City pupils travel back in time to wartime Sunderland

The Seaglass Cafe in High Street West recreated rationing for Year 5 pupils at Dame Dorothy Primary School as part of an interactive wartime project.

Kate Campion, Year 5 lead at Dame Dorothy Primary School, said: “Their topic for this term has been child at war, to help them understand how children in Sunderland were affected by the war.

“As part of that, they’ve covered The Blitz, rationing, evacuees and women in the work place and the final part of that was an evacuee morning.

“So we taped up the windows in class and did an air raid siren. Then the headteacher came in and said we were being evacuated and didn’t know where we’d be going.”

She added: “We then walked into town and told them to look out for the billeting office as the kids had been learning about getting rations from there. Seaglass had put posters up so they spotted it.

“It was a great way to recreate the experience of not knowing where you were going and bringing that to life for them, an experience so many Sunderland children faced during the war. They were a bit nervous at first, but they loved it and are still talking about it now.

“James at Seaglass made them feel so welcome and they sang wartime songs and read poems.”

The Seaglass Cafe prepared a special, limited rations packed lunch for the pupils, including simple ham or cheese sandwiches. The pupils had to show their ration books before the food was handed over. PrintSwift even provided Billeting Office posters for the doors for the kids to spot to help bring the project to life.

James Usher, manager at the cafe, said: “It was such an interesting project to be a part of and it’s great for the kids to learn something so important in an interactive way, rather than in textbooks.”

Seaglass Cafe opened its doors earlier this year, specialising in food for those with dietary requirements.

They had been building a following, but had to close their doors in September after their power was cut off in an energy dispute over unexpected billing amounts.

The cafe was inundated with support and was able to reopen thanks to an anonymous donation.

James said: “We’ve always been a community-based cafe, our customers are like friends and family, especially so during difficult times recently. So we were more than happy to help the school out at cost price.

“The children were great and all thanked us - we also gave them cupcakes as an added treat to their rations.”

James, who is also chef at the cafe, added: “Since reopening, our regular customer base has come back. We’re still quite quiet sometimes, but we’re developing more customers and it’s slowly picking up.”