What happens when you mix 200 sandbags, liberal quantities of Sussex clay, a box of hard hats, a selection of shovels, 75 enthusiastic students, and the vagaries of an English summer? Read on.

Few places in Britain were untouched by the First World War. Newhaven in East Sussex, however, holds a particularly close affinity with the battlefields of France and Belgium: being a Channel port, it saw millions of tons of supplies passing through on their way to the battlefront. For students at the town’s Tideway Community School, visiting the First World War battlefields is an annual event.

Assistant headteacher Jim Fanning says this year the usual discussions arose: “Wouldn’t it be great to have a resource like this nearer home?” The idea began to grow when a student picked up an education pack showing how to build a trench. But disappointment followed - it was nothing more than a cardboard cut-out.

The disappointment, however, was short-lived, because the school decided to build a large-scale model in a spare classroom. Only when the deputy head David Duke suggested digging it for real did six months’ work begin in earnest, with the inaugural turf being cut during an end-of-year activity week. Fanning admits that some of his colleagues had doubts that students would wish to be involved; they were proven wrong when 75 signed up from across the school.

The trench has also turned into something of a community project and many parents who attended the “official opening” have researched what happened to relatives in the war. A Great War Interest Group is also to be started at the school.

Businesses have also been involved and have given everything from hard hats to fencing. Newhaven Fort, built during the Napoleonic wars and overlooking the Channel, had recently opened a Great War exhibition and loaned original entrenching tools. The school bursar, Jenny Umney, meanwhile brought in a diary written by a relative during the Great War which included trench-building as part of his training.

Fanning says: “The pay-offs are not just in school, although there were many benefits for the young people and in their curricular work. There were also great pay-offs in terms of community involvement.”

It was good, he says, to see students working as a team: “Groups of students getting together with groups of staff to do a project. I think that’s a tremendous learning process.”

The project fits in with key stage 3, where students study the Great War, specifically life on the Western Front, and KS4, where similar optional units form part of modern world history.

Fanning says the trench will remain part of the school and a regularly updated website details developments. Interest did not wane over the summer holidays. “The minute we got back, there were a fair few of them out there looking at the trench and what had happened over the holidays. So the enthusiasm is still there,” he says.

The trench will continue to be used in lessons, and assemblies are being held on site during this Remembrance Week. Media studies students will use it for filming projects. Additionally, a group meets after school to maintain it and discuss possible development. They are also responsible for fund raising.

The site is about six metres square. Apart from the absence of barbed wire, it is authentic as far as health and safety constraints will permit: some four feet deep - plus parapet - it has corners, signposts, sandbags and duckboards. One Year 9 student made replica guns, using reference books as a guide. And, for that extra touch of authenticity, it rained throughout the project’s first day.

“Had it just been blue skies, it wouldn’t have been the same digging the thing,” says Fanning, observing that the horrors of true trench warfare were made more real for students who experienced the cold, wet and mud - albeit on a limited scale.

“Now we’ve seen what it was like for ourselves,” says colleague Aaron Pooley.

“I know I wouldn’t want to be in a trench like that,” says Year 10 history student Jon McCormick. The trench has raised students’ interest in the Great War, says Fanning.

“And their enthusiasm - which could lead to higher grades.”

* Newhaven in the First World War

Nearly 10,000 troops sailed from Newhaven during the Great War. In the early days, some hospital ships docked there, but its principal role was in dispatching supplies and munitions to the front, with more than 9,000 sailings from the port during the war. Supplies arrived from across Britain in almost 20,000 trains made up of 850,000 wagon loads.

Health and safety requirements

Students attended a health and safety presentation covering “dos and don’ts”. There had to be a specific and detailed risk assessment, says Jim Fanning. For example, he was not aware that shoring was required once you dig more than about a metre deep. Check out the full risk assessment on the trench website.

Web links

www.thetrench.co.uk covers every detail of the project

www.fallenheroes.co.uk Tideway history department site, including associated research on the project