The Pastons & Social Life in the Middle Ages

A recommendation for Key Stage 3 is The Pastons and social life in the Middle Ages. The link will take you to the excellent Historical Association website, where documents and a PowerPoint presentation can be downloaded.

Rachel Brown has prepared a range of materials to support exploration of the following questions:

1. How did the Paston family rise from being farmworkers to knights?
2. What can we learn from the Paston family's letters?
3. How much had life changed by the end of the fifteenth century?

This being an external resource from the Historical Association, we cannot provide direct links into the letter database provided on this website, but using the search facilities for the letters should enable the example letters to be found quite quickly. This will give students the benefit of being able to follow them through to seeing the originals on the British Library site.

A little bit of thought and guidance will need to be given to students on the search terms to be used.