Historic Herefordshire on Line contains an extensive education section geared primarily to Keystages 3 and 4, but which is also suitable as a teaching resource for primary schools and further education courses. The curriculum linked pages can be found via the education contents page. The chapters in the Education section contain quotes from a variety of primary and secondary sources. If you click onto the red button you will find the origin of the quote. Brown buttons provide explanations for history words. There are many places to visit in Herefordshire suitable for school trips that will give students a more immediate and thought provoking experience of history. Information on these sites is available in the sites to visit section.

In addition to the curriculum linked sections, there are also general information pages on all historical periods and a variety of topics, including medieval castles, the Saxons, transport, workhouses, non-conformist chapels and prisons. Most of these topics can be accessed from the "History and Archaeology of Herefordshire" button on the home page. There are also a guest author section with a variety of articles relating to historical aspects of Herefordshire and a games section.

Historic Herefordshire on Line is a Heritage Lottery funded project to make the Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) of this county available to a wider audience. The website therefore includes a database containing over 15,000 entries, one for each of the known sites or monuments in the county. Another database contains the fieldnames for Herefordshire taken from the 19^th century tithe maps, enclosure awards and estate maps. These freely available databases can enhance the use of ICT in classroom teaching.

The website can serve the history teacher in three ways:

1. As an ICT resource to meet teaching objectives
2. As a research tool for classroom work and homework
3. Ideas for school trips
   


Note: You need not be teaching local history to make use of the website. Even though local examples are used, much of the information is general in nature and fully compatible with the textbooks used in English schools. For example, the chapters on Medieval Towns and Villages, whilst using examples from Herefordshire, provide the reader with a good background on the development of medieval towns and villages in general.

Using the SMR database

You can access the database from the home page of the Historic Herefordshire on Line website. The records detailing the known sites and monuments of the county can be searched by site type (eg. castles), parish (eg. Adforton), period (eg. Medieval AD 1066-AD 1539) or site name, if you know which place you want to see. If, for example, you want to search for sites in Ross-on-Wye, you will find that currently there are 156 for all historical periods. To see an individual record you need to click onto the SMR number. There is a small map of Herefordshire on the bottom left hand of the screen to show you where in the county the requested site is located.

The individual entry is not a source in its own right, but a composite of sources, which are footnoted and listed below. The information in the records is based on books, journals, excavation reports or, occasionally, personal observation. You will sometimes find inaccuracies, such as spelling errors. It has unfortunately been beyond the scope of the project to allow for a check of all 15,000 records.

There is a separate "sources" database in which you can search for written sources by author, title, collection, date, source type and journal. The sources database can be accessed by clicking onto the word "sources" in the text of the SMR database search page or on the "sources" button at the bottom of the page.