Over a period of four Monday afternoons in Autumn 2022, 11 children from Limavady Community Development Initiative (LCDI) Afterschool Club stepped into Limavady Workhouse. As they crossed the threshold they entered the past. In these two-hour workshops facilitated by Conflict Textiles curator Roberta Bacic & Annie McKay (Conflict Textiles) and Rachel Archibald (Causeway Coast and Glens Museum Service), they got a sense of how children of their own age survived in the workhouse in the 19th century. They walked through the children’s dormitory, they tried out the straw mattresses, they made butter, they handled wool and flax; materials used for clothing and bedding materials at that time, and lastly they looked at the style of lettering children would have been taught.
And so, with pencil in hand they copied the ornate Victorian letters of their initials onto a square of linen fabric. Then the hands-on part started in earnest. They selected threads, they threaded needles – and rethreaded them, they pulled the stitches through – not too tight, not too loose - they dealt with knots in the thread and worked with concentration to see the process through. Annie McKay then stitched the finished pieces onto a backing fabric, ready for display, representing a window into the past.
Many of the children had never sewn before. Immersion in the sewing element not only improved their sewing skills but also gave them a chance to identify with and reflect on the lives of their 19th century counterparts. (See photo gallery of the process)
This series of workshops represented the second phase of ‘The Workhouse Through the Times’ project, part of an overall initiative commissioned by the Binevenagh and Coastal Lowlands Landscape Partnership (BCLLP). The collective textile The Workhouse Through The Times: Present Use 2022 was an outcome of phase 1. | 
