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Queen Victoria Primary Resource

How much do you know about this iconic british monarch.

In our  National Geographic Kids primary resource sheet , pupils will discover the significant events that occurred during Queen Victoria’s lifetime , from her early childhood to her death in 1901.

Download the resource at the bottom of this page, together with a stimulus sheet featuring ideas for study group tasks and classroom activities!

This History primary resource  assists with teaching the following  History objectives  from the  National Curriculum :

• Know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day: how people’s lives have shaped this nation and how Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world
• Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales

National Curriculum Key Stage 1 History objective:

• Pupils should be taught: significant historical events, people and places in their own locality
• Pupils should be taught: the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements. Some should be used to compare aspects of life in different periods [for example, Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria]

National Curriculum Key Stage 2 History objective:

• Pupils should be taught a study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066

This primary resource  also assists with teaching the following  English   objectives  from the  National Curriculum :

• Comprehension skills develop through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with the teacher, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction. All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum

    This History primary resource  assists with teaching the following  Social Studies Second level objective  from the  Scottish Curriculum for Excellence :

• I can discuss why people and events from a particular time in the past were important, placing them within a historical sequence  
• I can compare and contrast a society in the past with my own and contribute to a discussion of the similarities and differences  

Download primary resource

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Queen Victoria

Who was Queen Victoria?

Queen Victoria reigned in Britain from 1837-1901. This time is also called the Victorian era.   She ruled with her husband, Prince Albert, until he died in 1861. They had nine children.

Victoria was queen for 64 years . Until September 2015 she was the longest-reigning monarch that Britain ever had; that record is now held by Queen Elizabeth II .

Eight of her nine children married other royals in Europe, so some people call Victoria the ‘grandmother of Europe’ . She was a very popular queen for most of her reign.

Top 10 facts

• Victoria was queen from 24 May 1837-22 January 1901 – that’s almost 64 years!
• Victoria’s full name was Alexandrina Victoria.
• Victoria’s mum and her mum’s friend, John Conroy, set up strict rules that Victoria had to follow as she grew up – these rules were called the Kensington System.
• Victoria married her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, in 1840.
• Victoria and Albert had nine children, including Prince Albert Edward who became King Edward VII after Victoria died.
• Albert died in 1861 from typhoid fever, and Victoria never stopped mourning for him; she wore black clothes for the rest of her life.
• Victoria was queen during the time with the British Empire expanded to include India . She became the Empress of India in 1867.
• Christmas traditions such as buying a Christmas tree and sending cards became popular thanks to Queen Victoria and her family!
• Victoria died on 22 January 1901, and is buried with Prince Albert at Windsor Palace.
• Queen Victoria is Queen Elizabeth II’s great-great-grandmother.
• 24 May 1819 Victoria was born at Kensington Palace in London to Prince Edward and Princess Victoria Mary Louisa (the Duke and Duchess of Kent)

• 20 June 1837 William IV died, and Victoria became queen
• 28 June 1838 Victoria’s coronation took place at Westminster Abbey
• 15 October 1839 Victoria and Albert were engaged
• 10 February 1840 Victoria and Albert were married
• 21 November 1840 Princess Victoria was born
• 9 November 1841 Prince Albert Edward was born; he would later become King Edward VII
• 13 June 1842 Queen Victoria took a train from Slough to London, becoming the first monarch to travel by train.
• 25 April 1843 Princess Alice was born
• 6 August 1844 Prince Alfred was born
• 25 May 1846 Princess Helena was born
• 1846 Victoria and Albert bought Balmoral Castle
• 18 March 1848 Princess Louise was born
• 1 May 1850 Prince Arthur was born
• 1851 Prince Albert helped plan the Great Exhibition
• 7 April 1853 Prince Leopold was born
• 14 April 1857 Princess Beatrice was born
• 14 December 1861 Prince Albert died from typhoid fever
• 1 May 1876 Queen Victoria was given the title Empress of India
• March 1871 The Royal Albert Hall opened, built to honour Prince Albert’s wish to have a place where people could learn about and enjoy the arts and sciences

• 1887 Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee
• 1897 Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee
• 1899 The South Kensington Museum was renamed the Victoria & Albert Museum
• 22 January 1901 Queen Victoria died

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Did you know?

• Victoria was born at Kensington Palace, but made Buckingham Palace her home. Buckingham Palace is where Queen Elizabeth II lives now.
• Victoria’s first name is actually Alexandrina, but she always went by her middle name (Victoria). Her mum called her Drina.
• Victoria was very short – she was under 5 feet tall.
• The rules Victoria had to follow when she grew up were called the Kensington System. These rules were very strict – she was not allowed to sleep in her own room (she shared a room with her mum), and she wasn’t allowed to have other children around to play with.
• Victoria didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Her best friends growing up were her dolls, and her dog, Dash. Victoria had 132 wooden dolls!
• Victoria loved to draw and paint, and she was also good at music and maths. Victoria’s mum was German, so she grew up speaking both English and German.
• Victoria kept a diary for most of her life and wrote about the things that she did both growing up and after becoming queen. It’s through reading those diaries that we know about the sort of person Victoria was.
• Victoria met Prince Albert when she was 17.
• Imagine your mum waking you up in the middle of the night to tell you that you are the new queen of England! That’s what happened to Victoria when she found out her uncle, King William IV died. She was 18 years old.
• Albert Edward
• Victoria and Albert’s son, Albert Edward, became king after Victoria died in 1901. He is better known as King Edward VII.

Browse through the gallery and see if you can spot some of the following:

• Kensington Palace
• Balmoral Castle
• A statue of Victoria in Bath
• A sketch of the Queen
• Victoria's bathing machine, kept at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight
• A Franz Winterhalter portrait of Victoria
• Statues of Victoria

Victoria’s mum and her mum’s friend, John Conroy, came up with a list of very strict rules that Victoria had to follow as she grew up. This was called the Kensington System (after Kensington Palace, where they lived). It included things like having Victoria watched all the time, even when she was sleeping – she had to share a room with her mum and wasn’t allowed to have her own room. She couldn’t walk down the stairs without someone holding her hand, and she didn’t really play with other children. This was all done so Victoria would learn to depend on her mum and John Conroy, and maybe give them important roles after she became queen. But, it all went wrong – after Victoria became queen, she sent John Conroy away and gave her mum rooms that were far away from hers at Buckingham palace, so they hardly saw each other.

During Victoria’s life, there were seven times when someone tried to kill her! She survived all of them.

Victoria met Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha when she was 17. She was a few months older than Albert, and he was her cousin. They became friends and fell in love. After Victoria became queen, she decided to propose to Albert in October 1839 because she was worried that he wouldn’t know if it was proper to propose to a queen. They were married on 10 February 1840. Prince Albert wasn’t allowed to take the title of King, but Victoria involved him in the decisions she had to make. They even shared the same office, each with their own desk.

Eight of Victoria and Albert’s nine children went on to marry into other royal families around Europe. Because of this, Victoria is sometimes called the ‘grandmother of Europe’! By 1901, Victoria had 42 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren. One of her great-great-grandchildren is Queen Elizabeth II!

Victoria and Albert enjoyed celebrating Christmas very much. Prince Albert was from Germany, and carried on holding some of the Christmas traditions he was used to. These included having Christmas trees – before this time, people in Britain would have just hung a bit of holly or mistletoe rather than bring a whole tree inside and decorate it. Queen Victoria sent Christmas cards, and people began doing the same. Victoria and Albert also had a special red and gold sleigh that Albert would drive around in the snow.

Prince Albert was very involved in organising the Great Exhibition in 1851. He was interested in all the latest things to do with the arts and sciences, and celebrating the many discoveries and inventions of the Victorian era.

Prince Albert died in 1961 of typhoid fever. He was just 42, and Queen Victoria was very sad. She wore black clothes for the rest of her life to show that she was in mourning for his death. She didn’t really go out in public until quite a few years after he died. When she died in 1901, she had some of Albert’s things put in her coffin – his dressing gown, and a plaster cast of his hand.

Famous friends:

Prince Albert Saxe-Coburg Gotha (1819-1861) – Born in Germany, Albert was Queen Victorian’s husband, and Prince Consort of Britain. He died of typhoid in 1861, and Victoria wore black mourning clothes for the rest of her life. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) – Prime Minister in 1868 and again from 1874-1880; Queen Victoria liked Disraeli very much, and the two were good friends John Brown (1826-1883) – a servant of Queen Victoria’s at Balmoral Castle in Scotland; he and Victoria were very good friends, and he helped Victoria through the time when she was sad about the death of Prince Albert Baroness Lehzen (1784-1870) – Victoria’s governess from Germany, who was both her teacher and advisor

Related Videos

Just for fun...

• Watch Horrible Histories videos about Queen Victoria:  Queen Victoria - Mambo No.10 ,  Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's Love Song and the  Tricky Queen Vicky Song
• Read a comic about Queen Victoria's life
• Dress up as a Victorian with a Queen Victoria mask and sceptre and a Prince Albert mask and moustache
• Take this quick quiz about Queen Victoria
• Download an activity sheet and colour in your own picture of Queen Victoria
• You'll find activities, clips and photographs in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Scrapbook
• Read extracts from Queen Victoria's diaries
• At age 10 Victoria created a story about a girl called Alice Laselles as an exercise in English composition and wrote it in a notebook. The story is now kept safe in the Royal Archives, but you can read the published version,  The Adventures of Alice Laselles

Best children's books about Queen Victoria

Find out more

• Watch a BBC Bitesize guide to Queen Victoria for KS1 children
• Read some children's historical fiction set in Victorian times
• Queen Victoria for kids : an overview
• An introduction to Queen Victoria and her life
• Download a resource which charts Queen Victoria's family relationships and her claim to the English throne
• Information about Prince Albert from the Kiddle Encyclopedia
• Artefacts from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's wedding , including a picture of their cake and cake boxes containing actual pieces of 167-year-old wedding cake from the Wedding Breakfast in 1840!
• A description of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's nine children
• Find out how  Queen Victoria popularised our Christmas traditions
• See Victoria's bathing machine , which she used to swim on the Isle of Wight
• Look through the complete online collection of Queen Victoria's journals from the Royal Archives , including her childhood diaries
• The BBC guide to how Victoria redefined Britain’s monarchy
• Download Queen Victoria's family tree
• See pictures of all Victoria's palaces and the royal households
• Queen Victoria and photography : Victoria was the first British monarch to have her life fully recorded by the camera, and the portraits of her as a wife, mother, widow and sovereign became emblematic of the Victorian age
• Examine Victoria's family photographs to find out more about her life and reign
• Look at Franz Xaver Winterhalter's official portrait, The Royal family in 1846 , and find out why Victoria liked it so much
• See a watercolour of Queen Victoria's arrival in Paris on August 1855

See for yourself

• Find out what Victoria’s childhood was like by visiting Kensington Palace
• See Balmoral Castle , which Victoria and Albert bought in 1848
• Look through artefacts from Victoria's life , including jewellery, photographs, medals and documents
• Check out Queen Victoria’s train coach at the National Railway Museum in York
• The Isle of Wight was one of Queen Victoria's favourite holiday spots. Follow in her footsteps by downloading a Queen Victoria-themed Isle of Wight tour map
• See photographs of the Royal Family on the terrace of Osborne House in 1857 and a photo of Queen Victoria and John Brown in 1868
• At the V&A in London, eight characters including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert guide you on an exciting treasure hunt to uncover some of the secrets of the Museum
• There are 78 statues of Queen Victoria in the United Kingdom, and another 56 around the world !  

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© Copyright Mandy Barrow 2013

Mandy is the creator of the Woodlands Resources section of the Woodlands Junior website.  The two websites  projectbritain.com  and  primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk   are the new homes for the Woodlands Resources.

Mandy left Woodlands in 2003 to work in Kent schools as an ICT Consulatant.  She now teaches computers at  The Granville School  and  St. John's Primary School  in Sevenoaks Kent.

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8th October 2016

The Victorians was a time for railways, Queen Victoria and the establishment of many familiar companies, such as chocolate maker Cadbury and soft drink company Coca Cola.

Queen Victoria

The Victorian era started when Princess Victoria was crowned Queen, at 18 years old, in 1837. Three years later, she married her cousin, Prince Albert. They had 9 children together, before he passed away in 1861. Victoria was distraught, and missed him so much that she wore black for the rest of her life.

You can find out more about Queen Victoria here.

Life in Victorian Britain

How your life was in Victorian Britain depended on who you were and how much money you had. If you were rich, then life was luxurious, although how luxurious your life was depended on how rich you were. If you were poor, then life was hard, and in some cases, you literally had to fight to survive.

Workhouses were places where some poor people lived and worked. They worked long hours on the factory floors. In return for their work, they would get a roof over their heads and food (although not very much.)

Many workhouses were dark and dirty, and you weren’t treated very well. It wasn’t a place you wanted to be in.

The house(s) that you owned and lived in depended on how much you and your family earned.

Rich families usually had a country estate and a house in the city. During the working week, the owner of the house would usually be in the city for work and go back to their country estate for the weekend. This wasn’t always the case, but it was common.

Middle-class families usually lived in either the outskirts of the city or in medium-sized cottages in the countryside. If the family had enough money, they might have both.

Working class and unemployed people, who usually lived in the cities (although they could be farmers in the countryside) usually rented or owned a terraced house, or for the poorest, shared a single (or double) room with other families as they couldn’t afford to rent an entire house.

Servants for the rich

A more attractive job than working in factories or the workhouse would be to work for a rich family as a servant. You got paid a wage (how much that wage was depended on your job) and a roof over your head. Because you were fed and had a roof over your head, your wage was usually sent back to your family.

Servants were summoned by their owners to particular rooms through a network of bells. In the Servants Quarters’ of that house, there was usually a row of bells, with a sign saying what room it was coming from, so the servants knew where to go, and who was demanding their assistance.

Among the servants, there was a hierarchy, as there was in the family. The more senior your job was, the more time and the closer you were to the family. The closest to the family were the house-steward or the butler (or both, if the family was very rich), the lady’s maid, the valet, the housekeeper and the nanny (who supervised any children.)

Victorians had more free time than in previous eras. With the introduction of weekends and bank holidays, workers could now spend their free time however they wanted. Many people, rich and poor, sometimes decided to go down to one of the many new seaside resorts that were being built.

The seaside

The invention of the railways meant that many people could escape from the city to one of the many new seaside resorts that were being built. Train tickets were relatively cheap, meaning even factory workers and their families could afford a day or two at the seaside.

Piers were being built across the coastline. The first one was built on the Isle of Wight in 1814, and exactly 100 years later, there were at least 100 piers across the British coast.

When did attending school become mandatory?

It wasn't until 1880 that schooling became mandatory. All children had to attend a school until they were 10 years old. In 1889 , the school leaving age was raised to twelve, and in 1891 , the school's pence fee was abolished and schools became free.

What were the schools like?

There could be as many as 70 or 80 pupils in one class, especially in cities. The teachers were very strict. Children were often taught by reading and copying things down, or chanting things till they were perfect.

In many Victorian schools pupil-teachers helped with the teaching. The pupil-teachers were boys and girls of 13 and over. After five years of apprenticeship they could themselves become teachers.

What did the schools teach?

Typical lessons at school included the three Rs - R eading, W R iting and Dictation, and A R ithmetic.  In addition to the three Rs which were taught most of the day, once a week the children learned geography, history and singing. The girls learned how to sew.

Schools did not teach music or PE in the way that schools do now. Children sometimes did 'drill' in the classroom. Drill was a series of exercises that were done by the side of a desk.

For maths lessons, children used frames with coloured wooden beads, much like an abacus.  Children learned how to multiply and divide using this apparatus. 

What was a Victorian school day like?

The day usually began with prayers and religious instruction. Morning lessons ran from 9a.m. to 12p.m.  Children often went home for a meal, then returned for afternoon classes from 2p.m. to 5p.m.

Why did Victorian children write on slates?

Paper was expensive. Children usually therefore wrote on slates with slate pencils. After a lesson was completed, and the teacher checked their work, the students cleared their slates for the next lesson. 

Did Victorian children use pens?

Older children learnt to write on paper. An 'ink monitor' distributed ink to the children, who used pens made out of thin wooden sticks with steel needles.  The pen had to be dipped every few words or it would run dry.

Other websites

School Life In The 1800s . Web Quest

What were Dame Schools?

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