Begin with a spoonful of story: the last gasp of Rome, salted with migration and spiced by kings. Over one delicious year we taste the Early Middle Ages to 1066, for a curious 14-year-old.
Autumn — Foundations: fall of Rome, Anglo‑Saxon settlement, Celtic Britain, and monastic life. Read short extracts (Asnapium), map migrations, cook a simple period recipe and sketch a monastery garden (Boults).
Winter — Power and Piety: Merovingians, Carolingians, Charlemagne’s empire, and the role of the Church. Compare MS illuminations, read Southern and Eleanor Janega for texture; debate sanctity and kingship; examine coinage and law-codes.
Spring — Invasions and Everydayness: Vikings, settlements, craft, dress, agrarian life. Watch Time Team episodes, build a model longhouse, catalogue material culture (Metropolitan Museum resources).
Summer — Castles, Courts, and the Road to 1066: motte-and-bailey, feudal ties, Anglo‑Saxon kings, Harold and William. Read primary sources, reenact a moot, visit Castle video (Macaulay/Lee & Day), and culminate with a creative project retelling 1066.
Throughout: weekly source clinics, map drills, fortnightly essays, and portfolios assessed by argument, evidence and imagination — indulgent, rigorous, and utterly irresistible. Expect sweet moments of wonder, salty debates, and the slow-simmered pleasure of finding cause and consequence every week too.