Creating Cabinets of Curiosity at Waddesdon Church of England School

By Ludo Amory, Education and Outreach Officer

Art History Link-Up has been working with Waddesdon Church of England School in Buckinghamshire since 2023, devising and developing new Art History courses for Years 9 and 10. These introductory courses are based on the history and collections of neighbouring Waddesdon Manor, an extraordinary French-style château built in the late 19th century for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. The project is supported by the Rothschild Foundation, long-standing partners and supporters of AHLU, and also of Waddesdon School. 

From the start, we saw these pilots as a collaboration between ourselves, the inspiring teams at Waddesdon School, Waddesdon Manor, and the students themselves. We had the rare opportunity to shape the courses around feedback from the participants. A significant example of this was the students’ suggestion that an outcome such as a qualification would make the course more compelling for their age group.

Our most recent pilot at the school started in April 2025 and offered the opportunity for students to achieve a Higher Project Qualification (HPQ), which is equivalent to up to half a GCSE in UCAS points. The course was run as an after-school club by myself and an experienced AHLU teaching assistant, Beatrice Dallas. We had 18 students, all of whom were new to History of Art, and 100% retention over our ten week-long course. 

The HPQ is a project qualification that requires learners to develop their own unique project guided by a teacher. In our other pilot HPQ courses, run on Sundays at the Courtauld and online, the final project is a virtual exhibition which drew on the collection and their own research. Waddesdon Manor called for a different approach.

The Manor has a wide array of objects, from medieval armour to sculpture by Young British Artists. It is a cabinet of curiosities collected over centuries by successive generations of the Rothschild family.  So the students' project naturally was to collect their own cabinet of curiosities. We began by asking them to select an object that holds significance for them, from a childhood doll to a Pokémon card collection. This demonstrated that the collecting impulse that built Waddesdon Manor was far more relevant to them than they might originally have thought. 

Each class students learned about the Manor and selected further objects to go into their cabinets, supported by a trip up to the Manor itself. In one of the classes, we held a mock auction where the students were each allocated a certain amount of money to bid on objects in the collection for their cabinet. There was a particularly fierce bidding war over the Léon Bakst murals which depict the story of Sleeping Beauty, with Rothschild friends and family as the main characters!

The course concluded in mid-June with the students having constructed their cabinets using the online software Artsteps. One of our students reflected on the project, saying, “When we started our cabinets of curiosity, it allowed me to express myself through my selection of artworks which I was fascinated by and expanded my knowledge researching them.” Another student commented on the overall approach to the course, writing “I started thinking it was going to be a little boring and not very interesting at all, but I was pleasantly surprised and grew to find it increasingly more and more fun as the weeks went on.” Finally, it was good to hear that students enjoyed the research aspect of the course, as another student told us, “My research skills have been vastly improved and I'm now far more confident making analytical statements of art and literature.” 

As ever, this feedback will shape our next exciting chapter at Waddesdon School. We are planning to develop freestanding teaching resources over the summer so that the HPQ course can be delivered by Waddesdon school and Manor working in partnership with each other and with AHLU. While the course will still be supervised by AHLU, we will gradually hand over the delivery to those critical stakeholders, with the view that they could continue delivering the course well into the future. This pilot will be a critical next step in developing AHLU’s educational programmes as we move toward developing resources for third-party delivery.

AHLU is so thankful to the Rothschild Foundation for their support of our students and our work, and to all the stakeholders who have contributed their time and ideas to the development of this innovative programme. 

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