The Fabric of our Town Learning Resources

Crayford resident and former primary school teacher Peter Daniel wrote the education resource booklet ‘Fabric of our Town’. The booklet tells the story of the history of Swaisland’s factory and its effect on the town of Crayford through the fictional eyes of Richard Roberts, a man who worked in Swaisland’s and lived in Crayford most of his life.

This full colour education resource includes photographs and documents from collections at G. P. and J Baker and Manchester Metropolitan University and is beautifully illustrated by award winning illustrator Michael Foreman. The cross curricular booklet contains educational activities, created with the help of BA (Primary) Teacher Training students from Greenwich University, which include literacy, numeracy, geography, history and art.

Crayford schoolchildren were witness to interactive drama performances given by the MOD theatre group. These performances told the stories of the Crayford men and women who worked at the Swaisland and David Evans factories. The drama performance highlighted the role of Crayford in the Lord Shaftesbury investigation, the Chartism movement and the Great Exhibition. The script used for this performance has been reproduced here.

Following on from viewing a drama performance, local schoolchildren also attended drama workshops. During these workshops, children would be split into groups with each group learning about a particular scene. At the end of the workshop, each group would act out their scene to create a whole play. The work pack for those workshops can be found on this page.

Volunteers from the Crayford Manor House Historical Society conducted research into a friend of Charles Swaisland, William Tagg. These notes can be found here.

In 2010 Merton Council embarked on a project named “River and Cloth” which celebrated the textile heritage of Merton. As part of the “River and Cloth” project a number of fantastic instructional PDFs were created for those wishing to run their own fabric printing workshops. The PDFs are located in the Resources section of the “River and Cloth” project website.