Everyday life on a Victorian farm was no picnic, finds Matt Ford
'We smell and we ache," says Alex Langlands. "It's been a huge undertaking - and it's freezing up here in winter. But it's also been a real thrill."
Adjusting to hard physical work in wild weather was not the only challenge for the team of two archaeologists and a historian who retreated to deepest Shropshire to live for a year as Victorian farmers.
"Braces were a revelation," says Langlands, one of the archaeologists. "They used to wear their trousers much higher in those days, Simon Cowell-style.
At first we were using belts - seriously uncomfortable. The switch was a godsend."
It was the urge to get out of the library and find out more about the gritty details of the "forgotten voices" of rural life 150 years ago that led the group to conduct the experiment as a follow-up to a television series shown in 2005.
Tales From The Green Valley featured the same enthusiastic trio recreating life on a 17th-century farm on the Welsh borders. Once again the year-long project has been filmed for the BBC.
With everyone dressed head-to-foot in period costume, the farm looks so convincingly like something straight from the pages of Thomas Hardy it is almost eerie. Watching their mighty 17.2-hand shire horse Clumper pulling a log through shin-deep wild garlic with Langlands at his head feels spookily close to time travel.
The experiment began in September 2007, at the start of the agricultural year, when the team prepared the fields with a horse-drawn plough and sowed a crop of wheat.
"It was backbreaking," says Langlands. "It's very easy in the books to read that they planted this or that, but to be out there hunched over the plough in all weathers tells you a lot more about what life was like. We calculated you have to walk 11 miles to plough one field."
The Victorian period was chosen for study because it represents a historical cross-roads between old and new.
"It marked the birth of modern farming," says archaeologist Peter Ginn. "Railways and canals were making the country a much smaller place and that meant huge changes. Not only could you market your products all over the country, but you could buy mass-produced tools and machines instead of relying on local craftsmen."
The Shropshire farm is portrayed as the last of a dying breed, an old-fashioned mixed farm that lies on the cusp of a brave new world, and the series explores the myriad long-lost crafts that were necessary to keep it going.
"Even a moderately sized farm would have drawn on the skills of about 180 people," says Langlands. "Every village would have had a blacksmith, a wheelwright, a wagoner and dozens of other specialised trades, most of which vanished at the end of this period.
"We wanted to delve into their lives, as well as those of labourers, and so invited a great deal of the people who are keeping those skills alive to help us out," he says.
But it wasn't just out in the fields that the period marked a break with the past. Changes on the domestic front were just as dramatic.
"The workload doubled," says historian Ruth Goodman. "And that was all down to coal."
As the population of Britain grew there was no longer enough wood for fuel, and so the nation switched to coal, changing everything, including diet, in the process.
"It brought a different lifestyle from the moment you got up until you went to bed," says Goodman. "They had to use different recipes, because many quick cooking techniques, such as frying, don't work with a coal range, so there was a shift towards boiled and bland.
"Cleaning was also much harder. Not only was the house always filthy with coal dust, but washing clothes was more difficult. Under the old system you made soap from wood ash and washed your clothes in the river. Later you had to buy soap that needed hot water to work, which took a lot longer. All this meant that women were increasingly shut up indoors."
As a result of her time spent living in the past for Tales From The Green Valley, Goodman stopped using soap in her washing machine and says the clothes come out just as clean. "We're all victims of 150 years of hype by the detergent industry," she says. "We don't need it."
She also never eats factory-farmed food and loves cooking on an open wood fire.
For Langlands, the lessons are more physical. "Come on," he says, as he bounds over stiles in search of a suitable coppice from which to make sheep hurdles. "You learn to walk quickly when you're a Victorian farmer. There's lots to do."
Victorian Farm, by Alex Langlands, is published by Pavilion Books (£20) on October 20. The television series will be shown on BBC2 this autumn.
Who's who?
Alex Langlands, 31, is an archaeologist who studied at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. His research has focused on medieval and Anglo-Saxon archaeology. He stood as a Green Party candidate in Salisbury during the last local election.
Peter Ginn, 30, is a trained archaeologist who studied with Alex Langlands at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. His research interests include Egyptology, field archaeology and primitive technologies.
Ruth Goodman is a social historian focusing on the Early Modern Period. She is a specialist in costume and domestic life, and has worked as a consultant for the Victoria & Albert museum and on films, including Shakespeare in Love.
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