Tag Archives: mapping

Trip to the museum to learn about James Robertson

Today we went to the Shetland museum to look at the exhibition on James Robertson. He is the Shetlander who put Jamaica on the map. He was the youngest boy of 10 children. He lived in a croft house in Gossabrough, Yell. His family weren’t rich but they weren’t poor. He was very clever. He made several maps of Jamaica and they are really good for the time they were made considering he doesn’t have the technology we have now. After he made the map of Jamaica he went to London and got a painting made of himself as well as buying lots of nice things since he was rich. He wasn’t nice to his nieces and nephews. It took him 12 years to make the map of Aberdeenshire.  He went on trial because the people who asked for the map of Aberdeenshire told him his map was wrong but he had worked on it for 12 years so it would have been right at the time he started. He only had 3 years to make it so they thought they shouldn’t have to pay him, he thought he should be paid for all his work. So they took it to court. He died before his trial so we don’t know who would have won. He died aged 74.

Our topic

Our topic this term is Shetland. Yesterday in Topic Miss Nicholson gave us each a map of shetland and we had to write down where all the places were. We found a lot of places. We went over this as a class to see if we were right. We were learning about Fair Isle knitting/patterns and Miss Nicholson took in lots of Fair Isle jumpers which we got to try on. (they were a bit big though) We also got to see a jumper board which is what people dry Fair Isle  jumpers on to keep their shape. After that we got to design our own jumpers and we got to listen to Shetland music whilst we did this.