Our C Group took a trip to the Square Mile, the historic financial centre of London, to visit The Bank of England Museum. The museum displays a wealth of historical material drawn from the Bank's own collections of books, documents, silver, prints, paintings, banknotes, coins and photographs. As part of their financial maths topic, they learned about the effects of inflation and the role of a central bank, and were shown the different security features on current banknotes. They were very interested to learn how George Frederick Handel played the stock market (he was reportedly a solid investor!) and the students had the opportunity to view his original account ledgers.
Another highlight was the display of gold, including Roman and modern gold bars, alongside pikes and muskets once used to defend the Bank. Everyone had fun getting to handle the solid gold bars, which were surprisingly heavy at over 12kg in weight and valued at £380,000!