic.