Enrich the curriculum and inspire your pupils (and teachers!) with fantastic artefacts, props and costumes for all topics, performances and occasions.
Costumes
Our costumes can make a school performance come to life, or add depth to any classroom activity.
- Perfect for history, geography, drama, citizenship, or art
- Adult and childrens’ sizes
- Historical costumes from ancient world to Britain since 1930
- Contemporary costumes from around the world
- Uniforms/people who help us
- Drama and pantomime
How many costumes can I borrow?
- Unlimited number of costumes
Local History Artefacts
In 2022 the Schools Library Services launched ‘This is Our History‘, our local history project, continued in 2025 with the creation of multi-sensory stories. Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, it covers the following themes:
- The Matchgirls’ Strike of 1888
- The Blitz and the Bombing of the East End
- East London Bengalis
- Somali East End
- London Docklands
- The Huguenot silk weavers
Artefacts boxes that are also used as sensory stories
- A dockworker’s day at West India Quay
- A journey to West india Quay from Barbados
- The Est End Suffragettes
- The Jewish East End
- The Battle of Cable Street
- Ragged Schools
Historical Artefacts
Enrich your history topics with one of our artefacts collections. Artefacts can be an expensive purchase for your school, so why not borrow them instead? Each box contains up to 40 artefacts.
- Abolition of Slavery
- Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome
- Ancient Rome – Museum of London collection (includes original roman artefacts in addition to replicas)
- Anglo Saxons
- Bengalis in East London
- The Blitz
- Britain Since 1930
- The British Empire & East India Company
- Explorers
- Fifties and sixties Britain
- Florence Nightingale
- Homes (early 20th century)
- Islamic Golden Age
- London Docklands
- Mary Seacole
- Matchgirls
- Pirates
- Shang Dynasty
- Somali East End
- Stone age to Iron age
- Toys and Games
- ‘Tracks through Poplar’ (steam railways)
- Tudors
- Victorian Britain
- Vikings
- The Windrush Generation
- World War 2
- Writing and Printing
Single historical artefacts are also available, including:
- Artefacts from all of the above eras
- Ancient Benin
- Medieval History
- History within living memory
- Toys and home computers/ consoles from the 70s, 80s and 90s*
- Music playback, including a working gramophone, reel to reel, walkmans, etc*
- Typewriters
- Navigation and exploration
- Treasure chests (empty)
*Electroninc and electrical historical artefacts are usually non-working and for display/ examples only.
How many artefacts can I borrow?
- Unlimited single artefacts where available
- One historical artefacts box per teacher (and no more than one of each type per school)
Our Global History
Our Global History a series of classroom resources – Artefacts, books and more – researched and produced by the Tower Hamlets Schools Library Services with generous funding from the Aldgate & Allhallows Foundation.
The resources have been designed to support the Towards an Anti-Racist Curriculum training for Tower Hamlets Schools which has engaged schools in examining how they teach the National Curriculum to reflect the backgrounds and experiences of children in Tower Hamlets schools.
Our aim is to provide teachers with a wider range of resources to enable them to adequately diversify the curriculum and show them how to plan the de-colonised curriculum.
The following boxes and accompanying book and online resources are now available
- The Shang Dynasty
- The Islamic Golden Age
- The Windrush Generation
- The British Empire & The East india Company
Artefacts from Around the World
Bring a global dimension to your classroom.
International artefact boxes include:
- Shahnameh : The Phoenix of Persia : Iran/ Persia and traditional tales. Produced in collaboration with Tiny Owl Books.
- Dolls from around the world (boxes for different countries & continents)
- Where in the World is Barnaby Bear? / Weatherby Bear? / Benita Bear?
- Countries, including Modern Egypt, France, Australia, Poland
- Bengal History
- Deforestation
- Adinkra and Kente Cloth
- Olympic Games
Individual items can support:
- International celebrations
- Black History Month
- Chinese New Year
are from:
- Africa
- Middle East
- South America
- North America
- India and Bangladesh
- Europe
- China
- Japan
and include:
- Textiles and flags for displays
- Everyday items
- Festival items
- Masks
- Musical instruments
- Puppets
- Toys made from recycled materials
Religious Artefacts
Artefacts can help pupils gain insight into complex subjects like world faiths and religion.
Science Artefacts
We have a wide selection of artefacts to help teach a range of science topics:
- Human skeletons
- Model body parts
- Teeth
- Habitats and food chains
- Lifecycles
- The Solar System
- Rocks and fossils
- Magnets
Story Props and Sets
Props and puppets to make any story come to life. Add an extra dimension to your storytelling or literacy sessions, or use a persona doll for PSHE and citizenship.
- A wide selection of story sacks
- Animal and minibeast puppets and glove puppets
- Favourite character puppets and dolls
- Multi-sensory stories (ask us for more information)
- Puppets to suit traditional tales and fairy tales.
- Story tents (see our story tents page)
