A school’s history club has beaten off stiff competition to be named group winners in the National Archives 20sStreets Competition.

Pupils from Oakhill School in Whalley wowed the judges with their study of the households that made up a street near the school at the time of the 1921 census.

The competition was launched last year in partnership with the British Association for Local History.

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It invited entrants to research and share stories connected with the 1920s, focussing on any community within an areas covered by the 1921 Census of England and Wales.

The club’s 11 members spent hours researching Longworth Road in nearby Billington and the family who owned Oakhill House to piece together the community’s experience as it loved and worked through the trauma of war.

Longworth Road was, at the time, known as Factory Row and Oakhill students used a variety of sources to find out what happened to the families who worked at the Judge Walmsley Mill including visits to Whalley Library and using census data through Manchester Central Library.

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Jane Buttery, principal of Oakhill School, said: “We are very proud of the history club for claiming first place in the National Archives 20sStreets competition.

“They put in an enormous amount of work and learned so much about the history of the school and the area.”

The students were delighted to discover the prize for their success is an all-expenses paid trip to visit the National Archives in London, which they will do later this year.