A visit to Frogmore Mill

19.03.2019

Year 2 had a fascinating visit to Frogmore Paper Mill, the world’s oldest mechanised paper mill, in Hemel Hempstead last week. 

The girls were divided into small groups and each group toured the mill and saw how paper was made.  They were fascinated to discover that you can make paper from any plant material including waste products from elephants and reindeer!  The next activity was looking through microscopes to see the different fibres used in making paper. We examined soft wood, hard wood, hemp and cotton and it was very interesting to see how they differed.  After stopping for a snack, we went to make our own sheets of paper.  We discovered you had to be quite skilful lifting the frame from the water and ‘couching’ (lying) it onto a sheet of tissue to dry.  We were relieved to hear that our sheets were dried quickly in a drier so we could take them home, as we were told that, without the driers, the sheets would take four days to dry!  After stopping for lunch our final activity was finding out about Louis Braille and using the Braille machines to type out our names.  It was really tricky to read the letters with our fingers!

As we left the staff at the Mill complimented the girls on their excellent behaviour. Well done, girls! We had a really happy and interesting day.