The history boys - and girls - at Juniper Green

Published on Wednesday 22 August 2007 01:01

IT ALL started when a 4,000-year-old human skull was dug up in the garden of what is now the butcher's shop. At that moment, in May 1851, the village of Juniper Green uncovered a precious object that gave its residents a sense of being part of a long and fascinating history.

The skull went on to become something of a local legend and has now become the cover star of a remarkable book celebrating the colourful past of this sleepy Edinburgh suburb on the banks of the Water of Leith.

That the book tells the story from prehistoric times up to the present is not the remarkable part. It's the fact that the task of researching, writing and illustrating this professionally published volume of several thousand words - to a deadline of a dozen or so weeks - was handed to the pupils of the village primary school: a team of authors with an average age of eight.

Edinburgh University struggles to get its undergraduates to achieve half as much in twice the time, and this niggled at the back of my mind as I excitedly accepted the invitation to help the youngsters reach their goal. My job, as an author of children's history books, was to hold a series of assemblies, workshops and editorial meetings and steer things in the right direction.

But I worried we might have taken on more than even the combined might of several hundred eager young minds could handle. After all, how do you get Primary 3 to recognise the key differences between the medieval age and the industrial revolution when many of them believe ancient times began while their granny was at school?

The answer is: patiently, with the help of some excellent teachers - and props. Our first assembly began with that dependable old tool, the mind map.

"What do you want to know about life in Juniper Green hundreds of years ago? What interests you?" I asked the throng and instantly regretted it. "Fish and chips!" shrieked one. "Football!" hollered another. "Hibees! Hearts! Man United!"

Eventually we refined our random outbursts into useful categories that sprawled across our mind map: food, sport, transport, heroes and villains, school, work, family and so on. "Toilets!" was something many of us were bursting to learn about.

Then came the research. This is the bit, I reassured everyone, that even some authors who've been writing for donkey's years are terrified by - so don't panic.

A couple of weeks in and we were all learning fast. The local history society's website was a godsend and, with the help of the deputy headteacher, I was able to give youngsters the research tools needed to smash huge slabs of scary-looking grown-up text into manageable chunks.

Before long, young scribes were beginning to grasp at answers to such burning questions as: how did Juniper Green get its name? Was the owner of the Bronze Age skull murdered? And why did Bonnie Prince Charlie leave a sundial here as a present for the villagers?

Perhaps the most awkward question was: why were we writing about what happened before 1707? This arose because the project was hooked on the fact that November 1707 was the first time the name "Juniper Green" appeared in a written record. Indeed, the whole village is celebrating the anniversary under the banner of "JG300".

Of course, as the village's toothy Bronze Age mascot reminds us, the place now known as "Juni" is as old as the Pentland Hills behind it. So we couldn't just ignore all that history - especially since some local people bit the dust in such gloriously gory medieval clashes as the Battle of Flodden in 1513. Cue fantastic drawings of knights to brighten up our pages.

As the project's bare bones took on more flesh, we kept to the spirit of JG300 by focusing most attention on the recent past and the coming of the water mills. These transformed this quiet backwater into a powerhouse of Edinburgh's industrial revolution - and saw many a poor local lad lose a finger or two in the making of snuff, paper and sundry other products.

The beauty of a project like this is it concerns a history youngsters can see for themselves - a history that belongs to them: children interviewed elderly members of the community to learn about how the village coped with Second World War air raids; they went on a riverbank tour with the local history society to uncover the remains of the mills and the defunct branch railway; they searched their school library for clues; and learned how their own streets got their names.

The finished product was a credit to the school. The title, Juni Through Time, was chosen during the final meeting of the editorial committee. All that remained was for me to distil it into a coherent whole - and I can proudly say there must be thousands of books out there written by grown-ups that required much heavier editing than this one did.

I should also add it might never have made it into print without the support of the Scottish Book Trust. Next month I will join some of the other grown-ups involved to share our experiences at the Scottish Learning Festival. But the project's educational value is perhaps best illustrated by the authors themselves.

With the book in front of us, I sat down in the school canteen with Ross Muego from Primary Four and Hayley Valentine from Primary Five to take stock.

"Before, I knew nothing about bronze. Now I know tonnes of stuff," said Ross. "You couldn't just ask your mum. You had to go and look for info on the internet and in books. I would definitely do it again."

Hayley added: "I like the medieval bit. I thought it was difficult memorising the facts. But in any job you really need to be able to write well and take good notes. I felt really proud I was able to do this."

• Allan Burnett is author of the ...And All That series of children's history books, published by Birlinn. He will be appearing at the Wigton Book Festival on 30 September. Juni Through Time is available to buy from Juniper Green Primary School.