How To Harvest Oats Like An Edwardian | Edwardian Farm EP12| Absolute History

[Music] here in devon in the tranquil tamar valley is a port that once bustled with industry overground farmers supplied britain's growing towns and cities with fresh produce daffodils set for london while underground miners extracted copper and precious minerals now at malwan key archaeologists alex langland and peter ginn and historian ruth goodman have gone back to the early 20th century to live the lives of edwardian farmers for a full calendar year [Music] they've not just been farming but getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth to devon oh wow last month the farmers successfully harvested cherries no one doesn't have a stalk and potatoes got to pick up every single potato then enjoyed a trip to the seaside [Music] now it's august and their time on the edwardian farm is drawing to a close just one big job remains to harvest the oats rain permitting in their quest to forecast the weather they must master old crafts that were disappearing from the edwardian countryside while looking forward to the new inventions the new discoveries and changes in society that began in edwardian britain and shaped the world we know today we are now in the 20th century [Music] back in february alex and peter sowed an oat crop in the edwardian era this would have been sold as horse feed there were more horses in edwardian britain than at any time in history so it was a lucrative crop to grow but judging exactly when to harvest them is critical once again they've called on local farmer mr mudge for advice what do you think of this oat crop it's a very good crop of ulcers yeah as well they've got a good um ear on it right got a lot of green they're on yeah don't you knock it don't paint what it is it's got a good ear on it look it's um yeah there's a there's a lot of grain here it's the weather really that is going to play havoc with it if you get some heavy downpours and the wind in that so it's actually so tall that there's a danger now of the plant the weather actually blowing it down flattening it and then of course we can't harvest it when the wind's back southwest you know it's going to rain but when it's up around the north and northeast you know you mean for a dry spell like okay so we need to look out for that change in direction yeah right and then we know we're going to get some dry weather and that's our opportunity to harvest an edwardian farmer's income relied on a successful harvest so forecasting a week without rain to first cut then dry the oats was essential observing wind direction was key a southwesterly could bring rain whereas a north easterly would indicate dry so they need a weathervane they're commissioning one made using crafts that were dying out due to mass production so this is the sort of highest apex of the farm isn't it i think it is and here's the man they've called on blacksmith simon summers good to see you what brings me up here then we've got a special job lined up for you simon yeah what's that we would like to erect a weather vane up there okay i think you're the man to make it the highest spot is it yeah pretty much it's also the most kind of obvious place in terms of visitors coming up to the farm and people being able to see it i think that's quite important as well okay well two options maybe a shy horse plowing or maybe a crawl but i think to be honest a cockerel would look quite good up there as people approach the farm coming down from the lower track yeah alex wants to base the cockrell weathervane on his prized bird sunny is that one with the last sickle feather first they must catch him looking busy he's unaware [Laughter] he is he's here he's coming around peter [Music] ah now we have him he's made his fatal mistake here [Music] peter i'm locking you in okay careful mate that's my show bird yeah i've got him brilliant right time to take your vital measurements sonny one foot and ten inches footing an inch when he's got his neck fully extended okay so we're gonna go from here that center point again out to the edge of his sickles i'd say a foot and four inches maybe okay i've got what i need i'll just go away and do some drawings full size drawings excellent yeah we look forward to seeing them yeah brilliant the market gardening enterprises have been a great success they've reaped bountiful harvests of daffodils cherries and strawberries before they leave ruth wants to ensure next year's strawberry harvest will be just as fruitful market gardening takes such a lot out of the soil you have to put something back otherwise you get a smaller and smaller crop every year so now's the time to do that there's such a lot of pressure on your farmyard manure you know there's only so much of it and you've got so much to fertilize that you can't rely just on that likewise many of the chemical fertilizers are expensive and not always as good for market gardening as they are for arable crops in these coastal areas edwardian market gardeners used seaweed as fertilizer seaweed is full of all those sort of minerals that the earth needs to be replenished with and here it's so easy to get there's the sea not very far away and the barges to bring it easily and cheaply in bulk up the river [Music] peter's come to the blacksmith's forge to meet simon where he sketched a design for the weathervane hi simon hello so you've got this i mean this effigy of sunny and you've got him leaning into the wind and then these massive tail feathers and that's just going to help him swing that's right yeah tell us which way the wind's coming yeah and he's actually lurching forward yeah you know like crowing okay and this is your reputation that's right yeah that's uh a mask of the green man repuce means beating a sheet of metal repeatedly from one side then the other to create intricate embossed figures simon's going to use this technique to make the weather vane he's one of the few who still practice the craft that's all of the artwork done now first he transfers the artwork to a copper sheet i'm just gonna bellow this so we've got a little dip in there is this this is a this lever filled with silver sand right so it's got some give in it yeah right so if we bring that onto there next simon shapes the copper to form the body of the cockerel there we are we've got the body in that little dip that i formed with the mallet if you have a look start to see it swelling out yeah so now we need to come down to this area right beating copper gradually makes it hard and brittle so every so often simon must soften it again using a technique called annealing it fires nice and hot now so we can put it on the fire right in the heart of the fire yeah and we've got to keep moving it along to get it uniform heat right and this is going to make it softer is it yeah heating then quickly cooling the metal makes it malleable again ready for more [Music] shaping ruth's travelled downriver to the coast in search of seaweed she's meeting expert forager robin harford hi ray i've come to gather some seaweed for my market garden all right have you i have indeed what sort of stuff do i need well driftweed which is what we got here actually brought up by the tides been quite stormy recently so fair amounts here and any seaweed any yeah any absolutely any seaweed that you see seaweed is rich in nitrogen and potassium essential elements for plant growth the farmers we gather it we take it up to them spread it on the land and then all he has to do is pour it in simple as that yeah no processing no organisation just straight off the beach straight on the land yeah it's quite environmentally friendly too this isn't it because it's not like you're killing anything to harvest it no and you're using driftweed which is that the dead washed up seaweeds that's come in how many people were doing it in the edwardian period was it sort of a big thing hostile communities were huge yeah well you know people were still on the land they hadn't all moved into the cities and towns for work so it was a community venture poor people you know need some money need the work oh there's an enormous patch over there i'm gonna go get started i'll see you later okay goodbye ruth's collected 10 sacks of seaweed now she must transport them back to the farm in the edwardian era this would have been done by boat thousands of tons of seaweed were transported in this way to market gardens on the banks of the river taymar now she can fertilize the harvested strawberry plants to ensure a healthy crop next year in this form it also makes a really great weed seed free mulch and of course it's cheap so the seaweed should fertilize the soil reintroduce all those nutrients that the year's cropping took out of it i keep down the weeds over the winter it'll slowly rot down releasing its goodness choking the weeds out of life so this is annealed and ready to work again that's right in the forge the copper cockrel is taking shape next simon beats it on the outside to form the feathers to give him something to hammer against he's filling the cockerel with hot pitch as we add the pitch to it now it's going to slowly melt in there and then fill that dip in and all of these bits that we've hammered out we want to fill with the pitch once the pitcher's cooled the copper sheet is flipped over that's it and then off we go let it go yep there we go there it goes now the pitch is supporting the copper simon gets on with a fine repusee work and you see it go down it does move a lot isn't that's right and we've got the pitch behind to support us yeah crafts like this were often passed down from father to son and took years to master okay and work on that area and i'm going to work over here with a similar sort of tool but by the early 20th century they were living on borrowed time i suppose in the boarding period crafts are starting to die back because you're getting mass production yeah when the war came about the first world war um we lost so many crafts men and youngsters that would have taken on those skills yeah um from their fathers i suppose it was the war that wiped out a generation of young men yeah it had a serious effect to craftsmen in our country the pitch is removed so simon can work from the inside again by repeatedly working from one side than the other he's able to bring the feathers of the cockrell into sharp relief should we have a look at that around the other side yeah there you go look you see it coming up there and we'll go taper it into there but you can see it coming out and we can push that down wind direction is not the only way edwardian farmers forecast weather a barometer measuring atmospheric pressure is also a useful indicator during the edwardian age barometers were becoming cheaper and more widely available thanks to mass production alex has come to meet philip collins to get one for the farm fantastic selection you've got here all different types when we talk about a rise and fall in air pressure does that literally equate to good and bad weather as a generalization yes normal increase in pressure over a few days will give you better weather if it decreases it'll give you worsening weather but it can be affected by wind as well so sometimes it's a change in wind direction right and this is enabling farmers then to to start to read the the weather in a way in which they probably wouldn't have been able to before the invention of this machine no i mean farmers people out in the out in the countryside have often have an ability to tell the weather from history their folklore and things handed down to them but the barometer is the first rule the main scientific way of measuring air pressure so would farmers then back in the edwardian period have had one of these i'm fairly sure that most tenant farmers would not have been able to afford a barometer such as this so someone with my size farm really i i wouldn't be able to afford one you'd be relying on a neighbour having one and if he was cutting his fields you'd go and cut your fields right well i think for your case there's another thing we could suggest right this is a an old-fashioned very tried and tested barometer and i think it would just suit your right so this really is bottom end of the market this is this is low end of the market okay so you find a jam jar of some sort glass jar yeah and a fairly long next bottle and some colored water you can use plain water but colored makes it more noticeable smaller more visual that goes in there so the air in this bottle now is sealed because it's got water around the opening okay if atmospheric pressure rises it'll press down on the surface of the liquid in the jar raising the level in the neck of the bottle this would tell the farmer that a spell of warm dry weather was likely so you have a very simple crude domestic type of barometer that probably suit your pocket for the time being i think it will do and maybe if the harvest is successful i could invest in one of these and buy a nice one [Music] it's the second week of august and the oats are beginning to ripen but it's been raining all month if this continues it could flatten the crop making it impossible to harvest here's the final drawing though peter the weather vanes progressing well but the copper work forms only part of it the cockrell must be attached to a support so it can rotate freely in the wind and this is what we've got to focus on now so we need quite a bit of iron yeah and um some charcoal be useful right for forging the iron what will charcoal do it put some like carbon content into the iron and it also gets a really good heat because we're going to have these billets of iron we've got forged right out into this section size so we've got more heat in the fire yeah that'd be ideal perfect simon wants to make iron for the weather vane in the traditional way to do this he'll need large quantities of charcoal making charcoal was a craft that was disappearing from the edwardian where that knot countryside so ruth and peter have come to get help from colin richards and mick krupa experts in rural crafts [Music] those directions must have been pretty good this is the site the charcoal burn then yes it's uh flat easy to get the wood to it and once we've cleared a space taken away all this leaf mold we can start building the clamp collins chosen a site well away from any trees once the ground is cleared they can build a charcoal fire or clamp starting with the chimney all right we're running out of peter i do have my my belt your trousers will fall down it's in a good cause the ultimate sacrifice thank you very much peter you will not go unrewarded it's very good string is this next the raw material for making charcoal seasoned oak is stacked tightly around the chimney this process of making charcoal what we actually doing to the wood well the wood is made up of cellulose and minerals that you see the trees around you they suck from the earth and those items are quite flammable they're volatile so in the process of making charcoal what we do to start with is burn those off and then once we burnt them off we try and stop the burning process that's when we starve the clamp of oxygen leaving ourselves with pure carbon by driving off the cellulose and minerals the logs will contain just carbon this is charcoal and will burn at a much higher temperature than wood this is a key moment now because we're going to cover it all up and set fire to it and then apart from control in the air there's not much we can do enclosing the wood in a soil and straw layer makes the flow of air into the fire easily controllable all we've got is tubes on the sail so you've got to be really careful with it all we need is a thin layer to cover the whole of the clamp there you go second ingredient for your mud fight nothing much just a slight dampening okay now it's time to light it there we go that's perfect a few embers what we're trying to do is get the fire going and then slow it down so that it's a cold fire and so you get a lot more chemicals in the wood actually occupying the smoke and that's why it's important not to breathe it in so i suppose you need fuel heat and oxygen to make a fire yeah and we're reducing the oxygen yeah which reduces the heat which preserves some of the fuel which will be charcoal in the end yeah as the fire in here heats up it's obviously everything's starting to shrink as it dries out and the moisture is driven off so this outside layer of mud is cracking where the cracks appear smoke starts coming out and that's a bad thing because that means air can get in so we've just got to keep covering all these little smoke holes so that we can control our fire we're now getting sort of heat into the clamp and what we're burning off there are the gases colin's watching the clamp closely looking for signs that the cellulose and minerals have burnt off then he blocks off the chimney to restrict the air slowing the burn we're bridging over the clamp now with these timbers so that we can put a covering on which will actually choke the fire the fire must smoulder for five days and nights until the wood is completely carbonized into charcoal the team are here for the long haul so it's time to set up a sturdy shelter i think that's in now peter cool can you hang off a bit let's see if i can hang off it oh are we going the other way now peter oh right well it's certainly strong enough to take the canvas i think and now we've got our ridge pole up just putting a canvas over and this is going to be our shelter for the next five days as we watch and tend the charcoal clamp [Music] this is how charcoal burners would have lived moving from site to site through the woods and you know it was permanent occupation and there are many accounts of people raising you know sort of about eight kids in the shelter no bigger than this [Music] you don't often get a chance to build a camp at my age so always love getting out in the sticks properly living under canvas [Music] as night falls and they settle into life on the camp it's time for some sustenance devon pot cake it's cheap it's filling and it's really easy to do on a fire flour with some fat rubbed in as if it was pastry and then i'll be adding some eggs and milk and then whatever fruit you can find and cook it in a pot this is a real cooking in the woods sort of a recipe this is tinkers and gypsies and charcoal burners next trout cooked on a shovel look at that instant sear a piece of devin pot cake oh thank you very much delicious i know it's got fruit on it's not really pudding do you want fish with it this is the clean shovel not the dung shovel not the dung shovel thunderbar there we go bit of fish thank you delicious ruth could you ask for more look we're very close to the end of the year how are we going to go out we're going to go out with a bang or a whimper whimper that you may cry yourself to sleep every night peter but some of us want to do something to mark the end of our year what do you think we should do well a fatal something yeah a big fate all the latest equipment they would have had in the edwardian period the future yeah the future edwardian summer fates were usually held after the harvest when farmers had money in their pockets village fairs and agricultural shows weren't just about having fun they were also a place where salesmen could show off the very latest advances in farming technology at the forge simon's working day and night to get the copper cockrell finished so far it's taken him 120 hours this is the most rewarding bit for me the finishing touches the detail yeah you can actually actually looks like sonny now [Music] back at the camp colin's preparing to make iron for the weather vane to do this he's building a primitive furnace in the edwardian period there was a great shortage of iron and in this area a number of skills survived into the modern age you had iron ore and if you wanted iron you could actually make it in what is essentially a very primitive furnace what an ancient technology but i mean was this still going on in the boarding period well in these rural areas skills survived for generations beyond which they were almost obsolete or extinct in the cities because what you didn't have quite often was money [Music] and if you had the raw materials which they had down here then you could always get yourself out of a fix [Music] iron is found naturally in a rock called iron ore to extract the metal from the oar it must be heated in the furnace to 1200 degrees celsius to achieve this they must burn the charcoal this is the acid test five days four nights without sleep and you know we need to know whether we got good charcoal digging through the layer of strawn soil the charcoal is revealed this is what we've been looking for all that time wow that is burnt right through and is pure carbon black black gold gently lit up whoa and that's the iron ore going in yeah but that that's the raw material yeah that's right yeah what exactly is going on in there now well we we've got the iron ore which is um fusing together but we need that last little boost to get it up to temperature to get it up you know 1200 degrees so that we've got a workable bloom of iron to make the charcoal burn even hotter air is blown into the furnace using edwardian bellows a backbreaking job that falls to peter simon's come to the camp to supervise the iron making while the furnace gets up to temperature he's got something to show them there's a lot of hours gone into it and with peter's help this is what we've come up with wow i'll make the two oh my word look at that now it's amazing simon how you've got that relief there god it's so thick as well i mean it's not like a thin sort of foil of metal that's really chunky i can see the wind catching this and catching the feathers yeah the feathers are just going to be like uh sows of a boat so he crows into the wind he crows into the wind which is going to help us tell which way the wind's blowing and what weather's going to come for our harvest so excellent next i need the iron guys for the pivot yeah after the copper the arms for the letters for the north south east west yeah and then some lovely graceful scrolls to support those arms inside the furnace the charcoal has been burning for 10 hours raising the temperature of the iron to melting point you can see you know the the heat that's needed to get it to this stage i can feel the heat and hear the raw charcoal yes now the molten iron must be extracted using the most basic of methods basically one at the time but gentle bloating okay in theory the molten metal inside the oar should all stick together like toffee while the waste material known as slag breaks away but it soon becomes clear there's something not quite right so running through what just happened there it's just crumbling there's not enough pureness on there isn't it at the moment we'd be hard pushed to make a typing yeah pollen thinks the iron ore wasn't hot enough so it's back in the furnace to get it even hotter what sort of pressure should i be putting on his tongue just yeah just keep them now that is just a completely different material it's it's a lot spongier isn't it kind of like getting the good bits to stick together right stockton and it's working isn't it it's working essentially we've taken a raw material from the hillside having done this burn we've produced enough charcoal then to reduce that raw material to a workable and malleable material in itself that we'll be able to use for this weather vane that's right once we've actually got all the waste product out of this yeah then we can actually forge it into any shape now they've worked out the method they must produce enough for the weathervane [Music] back at the forge simon's worked the iron into rods now he's using the charcoal to heat it ready to make the support for the weather vane and how's this charcoal going it's really good no we're getting the heat quick in there obviously we've had to break the charcoal down quite a bit because it's quite you know big chunks i mean is charcoal good for working metal yeah very good you don't need much air going into the fire not so much as you do for car or coke but you can get the heat in very quickly for charcoal now we just got to get on with the scroll now and we just start to curve it off the edge of the anvil and i'm brushing it with a hammer just gently brushing it down it's really thin and then that's it knocking it towards me and just gently elevate here's the start of the scroll in the field the oats are ripe and ready to be harvested but the rain keeps coming and if they're left too long they'll rot the farmers need to predict a week without rain so they can first cut then dry the crop the cockerel 2 is turning golden as simon puts the finishing touches to his masterpiece i can see little flakes of gold moving as you took the brush i'm just going to do from his cheek right just first he coats the copper with glue then gently applies the gold leaf using static electricity what you have to do is be very careful with the static because that's the most important thing and i'm getting a static from my stubble on my face you're using body made static as your sort of lifting as a magnet yeah and it's incredible isn't it because i mean this gold leaf still is beaten by hand that's right yeah it's actually approximately four millionth of an inch thick and it's it's going to protect the weather vein i mean this is making like a complete seal isn't it yeah it's like a membrane of gold around the whole item and it's going to catch the sun look proud to be there and um yeah and it's not going to corrode you know finally the weathervane is ready to take pride of place at the farm perfect that's everything timekeeping up the name good all right you be careful i will i don't think he was ever in the boy scouts you know if he was he didn't pay much attention ye are you happy with that pete no but it'll do okay i've got it this might be the first cock-up we've seen this year peter it won't be the last do you need a hand up there yes please alex nice soft goodman mattress to land on if i slip you can trust my ladders peter just need to lift it up here a little bit higher yep okay [Music] right if you hold it there okay just slide it on yep wow give it a spin [Laughter] [Music] oh there it is yeah it's showing us the way the wind's blowing yeah which is in the direction of don't harvest your oats yet that looks fantastic from down here fantastic what's your tribute to the craftsmen and women of britain yeah definitely drink to that [Music] yeah august has been a washout the worst possible weather for harvesting oats but now they've got all the tools they need to predict a dry spell [Music] that's definitely going up so we should have some good weather alex is looking for a rise in pressure with his homemade barometer peter's keeping an eye on the wind direction and ruth's got her own method this is my granny's way of telling the weather a bit of seaweed hanging outside i forget high humidity it goes all slimy for the past few days the atmospheric pressure's been high and the wind's been blowing from the northeast this should guarantee a period of dry weather so the team have decided to harvest the oats this afternoon rather than relying on horsepower the team are turning to petrol power they'll be using a machine invented in the edwardian age that was to revolutionize farming the tractor [Music] engineer david white and farmer harry williams have brought along the mogul how fast does it go then it actually goes the speed of a walking horse which is three miles an hour right just as one single speed forward it does have a benefit of a reverse gear for maneuvering these were like the earliest attempts of mechanizing farming but within 10 years a tractor will be recognizable as a as you see a modern tractor right the tractor's pulling a reaper binder one of the most important agricultural machines of the age mr mudge used this one as a boy and it hasn't been used for half a [Music] century [Music] first it cuts the oats then ties them into sheaves but after a promising start it all goes a bit haywire just setting this knotter it's just causing us so many problems the knotter the device that ties the oats into sheaves has jammed this light isn't tied at all i mean some of the others have got some string holding them in places but this lots just being chucked out it finally worked out that it's the where it comes out of the drum it's just pinching string and that's just stopping coming through which means it just snaps we don't get this right such a sensitive piece of kit you know that's it might as well do it by hand the harvest has attracted the attention of cinematographer chris davis and producer david upshur the first purpose-built cinema in britain was built in 1907. by 1914 there were over three thousand so there are a lot of little film camera crews out and about nedwardian britain more than you thing the thing that's really happening in britain is is the kind of beginnings of a documentary mark here i've realized that people are fascinated with seeing real events being able to see the king the queen the prime minister and also seeing themselves people are absolutely fascinated with seeing themselves you've got a handle on the side of this camera does that mean you actually have to wind it absolutely it was the only means of turning the film around yes and you had to do it at a steady pace and it should have been 15 frames a second but different cameramen would do it at different speeds and sometimes if the projectionist did it in another different speed it would change the look together yes you could make them go faster or slower because there was no electric motor until later on it was all done by hand [Music] after some adjustments the reaper binders back in action cutting and binding the oats into sheaves but precious times been lost [Music] the thing is it's five past four it's taken us this long to get this far we've waited for the weather and really we've only got another four and a half hours of sunlight if the weather doesn't of course turn [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and there we are the perfect sheave of oats we finally we think we've got there we've done a couple of clean runs we haven't got choked up we're tying nicely the sun has come out it's going down but it's come out so half the battle is won [Music] this is the side of the boys way back at the beginning i hope it's all right i have a little one so it's an interesting color yeah this is proper scrumpy flopper being a tank driver i think that's a fine scrumpy that is how about you mr mudge we'll ever barrel from one now and take it on with us well we've got 300 points the oats will be left in the field for a week to dry before being stored in the barn with the harvest done now they can look forward to the village fate alex ruth and peter's time on the edwardian farm is drawing to a close so it's time to say goodbye to the livestock for me this is the the end of the poultry year i've brought on the next generation doubled the size of the flock doubled egg production as well so it's been a success and i'm so pleased with these fellas brilliant they're also saying goodbye to the edwardian way of life that they've experienced for the past year i've really felt this year so much of an empathy for people involved in the day-to-day fight for life [Music] for all its romanticism for all it's looking back on the past the day-to-day realities of edwardian life in the countryside are hard really hard it's the day of the summer fate when the edwardian age ended with the first world war in 1914 it left a legacy of innovations such as the aeroplane that would go on to shape the 20th century [Music] like the latest in mechanized farming equipment they were also a place to have fun and spend money after the hard work of the harvest [Applause] once raucous and drunken affairs by the edwardian age pressure from landowners and the church have turned them into respectable well-ordered events mr mudge has guided them all year through their farming put those on there alex has threshed some of their oats to remove the grain so mr munch can examine them if you can blow them out of your hand it won't be a good sample but you can't blow them around i don't think it's a good sample of all that we've done very well right you know steve steve have you got a uh a glass of cider for mr much please say francis get you to test our cider and that'll be the acid test of whether we're proper south west farmers i think there you go to the man i think it's a big thank you and cheers good job good starter makers and good farmers all the way around look like it to me you've done a very good job [Music] [Applause] by the end of the edwardian age reliable petrol-powered machines were appearing on farms engineers transported their latest models around agricultural shows to encourage farmers to invest having experienced first hand the advantage of harvesting by machine alex is demonstrating the very latest in farming motive power please gather round to marvel at some of the innovations of the age the victorian age had introduced steam power now the edwardian age introduced petrol power first and foremost we have the agricultural motor a quarter of the size of a steam engine with twice the power it was the dawn of a new industrial age of farming that would flourish throughout the 20th century engineer fred lister is demonstrating how quickly they could thresh oats to remove the grain from the crop we are now in the 20th century we have moved on well we used to use a flail or a dresser we now have a machine to do this for us you would require four or five men working all day to produce what that produces in about two hours if you'd please step back because we have one of the newest and most innovative machines ever to enter into british agriculture fred's father produced one of the most celebrated agricultural machines of the age the lister static engine this engine performs the work of at least five horses you see how a small tank of this new fuel petrol can help us to innovate on the farm no bales of hay are needed to feed an army of horses mr lester can you see a time when there will no longer be horses on the farm yes i'm afraid i can the horse is going to be a thing of the past working on the farm you have seen the beginnings of a new mechanized age in agriculture the internal combustion engine has finally arrived at the british farm thank you very much the edwardian age also saw profound changes in society [Music] we are in a crisis men are making laws for women in total ignorance of what women themselves actually want suffragettes campaigned for women's votes at events across britain beat men for endurance every time yeah women of devon but despite an increasingly militant campaign it wouldn't be until 1928 that women finally got the same voting rights as men this moment help us to win a great victory and then you will not have lived in vain [Applause] there was an entertainment revolution too from the deep south of america came a new dance that swept through britain's music halls choreographer caroline hines is introducing it to the fate this is greatness what's it called it's called the cakewalk yeah and it was a dance that was done on plantations in the south in america it really sort of seems a bit like a comedy dance it has that element of parody about it well it is in effect they were mimicking the mannerisms of their white masters so everything would be exaggerated so just a simple brush down would become a big push of the legs everything would be going the thing about the cake walk and the original thing about the cakewalk was it was competing so it was one plantation against another plantation and the prize was a cake it quickly took off over here and became one of the most popular dance crazes in edwardian britain even king edward vii was rumored to have had private cakewalk lessons at the palace [Music] it's the final day on the edwardian farm just one job remains to store the harvested oats in the barn horses are so versatile i know i mean the tractors in the field are great aren't they but once you're on rough ground like this the horse is still good such a lot of uses exactly there's no faster way of getting in your last load of arsenal just before it starts raining oh look at it ominous mechanization of the countryside and the demise of village crafts were hastened by one of the most devastating events of the 20th century [Music] it would bring the golden age of edwardian britain to a brutal end the first world war it was harvest time in august 1914 when war was declared professor alan howkins has studied its impact on the countryside everybody thought it was going to be a short war over by christmas over by christmas yes everybody said and so people didn't really think about that but there was a call for volunteers and that call we're told was that met massively interestingly in the country districts it was a bit different you're gathering your oats in august 1914 a harvest was the absolutely essential part of the year to farmer it was where he made his money for the farm worker it was often taken by the peace so you earn probably twice as much a week in your harvest as you did at the rest of the year yep i mean it must have been a sense of priorities here not everyone could run off to war here and plenty of farmers didn't want their men to go they couldn't just let them go no matter how patriotic or wonderful it was so the rush to join up was not as obvious particularly in country districts as people say it was it wasn't only men that were called to war horses were too michael moore pergo wrote the novel war horse about the experience of a farm horse going to war right at the beginning of the war when the army came to the villages all over the country the farmers often sold them because they were paying good money and the army really needed horses that's for sure but also they would sometimes sequester horses they would um say well we're having that horse anyway whether you like it or not it was a hard and cruel life for four years if they survived so you needed to pull ambulances you needed to pull guns ammunition wagons because i think they thought mechanized stuff was going to come it just didn't come fast enough and besides which it gets bogged down doesn't it i mean if there aren't really horrible pictures of both men and horses up to here in mud so many men and horses drowned in mud it's estimated half a million horses died in the great war very few came back they suffered exactly as the men suffered the awful thing was that even if they survived those terrible four years right at the end of the war when it was all over they only brought sixty thousand horses home well if you reckon that over a million went and sixty thousand came home the truth is many many of them were sold off to butchers in northern france for speed after all they've done the edwardian age would become known as a golden age perhaps in the light of the horrors that followed it i don't believe the first football left anybody untouched no people like my grandmother who lost a husband and a brother-in-law two brothers out of three killed to her the world before the war when she talked in her old age was a much much better place and yes you could say oh that's golden ageism well in some ways it is but in some ways it was a golden age because your husband was alive your brother-in-law was alive you know that impact that personal impact just came to my mind can never ever be overestimated it's an absolutely fundamental fact [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] bye chaps it's your history it's over for the horse it's a big shame countryside's going to be a noisy place [Music] come on oh well i'm winter that woods after a year at malwan key it's time to leave edwardian britain for good i suppose really it's become understandable for me that in light of what happened in the great war that people did look back on that period um with maybe roast into spectacles and did think about when sons and fathers were around and happy days spent in sort of endless summers i know i am never going to read anything about the edwardian era in the same light again it will always come now with this great sort of freight of emotion and an experience [Music] the farm itself is just a series of buildings and land i mean that's that's one thing the people who've taken us into their their homes and taught us their skills and it's those relationships we've formed they're going to be the hardest things to leave behind we're removing ourselves from this community [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 660,493

Keywords: Absolute History, Edwardian advancements, Edwardian cinema, Edwardian farming, Edwardian innovations, agricultural machinery, antique weather instruments, crop harvesting, educational history videos, farming challenges, farming lifestyle, farming traditions, historical documentaries, historical documentations, nostalgia farming techniques, old-fashioned farming, traditional crop harvesting, traditional crops, vintage agriculture, vintage farming

Id: z9Ds5m1G1ZI

Length: 58min 17sec (3497 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020