How To Renovate A Victorian Cottage | Victorian Farm EP1 | Absolute History

here in shropshire is a farm that's frozen in time lost in victorian rural england now a unique project will bring it back to life as it would have been in the 1880s such an amazing piece of connectivity ruth goodman alex langlands and peter ginn are taking up the challenge of living as victorian farmers for a full calendar year from the depths of winter to the warmth of summer they'll wear the clothes eat the food and experience the day-to-day life of rural victorians they'll rear victorian breeds of animals they really are that's the first one you've actually delivered is it alex hello sweeties they'll grow crops fingers crossed i'll get it right and i won't look like too much of an idiot and get to grips with the crafts and skills of the age this was a time of agricultural revolution in britain but the industrialization of farming would wipe out centuries of traditional skills thankfully there are a select few who still keep them alive this is going to encourage the tree to fall in the direction we want it to go that's certainly the theory with their help the team are about to turn back the clock to rediscover a lost world [Music] but first before winter sets in they must restore their dilapidated farm cottage i've never used anything like this so crops using only horsepower whilst dealing with the perennial problem of the british weather unfortunately it's just not working out for us today the problem is is it's just so wet and take charge of livestock learning shepherding skills the hard way a nightmare this isn't bode well for the year they'll be getting to grips with every aspect of life on the victorian farm [Music] it's the first of september ruth alex and peter arrive at their victorian farm this is the way to travel isn't it ruth goodman specializes in domestic history she'll run the cottage and be responsible for the dairy and poultry the victorian period is a really really interesting moment in history it's a time of most enormous social change there's new ways of feeding ourselves there's new ways of clothing ourselves there's new ways of housing ourselves there's new ways of transporting ourselves you know we all base our modern living on the things that came out of this great turmoil and experimentation what's in this one oh this is mostly cooked archaeologist alex langlands will be responsible for growing crops and rearing the animals it's about getting up first thing in the morning and coming in you know when the sun goes down it's about spending the time outside it's about eating fresh ingredients growing your own ingredients i mean it really is about going back to a way of life that i think many people today would love the opportunity to do ginn also an archaeologist is keen to get to grips with the steam and horsepower technology of the era we all know about the big events in history i want to know about the day-to-day living within that context there are massive changes in industry and also there are massive changes in agriculture because it's such a moment of change you've got the old and the new sitting right alongside each other so you've got ancient crafts that are almost unchanged for a millennia sitting right alongside a time of mass production [Music] their farm is on the acton-scott estate which stretches across one and a half thousand acres of shropshire countryside it's been home to thomas stackhouse acton's family since 12 55. mr acton is a victorian farming enthusiast and has spent his life collecting old agricultural tools and machinery his son rupert manages the estate and will be their land agent for the year ahead goodness just a bit daunted yeah you ring the bell first stop for the farmers is acton scott hall [Music] hello hello nice to meet you how are you very good indeed hi i'm i'm peter peter nice to meet you hello hello and i'm alex yes excellent hello hello this is little florence hello she's rather shy in the victorian age this was a busy working farm with 15 acres of land it was abandoned 50 years ago but little has changed here for a century oh it's quite a sight isn't it i'm afraid oh wow look at that these barns will be home to their cows horse and pigs needs a bit of a clean he's going to need a bit of a clean isn't it yeah home to 100 spiders although abandoned long ago amazingly the victorian water pump still works i spent many happy hours here as a child pumping water for the for the cattle above the cow shed is the tool loft untouched for decades now be very very careful there's a good range of tools oh fantastic this one is a castrating knife i think that's definitely a boy job and it's it's you know it's a milking stool no other stool is that high i mean it's absolutely perfect isn't it all has three legs yeah exactly there's some horse medication up here as well you've thought of everything it's not still in there wow now the bottle still seals the one minute cure for gripes or threat in horses oh my gosh it's still sealed oh flipping egg wow there's so much here so much to take in this place is amazing it's almost like it was left yesterday yeah well okay a long slightly rusty yesterday time capsule that we've just uncovered with everything here we've just got to get it back in shape make it easier to get to the door the team will not just be farming but also living cooking and eating like rural victorians yes rupert has found them a small farm workers cottage uninhabited since the 1950s i believe one of these keys fits this door but i'm not quite sure which one it is oh wow fantastic in need of a bit of work i'm afraid i take it this can't have been lived in for quite a while no it hasn't been lived in for 50 years 50 years at the heart of the victorian cottage is the coal range this was the way most people cooked until the 1920s when gas and electricity began to replace coal it's not only essential for cooking but provides hot water and heats the house but this range is in a sorry state i'm gonna have to get this sorted absolutely first thing you're just not going to do anything until we've got a decent range i mean the rest we can live without but we can't live without the range i'm worried about cooking on a coal range i've never done it before so that's going to be quite an important thing for me because if i can't crack it we're going to eat horrible food all year which is not very nice so shall i show you upstairs show you where you'll be billeted although dilapidated the cottage is structurally sound no it's not too bad up here i think it's pretty good he says a good shot of the dead birds and the wind itself right that's it moving in soon as possible guiding the farmers through the year ahead is the celebrated book of the farm by henry stevens first published in 1844 this kind of book i mean it's it's absolutely priceless and it gives you a breakdown about essentially everything you would need to do throughout the year and it also gives you the science behind it as well all types of breeds i mean there's literally absolutely everything here what is most interesting about these publications though is their mixture of the old and the new it often refers to sort of ancient ways of doing things but without quite knowing the exact science behind it this was the bible for farmers coming to terms with the industrialization of farming in the 19th century it's also got the new as well some of the sort of cutting edge technology of the time and i'm just looking here at some of this um ploughing with a steam engine with these huge cumbersome steam engines but seem to be and it says here absolute cutting-edge technology [Music] turning this theory into practice will be an enormous challenge one of the tasks i've been trusted with throughout the project is going to be sort of managing our arable concern it's it's really a part of the project where i just can't afford to fail and of course for farmers back in the late 19th century it's just not an option you know really really anxious about it but at the same time really excited the farm has three acres of arable land on some of it they hope to grow a cereal crop like wheat or barley at the moment the fields covered in grass so first it must be plowed to return it to bare earth guiding alex is britain's most award-winning ploughman jim elliott hi jim oh yeah there are these lovely fellas then this is lion he's an eight-year-old shire right and uh this is prince he's a 13 year old irish draft and they work well together then yeah yeah they do so what do you think of the field then jim field looks fine um quite a bit of grass on but we should be able to plow it down and put a bit of fertility into the soil you're confident yeah as long as there's no big stones good i'm glad you're confident your back prince chewbacca oh whoa whoa slowly now this really is your money maker and this is really important especially for a farm of our size you've really got to turn out a good cereal crop because that's really that's where you're going to get your cash [Music] during the 19th century the population of britain grew from 10 million to 40 million to feed the masses agriculture had to undergo a revolution by industrializing simple wooden plows used for centuries were superseded by high-tech iron machines leading the market were ransoms of ipswich in the 1840s they came up with this the yorkshire light so great was the design it was still being manufactured a century later [Music] fantastic bit of kit this is the ransom's plow and this is one of these mass-produced plows what you have in our in the sort of earlier period early 19th century is you've still got your wooden plows and they're being made in local workshops but with ransoms mass-produced and they're being sent out to all over the country so you'll be using one of these north of scotland all the way down south of england these high-tech plows revolutionized arable farming the earth was plowed to a consistent depth improving the quality of the land and increasing the crop yield but in much the same way that you see a modern tractor come on prince it's got all sorts of gadgets on it you know hydraulics levers all sorts of it's very much the same here having to adjust everything just by very very small fractions of inches at the cottage ruth and peter are beginning the restoration let's get rid of these birds first [Music] the first job is to clean the bedroom it's in a pretty neglected state this room um the walls the plaster's there mostly but if we just start at the top and just take it as slowly as we can down this has been 50 years with dust 50 years of spiders 50 years of an insect and animal paradise so yeah it's absolutely filthy this is i think a much bigger job than i thought initially as they remove half a century of dust the state of the plaster becomes clear this pasta's not as good as i thought it was it's going to take quite a bit well if it needs to come off it needs to come off i think the more we look the more we're finding we're going to have to do downstairs in the kitchen there's an even more pressing issue the range so this is henley cottage and this is our range i don't know what you think about it peter's called on paul arrowsmith an expert in victorian building yes could be repaired but it's a big job not worth it it's very small opening now do you need to do much cooking we need to do a fair bit of cooking yes all right i don't know i'm not sure if this is actually the original fireplace because we've obviously got this here on the adjacent wall is evidence of a fireplace bricked up long ago only the wooden lintel is visible it's a lot bigger area so i'm sure it goes back further so you can get a much bigger range in i suppose the only way to find out is actually to get rid of some of this stuff the old range will be discarded and a new bigger range installed here peter is hoping that beyond the rubble the chimney will still be intact [Music] any cottage hasn't been used for 50 years and moreover this is a bricked up chimney so this is all rubble that has been used to fill up this fireplace when it was abandoned and moved across to there to burn the range draws air from the room out through the chimney but if the chimney is blocked the air won't flow so the coal won't burn when they block this chimney up um they've capped it with a stone so that we can still use the fireplace in the bedroom above at the moment that stone is lingering precariously up that chimney so they're trying to force it down so it doesn't fall on us while we're working upstairs in the bedroom paul's attempting to shift the offending stone it's [Music] once the rubble's cleared the chimney is revealed in all its glory you can see the shape tapering as it goes up to draw the smoke up we've had a shoe come out of here and um a salt hole here i mean these houses would have been damp this is one of the few places you could keep your salt dry so it would still be granulated we're going to sweep the chimney with these drainage rods well as you can see this is just the beginning i think there's going to be tons and tons of debris coming down got all the birds nests out of there and you can see daylight just waiting for the range now in the fields alex's early optimisms turned to gloom and what we're finding at this end of the field is that we've got a lot of boulders here a lot of stones and what's happening is the share is hitting these stones and it's kicking the plow out if it's a bit wetter you see it could just roll it over the ground is just quite you know quite dry right um we have it rain overnight but i don't know if it's gone in but it's been dry for yeah two months almost that's going to create real problems here yeah it it'll the photo won't want to roll off smoothly it'll want to break in lumps that might be our worst concern but we'll have to give it a try i'm slowly losing confidence here jim no no there's not many all the many problems you're pointing out alex is coming to terms with the challenges that faced the victorian farmer failure of a wheat crop back in the victorian period would spell disaster for any farmer i mean it really would be a case of of going from sort of struggling to get by to being to being broke essentially and you might even find yourself and your family in the work house i've got to have a gun myself because obviously farmer of my stature would know how to plow back in the late 19th century so i'm a bit anxious here because if i [ __ ] this up then jim's got a lot of work to do to rectify it all i want you to do is keep the footer wheel up against this edge here walk on good boy right um keep the land wheel on the ground yeah you can put a little bit of pressure on the right hand handle and that helps turn the fur better but as long as this wheel doesn't come off the ground unless you'll lose your depth how's it doing jimmy you're doing fine yeah you're inside no no you don't i'll still tell you if you're not i don't look at my handiwork it's fine we'll catch it on the way around yeah it's just mesmerizing watching it turn over dead enough victorian farmers plowed an acre a day walking 11 miles from dawn till dusk but the work is backbreaking after a couple of hours alex is exhausted [Music] thank you and the dry stony ground is adding to his woest oh my father used to say that um hard work never killed anyone it made them into gay queer shapes so i suppose a lifetime play went like that you know and out in all weathers as well you know [Music] at the cottage the chimney is clear and two flues have been built ready for the range to be fitted [Music] peter parker and steve powell are victorian range experts and have restored a hundred-year-old model we're just sizing up the oven to make sure that it actually fits within the the opening that's been made for us but there's a snag the fluids have already been put in um and they're they're too far forward which means that the oven is protruding in front of the brickwork which is going to make it a bit of a problem while adjustments are made to the flues peter and ruth set out to forage for fruit on the acton-scott estate [Music] this is real hunter-gatherer stuff isn't it yeah absolutely and this is this has been a staple of people's throughout the ages thousands of years it's probably why it makes you feel so good isn't it i mean i always feel happy when i'm doing something like this it always lifts my spirit so if you think of the toil that's put into the fields like a yeah of a blessing isn't it luxury in life yeah what are you what are your plans for the slows mostly gin good to hear i think we've got danson's here this bounty of free fruit will only last days unless it's preserved a job that requires a kitchen and a range after a few alterations to the flues the range is fitted and ready to be blacked we're putting graphite onto the car style to help protect protect it from rusting and it gives us a nice sheen and usually the housewives would do this the the young ladies of the house i'm saying that because we we don't want to get pressurized into doing this sort of thing at home do we see ruth's keen to try out the range as soon as possible but first she needs some fuel ruth and peter head to the nearby shropshire union canal to collect a cart load of coal [Music] building britain's canals was one of the biggest engineering projects the country has ever seen by the eighteen fifties over four thousand miles of waterways had been dug transporting thirty million tons of freight a year [Music] this shropshire narrowboat saturn was restored by tony luery in a group of enthusiasts and is the last of its kind wow what a boat beautiful boats the best just the best we've we've come to pick up some coal from you i'm just going to take it over yeah what sort is it the boat is a shropshire union boat built as a build of the fly boat fly boat non-stop bow meaning going day and night with changing the horses along the way these boats were the creme de la creme really so they were built smaller they were built slimmer and they went very well indeed so it's a very graceful boat do you want to handle the coal i certainly do how many times have you won uh we've just had a range fitted in our cottage well you're gonna need most of this for the win today we're gonna need a fair bit yeah i mean this stuff changed the entire world didn't it it did and the canola helped it really because yeah until the canals came along and travelling coal you know in bulk for long distances was impossibly expensive yeah as soon as the canals came suddenly you could deliver 20 tonnes at a time with relative ease and they just everything burgeoned then yeah everything you know we're used to the idea of cold changing industry but it changes farming it changes food it changes laundry it changes the way you breathe in your house it changes everything canals were one of the principal communication networks of britain and the industrial revolution but it also enabled farmers to move produce across britain yeah they're essentially linked farms so allow them to specialise yeah that's a really good point isn't it be able to choose you know which is most commercially viable is it better to be growing grain or is it better to be growing dairy and whether you've got a canal or a railway in your area is going to be one of the factors that suddenly makes you make that decision isn't it because it's the industrialization of farming in a city [Music] transportation opened up wider markets for farmers enabling them to specialize in one product like dairy crops or meat for the first time it created a national food economy [Music] it's late september the plowing has taken alex twice as long as he hoped but finally the job's done next he must decide what crop to sow [Music] in the cottage peters stripped the walls back to bear stone now he must learn how to plaster and ruth's about to light the range for the first time under the guidance of range fitters peter and steven to give you a surprise okay let's hope you like it [Music] what do you think about that i swear it comes straight from the factory wouldn't you wow so let's hope it's going to work as well oh dear [Music] wrong and i'm going to be an idiot no i don't think you will be well we'll see ruth's collected kindling in wood to get the coal going now i'm getting excited now and a little bit worried as to when that will work first time here we go [Music] oh yes that's a bit more like it you're happy with that that looks good doesn't it i am a pyromaniac it's fire's lovely and hot now and kettle's nearly boiling cooking on coal is is so different um it's not something that i've done before and i know that it has the most enormous impact on what you can cook would smoke taste nice coal smoke however tastes foul it's sort of acidy and sulfurous in the old way of cooking on wood you would be almost encouraging smoke to come round your open food but on coal you really want to stop that you want no smoke whatsoever and you're trying to make sure that you've got as much separation between food and fuel coal revolutionized cooking and recipe books were rewritten for the new fuel roasting on a spit went out and oven roasting came in i don't know that i'm going to get it right for quite a while it's going to take me off the air to practice maybe by the end of the year i'll be quite good coal also revolutionized farming and nothing symbolizes the agricultural revolution more than this the threshing machine [Music] in the victorian age these steam-powered machines moved from farm to farm threshing wheat removing the valuable grain from the plant i'm just looking at our bible the book of the farm and once again henry stevens is quick to inform us about what we should be doing here as the incoming tenants there'd be certain jobs that we'd have to do and one of these is to get involved with the threshing it says here not unfrequently the incoming tenant undertakes for the outgoing the threshing and delivering of the crop to market on payment for the trouble so hopefully we'll be able to earn ourselves a few quid today alex and peter have joined a local threshing team tom henderson operates the steam traction engine it should start to build up steam in about three quarters of an hour we should see the gauge move when we get up over 100 pounds and we've got enough to start threshing this new mechanized thrashing ended centuries of rural tradition until the 1830s the job of separating the grain from the stalks by hand employed thousands of unskilled men throughout the winter i've got here a head of wheat and it's only really with some force that i can release the wheat from the husk and when you think about this job timeless essentially since the first harvest of wheat to separate the grain from the rest of the plant these machines reduced threshing time from months to just days now a few men could do the work of thousands the unemployed were furious farms were attacked and machines smashed but by the 1880s the threshing machine was a generally accepted part of country life the threshing machine is an absolute beast that needs feeding so i'm just i'm just pitch forking up these sheets and they're being put inside it's reasonably light work i suppose i'm just getting into grips for this pitchfork i've been told i look quite amateurish when i do it [Music] for those lucky enough to get work threshing there were other advantages well we're cooking eggs and bacon and uh i've just got the fat hot on the shovel next job now is to put some bacon on excuse my clean hand but it does add to the flavor there we go that's ratio number two we usually get three on this is ideal bacon lunch break over it's time to finish the threshing basic at the end of the rick now it's quite precarious because i'm just standing on metal struts with my hobnail boots on it's a bit slippy i feel my legs buckling with the threshing done the grain is weighed what's the news then mike have we done well very well yes but two and a half hundred wait for the days thrashing right which is about 125 kilograms right okay um so very successful most of the grain would have been sold to make flour some would have been kept to re-sow back in the ground for next year's crop yep you're right with that victorian varieties of wheat are very different to modern breeds today we've bred the species so that much of the goodness that goes into the straw actually goes into the head and wheat today actually very very short you know a couple of foot off the ground this would grow to about four or five foot off the ground so hopefully when we come out here in august we'll have a crop that we can just barely see over before the wheat is sown the clods of plowed earth must be broken up by harrowing this is the first time i've actually ever driven horses myself so it's absolutely thrilling this is great fun now i'm going to bring them round this is a difficult bit good boys you know really that i mean you know they're doing the stuff [Music] at the cottage peter's ready to start plastering he's read in a victorian manual that the old lime plaster removed from the walls can be recycled i'm just using this to pulverize the plaster into dust and i've done about a day of this it's quite a quite a laborious process and it's quite hard on the upper body but at night it's the it's the wrists i think it's the jarring motion it's great to be reusing materials like this it's also very labour intensive sand and water are added to make fresh lime plaster this is actually incredibly tough the consistency we're looking for is quite sloppy um again it sits the ad old adage a bit like porridge pretty much all the materials we use on this farm are a bit like porridge there's one other essential ingredient horse hair and i'm just going to put this in and this should help the plaster bond when it's on the wall stop it falling off hopefully it's really good to experiment all these these old techniques but um god they're difficult and they do take time in the field alex must decide how densely to sow the wheat too dense and the shoots will compete with each other and die two sparse and the birds will eat it all alex is taking guidance from a highly scientific source an age-old poem it goes one for the rook one for the crow one to let rot one to let grow so according to that um little poem there we should be anticipating losing some three quarters of what we're sowing today alex has called in local farmer brian davis and his daughter sharon to help to sew the wheat they're using a seed drill it's a real concern because really you wouldn't normally do this job in the rain and we're hoping this is just a shower and it's just going to pass but it's looking fairly ominous traditionally seed was sewn by hand broadcast the problem with broadcast sowing is that the grain lands on the ground and it and it hits the ground at different heights and then when you harrow it over you'll get the seed because it's at different heights within the seed bed it'll grow at different times it'll be uneven it'll mature different periods the seed drill invented in 1701 by jethro tull was a major leap forward in the industrialization of farming this was the moment when farming became scientific brian has brought along a design from the 1880s the pinnacle of victorian technology the wheat in the hopper at the top it drops down the bottom into a little trough and the revolving cups there you can see those discs with the cups on you can just see them picking the wheat up and dropping them into these little yellow containers which then funnel them down into these tubes so they drop out in the drill so the seeds are all planted at the optimum depth increasing the chances of germination but with just two rows sewn alex's worst fears about the weather are realized unfortunately it's just not working out for us today the problem is is it's just so wet it's so damp the silt gets so heavy that it's just a nightmare for the horses to pull it's a bit of a nightmare really because it looks like we're not going to get it done today and if this weather's set in for a couple more days um you know we're going to really struggle to get the grain in the ground do you want to park it up under the trees then [Music] at the cottage peter and stonemason paul are preparing to plaster the kitchen so we've each got a churn brush and um yeah we're just going to brush it down it's yet another dusty job on the farm and after that we're going to get our stirrup pump i'm going to moisten it which will help the the plaster adhere to the wall this is our stirrup pump that we found in the tool shed it's pretty old paul and i have taken it apart and we've tried to fix the seals because originally more water would come up in your face and actually come out of the nozzle but um i'm surprisingly dry and it's working very well so i think we've succeeded it's a remarkable improvement in the air quality in here it's time to apply peter's recycled plaster what you have to do is work it into the wall nice layer on because once it's on the wall we can spread it out really makes your forearms doesn't it it does you're doing very well you're a good liar paul i'm learning an awful lot i'm also learning the process has actually taken off a lot of time you can't hurry lime plaster and we've got a number of coats put on here and ruth's just got a range and she's quite keen to have a meal so i don't think we're going to be finished in time [Music] it's mid-october after a week of rain the sun has returned so alex is back out with a seed drill planting the rest of the crop so so far so good you know this is really turning out brilliantly two days ago it was absolutely bucketing down and now it's uh you know it's really dried off really crumbly surface good distribution it took us a couple of rows to get to get it right but um it's so far it's looking really really good it's the last thing we need to do in here really i don't think we'll have to come in in spring and do any hoeing and it's the job done and it's a relief really um because you know it's the first thing to do in the agricultural year and it's one of the most important things you know hopefully now we're gonna get a good year we just really have to leave it to the weather and we'll be back here in august to um to harvest the crop and only then will we know just how successful things have gone [Music] in the cottage the sunny weathers helped the slow-drying victorian plaster to dry after removing half a century of grime re-plastering and repainting it's returned to its victorian glory complete with a victorian brass bed lent by the actons i'm afraid it's still rather a building site the cottage will mainly be ruth's domain so she's taking advice dr nicola verdin is an expert on the role of the victorian farmer's wife if you read the farming manuals which were written by men so for example henry stevens book of the farm which was very popular 19th century manual and went through several additions and they don't mention the cleaning of the farmhouse as a task they talk about the dairy and the poultry and the food processing and so on but the cleaning and the laundry work and so on which were big tasks and would have taken up a large amount of time these aren't mentioned just magically happened [Music] nicola helps ruth tackle a much-feared victorian pest for bedbug using turpentine and salt i always used to think the bed bugs were like you know like dust mites sort of things that lived in in mattresses but they're not they're they're they're nasty they get everywhere they get everywhere they live in any little tiny crack or space and lie dormant for months on end and then as soon as carbon oxide so your breath right you know since you're in the room and you're breathing that reactivates and then they come out and get you and stuck pints of blood over over a couple of months which sounds really unpleasant tackling bed bugs was a twice yearly job others were daily this obviously would have been one of her first tasks of the day we'll be cleaning the bedrooms making the beds and so on um alongside the milking of the cow feeding the pigs feeding the pigs and the hens and any other small animals that are in the farm yard and making the breakfast obviously and making sure the men are all fed and watered emptying the chamber pots absolutely working all day basically very very little leisure time indeed [Music] it's late october in a few days the animals arrive and caring for them will be a full-time job by now peter hoped to have completed the cottage but there's still an awful lot to be done ruth can't wait to use the range so she's braving the building site with nicola to preserve the foraged fruit what we're doing now in the kitchen was actually one of the main roles of a farmer's wife yes that preservation of foodstuffs the food processing the preserving of seasonal food this really kept the farm and the family and the workforce ticking over so it was very important that a farmer married a woman who was a good cook and look how much fruit we gathered we just got loads and loads and loads of it they're using forage damsons and crab apples to make an indian version of pickle chutney i suppose we shouldn't be surprised really that so much indian food comes into english cookery after all there we were over there height of the empire height of the empire first the fruit is slowly cooked then a mixture of ginger turmeric cayenne pepper and cloves are added so where are we getting these recipes from well these particular ones are from eliza acton's recipe book but you can find similar ones in almost every recipe book of the period and these were cheap enough for most farmers wives to have been able to afford at least one or two they seem to have been deeply common and you could buy them pre-prepared [Music] peter and alex also make the most of the autumn crop of fruit under the watchful eye of the estate owner thomas stackhouse acton every year he makes cider using apples from the orchards there's quite a few on the ground these are side of apples aren't they these ones yes these these will do all of these ones yes it doesn't matter about these blemishes no it doesn't matter about those okay no ones which have gone black right well like like that one i suppose that one we don't want yeah right now that one looks a bit faster even to the untrained eye peter and avoid putting leaves in right okay with the windfall apples collected mr acton springs into action this is a painting pole and we use it to shake the apples off find your head see why you're wearing a hard hat now yes standard gear mate [Music] the chutney has been simmering for three hours so the stewed damsons and crab apples are infused with the spices like all chutneys this improves with keeping i mean you can eat it straight away but it tastes much better after about three months um you sort of lose that vinegary edge don't you so this will be really tasty right in the heart of winter yeah i'm sorting out the sealing of the jars which we're going to do with the bladders of pigs these are particularly good because they're so stretchy and watertight i should get several several lids out of each one i don't think i've ever actually stretched a pig's bladder before there's time for everything yeah well yeah so if i stretch that over certainly as it dries it will shrink and then we'll get a really tight seal on it it's not as bad to touch it it's slimy it's a little bit yeah but it's only like wet rubber would be ruth and nicola are making another indian inspired recipe pick a lily this is the vinegar and the spices ruth stocks the larder with the preserves and pickles ready for winter as well as chutneys she's also made tomato ketchup another popular victorian relish i'm going to let the picca lily which was in this one here cool down before i put the lids on them actually i'm really relieved to have finally managed to be able to get some of this pickling and preserving done without the range that i just couldn't do anything and i've been watching all the fruits in the hedgerows you know beginning to go over i'm thinking ah you know gonna move soon or we'll have nothing in here so it is a relief all right let's have these apples on the pier okay over it guys the fruits gathered from the orchard will be crushed using a victorian cider mill just that bag and that'll be enough i think you think this right okay that's enough to be starting with okay now it's a case of getting the horse to do all the hard work how long have you been doing this for then we've been doing this for about 25 years i suppose right have you ever had a good really good vintage year well we haven't made a note of it we just keep drinking it steadily what consistency are we looking for here then um consistency of porridge right the boys are being helped by local farmer merle wilson peter's taken mr acton's usual job steadying the millstone but things aren't running smoothly [Music] you're getting a bit of a build up in here yeah every time you stone there's one rotation yeah uh it settles right now if it's got good momentum and there's not too many apples it'll just carry on mr acton you were saying that this stone you think it might have been used for sharpening probably that's why it's got a flap on it it's got a slightly flat edge you wouldn't think a stone wheel could have a flat but i think that's what i think that's what's creating most of the problems he seems to be making a harder job of it than you miss tractor well he hasn't had so many years at it so he's a lot to learn in the cottage ruth's ready to cook her first meal on the range i've got a leg of mutton here you can see by the size of it it is not a legal arm it is indeed a leg of mutton it makes so much more economic sense to eat adult sheep after you've had eight years of cropping them for their wool and mutton was ever such a popular traditional and common dish for the middle classes in fact sometimes they actually call mutton eaters as a sort of definition of people who were doing okay but not great so i'm going to take the bone out and boil it like that yeah i think that's done it yes right i roll that up oh that doesn't look too bad tie it up neat i'm just gonna pop him in [Music] the pulverized apples are ready to be squeezed for juice using a cider press winding things up again are we peter not as much as you alex here's your first load of apples i don't know about you mel but my hands are utterly freezing in these apples thank you very much the pulp is loaded onto mats known as hares this cider that we hopefully make is going to be kept going to be used for a hay harvest as a means of giving to our workers our labourers and quite often the quality of your cider would be something that attracts laborers to your farm to do the work and the farm would also keep back a batch for himself and he'd probably have some rotten stuff for people he didn't like like alex the [ __ ] is going up on your head the stack of hairs known as a cheese is put under immense pressure to squeeze every last drop of apple juice from them and we're just bringing the the beam down to press it great stuff just compressing the cheese and we're getting all the juice out all the apple juice there's a lovely color as well isn't it keep it going it's getting really hard now the juice coming out pleased very pleased we've pressed this as much as we can now um it won't go any further the juice is stored in casks where it'll be left for the next few months to ferment should start fermenting in five days you have to top it up regularly sort of every day because um otherwise the air gets in and you get impurities in so we need to top it up with pond water or stream water basically water that hasn't come in contact with metals the last job of autumn's done just in time to greet the arrival of the first animals ten shropshire ewes bred in the 1840s from local wild sheep they're famed for their excellent meat and wool but the boys shepherding skills are put to the test almost immediately one of our newly arrived ewes split from the flock has come into this garden [Music] any any sign of her yes and no yes and no because sworn i saw her in here she's up there alex yep found her you get behind her easier said than done it's pretty thick up here oh no what a night there's a gate has she gone through this doesn't bode well for the year oh no oh i think all those sheep over there have seen her yeah she's in the field the runaway sheep has joined a nearby farms flock yeah these fences are pretty low well a 90 success rate there richard spencer a sheep farmer of 40 years experience has come to give some much-needed advice to the novice shepherds the one thing you have to remember you guys when you're sort of getting settled down with this flock of sheep every shepherd knows as sheep is the only animal in god's creation looking for the quickest way to die you can do everything right oh yeah you can do everything right and you can all go pear-shaped you can make loads of mistakes if mother nature's with you you'll come out smelling of roses that's the way your mother nature and life start you just gotta accept it if the user to produce young they must be in tip-top health richard's checking out the field where they're to live well young man it's a good thick turf it'll carry the sheep come winter this will yes it'll take some weather you need a good turf to carry livestock in winter right if it gets wet and you haven't got a solid there's nothing to carry the weight of the sheep but this will be fine this will be fine this one and i've read about flushing which is where you put them into good pasture and then they're because of their improving condition they're more likely to conceive twins essentially is there any basis of fact oh absolutely it's it's fact fact all the way because very basically if the sheep is bursting with the energy so all this lovely lush grass she's going to shed more eggs she's going to have more lambs okay so we're doing a good thing here bringing them into this type of grass yes in a few days time once the ewes have settled into life on the fresh pasture it'll be time to introduce a ram hopefully come spring they'll produce plenty of young [Music] it's time to move into the cottage very kind of the actors to lend us these chairs yeah well whatever you do don't break them and ruth's first meal cooked on the range is ready this smells absolutely delicious what do we have okay um boiled mutton you couldn't grab a plate yes yes oh right in here shall i oh there we go oh look you'll have to use the clung chair which isn't much better actually how do you think it's gone then so far uh it's more work than i thought it was gonna be getting this all ready quite obviously yeah the building work on top of everything else that's like modern builders you know they always come in yeah it was like a couple of weeks you know six weeks later you're still waiting so you know it's starting to look good it's starting to come alive yeah the good news is that we are ready for our animals just peter ruth and alex sleep elsewhere on the estate but with the bedroom finished ruth can't resist spending the night here i've got my chamber pot if i need it in the night and i've heated a brick on the range and wrapped it in the cloth and i'm hoping that this will warm the bed up a bit act like a hot water bottle and then i'm going to get in on my lovely feather mattress clean and stuffed earlier that feels rather nice actually [Music] better not actually be any bed bugs next time on victorian farm building pigsties we've had snow we've had rain and it's just so cold back breaking laundry duty a new arrival to get to grips with how am i doing then you're doing very well and a victorian christmas to look forward to

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 287,069

Rating: 4.935236 out of 5

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, victorian farm, victorian restoration, victorian farming, arable farming, victorian documentary

Id: Ccjyt7BQEVU

Length: 58min 22sec (3502 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020