Hi Sarah,
Excellent Local history project. The students would absolutely love this and I can see how it could be divided among groups nicely. Something that you could include in this project is the explicit teaching of group work and collaboration skills. I have found it very beneficial to get the students into their build groups and ask them to write up a set of group rules. they can then have this to hand during all future parts of the project and it will be very beneficial when it comes to resolving problems.There is a Minecraft introduction world that is preloaded in the App. I always use this when i am starting with a new class. It guides them through the basics and is very helpful. You will probably need to give the students 3 hours worth of “free play” and learning time with Minecraft before rolling out the build. Well done, a great idea for a project.