Pupils have experienced an old-fashioned style bake-off at their school.

Year three and four pupils at Venerable Edward Morgan RC Primary school, Shotton, took part in a Great British Tudor Bake Off.

More than 12kgs of bread dough was mixed and kneaded at home before being brought back into school and shaped into small loaves and plaits.

This activity was part of the history project, where pupils explored the diet of the rich and the poor in Tudor times.

Half the pupils used strong white flour that was exclusively for the nobles and wealthy merchants, while the other half used stoneground wholemeal flour that would have been the staple carbohydrate for the serving and working class.

Matthew McIntyre, the leading teacher on the project, said: “The children saw how different it was for the poor and the rich, like the poor boiling meat instead of roasting it and having to use a tea towel as a sieve which took ages.

“We also watched a video of how the Tudors used to bake it in the oven fires, before the cooks at our school let us bake the table full of loaves in the school ovens.

“The children took them home, and swapped brown and white bread to have a taste test and see that the servant’s bread was coarse and sandy.

“They were excited to take them to their parents and were raving how their brothers and sisters enjoyed it too, saying they’d never tasted bread like that.”

The hands-on learning approach covered other topics such as food-hygiene and home economics as the children learnt how to correctly sanitise their hands, tables and wipe down thoroughly after.

Mr McIntyre added: “The children absolutely loved kneading the bread, as it was all sloppy and squidgy and they could throw it around.”