Fill Your Battlefields Tour: English and History together !
Do you ever face the challenge of not quite having enough students to make a trip viable? It’s a familiar story. At TCBC, we know that getting the numbers can sometimes be the hardest part of organising a school tour. That’s why we’ve designed our cross-curricular Battlefields Tours, giving you the chance to combine History and English students on one unforgettable trip. It’s a practical way to boost numbers — and a unique opportunity to show students how history and literature sit side by side on the Western Front.
Literature, Legacy and Myth
World War One is not only history. It’s also poetry, prose, and art — voices of men and women trying to make sense of unimaginable experiences. On a TCBC tour, we help bring those voices to life by linking key sites around Ypres to the poets, writers, and artists who captured them.
Lijssenthoek Cemetery – Once the site of a military hospital, this cemetery offers the chance to explore Vera Brittain’s writing, the diversity of the fallen, and the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg. It’s also a place to consider Rudyard Kipling’s role in shaping remembrance.
Essex Farm (CWGC) – Here, your students can discover the story of John McCrae and his famous poem In Flanders Fields.
Menin Gate Memorial – Each evening, the Last Post Ceremony remembers the fallen. It’s the perfect place to talk about Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen and the words of the Exhortation that still resonate today.
Artillery Wood Cemetery – The resting place of two of the Great War’s most famous poets: Francis Ledwidge and Hedd Wyn.
Broadening Perspectives
A cross-curricular tour also opens up discussions beyond the British experience.
Langemark German Cemetery – A sombre reminder of the German losses on the Western Front. Here, you might introduce All Quiet on the Western Front, its anti-war message, and how it was later banned by the Nazis, even as Hitler used Langemark in his propaganda.
Tyne Cot Cemetery – The largest Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in the world, where poets J. E. Stewart, E. F. Wilkinson and W. R. Hamilton are commemorated. It’s an opportunity to explore the role of poetry as both art and communication during wartime.
Life in the Trenches & the Art of War
Trench life is one of the most powerful subjects to bring alive for both historians and literature students.
Hooge Crater Museum & Trench Visit – Here, trench conditions and medical care are vividly illustrated. It’s the ideal setting to connect with war poetry or works such as Pat Barker’s Regeneration, which explores the mental health of returning soldiers.
Hill 60 & Caterpillar – A key battlefield where mining took place, but also a site linked to the war artist Paul Nash, whose painting Hill 60 depicts the experience as a kind of hell. For English students, it’s a natural point of connection to Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong.
Refuge at Talbot House
Not every site tells a story of combat. Talbot House in Poperinge offered soldiers a place of refuge, where rank was left at the door and men could write letters, share tea, or simply rest. Today it’s a living museum — and a reminder that even in war, there was space for humanity, creativity, and calm.
Why Travel with TCBC?
At TCBC, we’ve been specialising in school Battlefields Tours for over 20 years. We know the sites, the stories, and how to bring them alive for students. Our tours are:
Bespoke and flexible – tailored to the needs of your History and English departments.
Personalised – if students have family connections to the Great War, we can include a visit to specific memorials.
Trusted – 99.9% of teachers who travel with us recommend us and book again.
Recognised – we’re proud to be a finalist in the School Travel Awards 2025.
"I would definitely recommend TCBC for its reliability, for its flexibility and how personal the trips are. There's nothing you can't ask them" Rebecca Lothian, Cheadle Hulme School.
Most importantly, your students will stand where writers, poets, and artists once stood — experiencing the past through both a historian’s and a writer’s lens.
One Tour, Two Departments
With a TCBC cross-curricular Battlefields Tour, you don’t have to choose between History and English. You can bring them together in a way that makes sense for your timetable, your students, and your budget — while giving young people a deeper, richer understanding of the First World War.