Edwardian Farm (2010) s01e01 Episode Script
Episode 1
Here in Devon, in the tranquil Tamar Valley, was once a port, bustling with industry.
Now Morwellham Quay is to be brought back to life as it would have been during the reign of King Edward VII.
Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, and historian Ruth Goodman, will be living the lives of Edwardian farmers for a full calendar year.
That's fantastic, all hand-forged.
It's going to be an enormous challenge.
Wa-hay! Wa-hoo! To get to grips with the skills and crafts of the early 20th century.
Here on the banks of the River Tamar, farming was about far more than just livestock and crops.
Farmers had to diversify into fishing Wow! We've got something! Mining, market gardening, and master the industrial advances of the Edwardian age.
It was a time of inventers and entrepreneurs and great social change.
Over the next 12 episodes the team are going back to an age that saw the dawn of our modern world, and a time of new and exciting ventures on the Edwardian Farm.
It's September and Alex, Ruth and Peter must establish themselves in Edwardian Britain.
This means setting up home.
Oh, my goodness.
Can't live with it like this.
The arrival of their first livestock.
- You've got control there, Alex.
- Yeah.
Sort of! And fertilising the fields to grow crops.
For this they must make deadly quicklime.
- Wow! - There's no going back now.
A hazardous but essential job.
Oh, dear.
This is killing me! On the Edwardian Farm.
The team are getting ready for their new adventure.
My dad called me "Oddhead" for a number of years.
That was kind.
The Edwardian age began with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, when her son, Edward VII, became king.
It was to last until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
Are you excited about our adventure, Peter? Very much so.
If you think about it, it's an incredibly exciting age, isn't it? The age of the wireless.
There's an explosion in daily newspapers.
And the motor car means people can get around that much quicker.
Flight.
And the difference between the rich and the poor, too.
At this point it's at its most extreme, the social divides between aristocrats and, you know, the next layers down.
It's an age of exuberance.
The salad days, you might say, before the hell of the First World War.
I really like the beard but I think it should go.
I never realised how handsome you were, Peter.
Thank you very much.
That's fantastic.
- That looks weird, different.
- Time to step into Edwardian Britain.
The River Tamar, the border between Devon and Cornwall.
- The adventure begins.
- Mm.
The team are sailing from Plymouth 18 miles upriver to their new home at Morwellham.
Is that it, through the mist? This is obviously it.
Gosh.
Quite eerie.
- Like a ghost town, isn't it? - It is.
- A huge water wheel, as well.
- Oh, yeah! Look at this place.
- Stunning, isn't it? - Absolutely fantastic.
Right, well, first ashore, me and Sonny.
Yeah.
- After you, Ruth.
- Thanks ever so much.
Right-ho, sir.
This is Morwellham Quay.
At its height, this was one of the busiest ports in Britain, shipping locally mined copper ore to South Wales for smelting.
- Welcome to Morwellham.
- Pleased to meet you.
Anthony Powers will be their land agent for the year.
- Pleasant journey? - Very much so.
- What a place! - Well, absolutely, yes.
And you've exactly the right way, on the river, cos the river is so important to this place.
It was a way of getting out all the minerals from the mine around here, cos this is a hugely important mining district.
Ships are going up and down here, carrying all sorts of goods: Copper, tin, arsenic, lead, limestone.
- All sorts of things.
- Really heavy stuff.
- Really heavy stuff.
- Much easier to do on a river.
Absolutely, yes.
Apart from all the mining, what else was going on? You've got a farm, of course, really to feed the industrial workforce that was in the area.
Then we've got market gardening coming in, really coming on full steam in the Edwardian period, and they're growing cherries, strawberries, daffodils.
- Cash crops really.
- Fantastic.
Would we be expected to turn our hands to everything? I think you would.
I think it's a time where people's traditional forms of earning a living are getting a bit dodgy, so they're looking for other things as well.
Well, all these other industries aside, our core industry is going to be the farm.
So I think Peter and I had better go off and have a look at that.
I'd like to see where we're living, actually.
I think I'd rather get that sorted out first.
A bit of work to do there, but we'll have a look.
This is where the team will experience Edwardian domestic life.
- A little bit basic.
- Yeah! There was a reasonable-sized family here.
Probably you had a family of two parents and six children in this house.
- So you need a big kitchen.
- You need a fairly big space, don't you? Especially as this is the room you spend most of your time living and working in.
- It's a pretty small range, isn't it? - It's very small.
- There's no hot water tank on it, is there? - Not at all, no.
I think they must have been heating water on the top in pans there.
That's small! - And I've got a sink.
Have I got water? - You have got a sink.
You haven't got water, no.
- There's no running water down here.
- OK, so it's back to carrying buckets.
So I've got my work cut out, haven't I? You have, yeah.
The team are taking charge of Morwellham Farm, originally built to feed the people that worked and lived at the port.
Whoa! Wow, Peter! Look at this selection of vehicles.
Cor, look at this! This water wheel once powered the farm's machinery.
Big, isn't it? It's clear that farming in Devon will be different from anything they've experienced before, so they'll need local knowledge.
They're calling on someone with a lifetime's farming experience, Mr Francis Mudge.
The Mudge family have farmed the land here in Devon for generations.
So this is our farm for the year.
Yeah, we're going to look around and see it all.
The most pressing concern is working out what crops to grow.
Do you think this would make a good arable field? Oh, yeah, this one is not too bad, really, for that sort of thing.
You can put any crop in here from corn, potatoes, kale.
Mangles, anything you like, you know.
We were thinking of putting in a grain, either barley or oats? And maybe a crop of potatoes.
Basically, one to thrash and one to mash.
You would be better to till oats, really, because you can feed your horses and that with oats and what's leftover you give your cattle and things like that.
So we're looking for some oats as our cereal crop? Peter and I are both thinking about potatoes because it was a bit of a cash crop in the period.
Oh, yeah, you could till a few potatoes there.
They would grow well here, you know.
Then provided you kept your You'd have to keep your lime up.
In Devon Edwardian farmers applied alkaline quicklime to their fields.
This neutralised the acidity of the soil caused by the granite bedrock of neighbouring Dartmoor.
If we decided to short-cut this and not lime the fields, what would happen? You'd only get half a crop.
You wouldn't have a good crop.
How much lime do you think we'll need for this field? Well, I would say you want to put about two tons to the acre on it.
We're probably looking at up to about ten tons here, if we go for the whole field.
Between five and six tons if we do two-thirds, half? You do all that and you should have good luck with your crops and everything else.
OK, then.
- We'll get to it and find ourselves some lime.
- Yeah.
This is a huge challenge.
To successfully grow crops, Alex and Peter must find a way of making ten tons of quicklime fertiliser.
At the cottage, Ruth's already busy.
The Edwardian way of scrubbing a floor is quite precise.
Instead of just sploshing water everywhere, you work square by square.
So each square is scrubbed wet and dried off, rinsed, rescrubbed and dried off before you move on to the next square.
It's been a while since this was done.
Look at the filth coming off.
What it means is I can maintain me and my clothes reasonably clean, cos it means I'm not swimming about, kneeling down in a whole load of water all the time.
There's lots of references to many farmhouse wives doing his twice a day.
I don't think I'm going to be that house-proud.
Once will do plenty.
Right.
That's that done.
- Where shall we put this? - Over this way, yeah.
This will do fine, won't it? We can always move it.
My dreaded sewing machine.
Ha, ha! All the pretty stuff goes on here.
I'm really pleased with this.
It's a really nice cottage Edwardian dresser, you know, made out of pine and stained and pretending to be out of oak.
Now, I'm quite excited about this, you know.
- So what's in here? - Edwardian provisions.
Looks like we're not going to have to make many products.
Pickled onions.
Marmalade.
This is starting to look like my mother's cupboard at home.
A lot of familiar designs.
I'm just amazed at how many companies are still in business.
Oh, Brasso, look at that.
There were branded products in the Victorian period but it's just gone crazy by the Edwardian.
There's just so many more of them.
And they're beginning to sort of target them at different groups of people.
You're getting some advertising aiming at the working classes, things like the Sunlight soap being aimed at everybody, and some things that are really being aimed at the middle classes.
There we go.
End of a long journey for you guys.
This is the first of our livestock on the farm.
These are my chickens I've brought over.
Light Sussex is the breed.
They'll mix in with these Buff Orpingtons for a while, but I really fancy getting together a nice industrial sort of poultry concern on an Edwardian scale.
There we go, boy.
He's a fighter, this one.
So now we're going to have to look out for some cows, some pigs and some sheep and get this farm properly stocked.
Well, this is home for a year.
It's looking nice.
Yeah, it is, isn't it? We have struck upon the most fantastic location.
We've got everything, the river, the coast, a fantastic farm, a fantastic mining heritage and the market garden heritage.
There's going to be so much to do, so much to keep us busy.
It's quite an opportunity really, a place that is so abandoned.
The chance to bring it back, to turn the clock back and make a place live and breathe and hum, busy with people and life again.
I think that myself, Alex and Ruth have burning ambition inside us.
And perhaps we do bite off a little more than we can chew.
But I just hope that I'll be able to learn new skills, do right by the animals, and try my hardest.
Until the range is up and running, they can't cook or have hot water.
But there's a problem.
Don't sneak out.
Ooh! Can't live with it like this.
Ruth turns to their land agent, Anthony, for advice.
- Hi, Anthony.
- Hello.
How are you? I'm having a nightmare with it.
I've given it a really good clean - well, as best as I can - and it's clogged solid, absolutely solid.
The chimney needs cleaning for a start.
I cleaned the chimney in there last year, and had to get on the roof and knock a plug about this wide down through the chimney.
Cos there's jackdaws' twigs and all sorts of stuff.
A blockage in the chimney may be sending the smoke back into the room.
You all right, Alex? Yeah, I'm good.
How's it going with our little volunteer? Yeah, he's looking ripe and ready for it.
To sweep it, Alex has a cunning plan.
One of the traditional ways to clean your chimney out was with a chicken.
And what you'd do is get him here and you literally stuff him down the chimney.
And what he does is he tries to flap up the chimney, to fly up the chimney, and in doing so, his claws scratch the inside of the flue and bring down all the soot with him.
But I've got to be honest.
I really can't bear to do it to the little fella, cos he's so gorgeous, so I'm just going to let him get about his business.
And we're going to go for plan B.
- What went wrong with plan A? - Lack of volunteers.
Plan B involves holly, rather than a chicken, to clean the chimney.
- OK.
OK.
- Right, we're ready.
End's in.
Start hauling.
Pull it up.
Here we go.
This is a really old method of cleaning chimneys.
It goes back to the medieval period.
Stuff a holly bush down.
There's loads coming down just as you pull it up.
- Don't pull him off.
- I won't pull him off! - You can pull it back down now, then, Peter.
- OK.
Pulling away.
There, you see.
He's Oh! He's the man with the muscles.
How's it going? Worked a treat.
I think we've doubled the size of the chimney.
At the farm the most pressing concern is neutralising the acidic soil with quicklime, ten tons of it.
Quicklime was a wonder material of the Edwardian age.
Not only was it used in farming, but it was the basis of cement and plaster.
It's made by heating limestone, essentially chalk, to over 900 degrees in a kiln.
Our first bit of lime.
Something almost every Edwardian town would have had.
These are the raw materials for our lime burn.
We've got the limestone here and the coal, all brought in by barge, the most effective way to bring it in.
So now we've got the raw materials, Peter, we just have to find ourselves a kiln.
So here's our lime kiln, then.
Anthony's brought the boys to the kilns at Morwellham Quay.
Actually, it's one of two and they probably were being used up until the Edwardian period.
Limestone brought up from quarries from Oreston on the outskirts of Plymouth, all built over now, and coal from South Wales.
To make quicklime, which is what you need for your fields, you basically burn layers of limestone with coal.
It converts the limestone into this stuff called quicklime, the lump lime, quite small pieces, which you can then pull out from the bottom and spread on your fields.
Mr Mudge reckons we need approximately ten tons of lump lime to go on our fields.
Do we need to measure it and find out exactly how much this is going to make? I think we should.
We could end up with heaps of it all over the place and goodness knows what we'd do with it.
- Rather than a little bit extra.
- Yes.
At the cottage it's the moment of truth.
Here we go.
That's it.
Crackle, baby, crackle.
Oh, I can see the smoke going sideways! That's a good sign.
That is warm already.
That's how it's supposed to be.
On the continent by the Edwardian period people were abandoning coal cooking like nobody's business, moving over to the new gas.
But here we hung onto ranges a lot longer, so that they're still manufacturing them right up until the end of the 1930s.
I wonder if you can see it going up the chimney.
If I have a look in this inspection Yeah, you can, zooming up there.
Look at the draw on that! Measuring the kiln is proving to be a mathematical challenge.
- Five times five is 25.
- Yeah.
Times by pi.
What's pi? 3.
14? - Make it three.
- OK, 75.
- Times that by the depth.
- How are we going to work out the depth? If you hold one end and abseil down So 20 times 75, that's two times 750.
- 1500.
- 1500.
That's cubic feet.
- How many tons is that? - I've no idea! That's over 50 tons of quicklime.
They need just ten.
It's highly caustic stuff, Peter.
A ton of it is bad enough, and you want 50 tons of it? We OK, OK.
It's the end of the first week on the Edwardian Farm, and already the challenges are mounting up.
We're next to one of the world's biggest granite deposits, which means the entirety of the soil around here is going to be acidic.
So we're going to have to combat that.
If we're to stand any chance of growing anything in it, we're going to need a whole load of lime.
Quicklime, and they have the lime kilns down there.
We're right next to a set of lime kilns.
Well, I think those are a little bit too big.
- Is the worm turning? - No, the worm's not When Peter first clapped eyes on those lime kilns, he was like, "We're going to do a burn.
We're going to do a burn.
" His eyes lit up, and I'm like, "Peter, what's the tonnage?" Well, there's a critical mass, you see, so you can't You can't just do a teeny bit? So if we're going to do three-quarters full, we're looking at 45 tons of lime to ten tons of coal to 12 feet of wood.
I was going to say I could do with some lime, but I don't need that much.
So, you're sort of backing out, Peter, here? I think we'll probably end up doing a smaller kiln, just because of the amount of lime we actually need.
In Edwardian times there were thousands of lime kilns across Britain.
Now there's just a handful.
So finding a smaller kiln that's still working isn't going to be easy.
Until they get some lime, their arable project's on hold.
So the farmers turn their attention to livestock.
Go on, girls.
Go on.
Local farmer, Matthew Cole, is delivering an Edwardian breed of sheep that's particular to this region.
Stay there, stay there, stay there.
Stay there, stay there.
Meg, Meg.
Good dogs, good dogs.
- Lovely-looking animals.
- Yes.
And these are white-faced Dartmoors.
These sheep have been on these hills for centuries.
They look quite small.
- Yeah, they are hill sheep.
- Right.
They've evolved on Dartmoor, which is a large granite outcrop.
The wind blows and the rain comes down and these girls have evolved to cope with that.
As a result, their body size isn't that big, but they make good use of the rough forage and what's available to them, really.
They've evolved for the area.
And are they bred just for their meat? These would probably have been one of the first dual-purpose animals.
Not only do they grow a good, heavy fleece, but the meat is also of very high quality.
- They call it angel meat, it's that - Angel meat? Angel meat.
It's that tasty.
Great, well, they're certainly settling in.
- Thank you very much for bringing them down.
- Yeah, thanks ever so much.
- Thank you, Meg, as well.
- Yeah! - She did the hard work.
- Yeah! Crucial to the success of their sheep enterprise will be keeping them well fed over winter.
In Edwardian times, this river was the only way to deliver heavy cargo into Morwellham, deep in the Tamar Valley.
This is our first consignment of hay.
We'll need plenty to keep our cattle and our sheep fed throughout the winter.
And fortunately, in the Edwardian period, it came ready baled.
So we've got a nice empty hay loft to get filled up.
And we should nearly be there for our winter feed.
Today the only Tamar barge that's fully operational is this one, the Shamrock, skippered by Peter Allington.
It's funny.
You look at a sailing barge with no engines and you think, "Out of date by the Edwardian period.
" But that's just not true is it? An awful lot of sailing barges were still in use.
I think the barge skipper relied on three things: Wind power, muscle power and tidal power.
Or probably a combination.
Several of them.
I mean, apart from the railway, which, of course, is several miles that way, getting anything in or out of this valley, this is really the only way to do it.
Particularly with any bulk cargo.
If you're talking of Morwellham, people immediately think of copper ore.
Yeah.
But you could have barges bringing in coal.
Some of the coasting schooners that came up here - came from as far away as Russia with timber.
- Yeah, that's an interesting thought.
- I think it was quite cosmopolitan.
- This is an international link.
This is not some little backwater.
This is really connected.
Having taken delivery of the hay, it must be stored in a dry place.
- Climb up there, mate.
- Right.
- Are you ready for this? - Yeah.
Right, here we go.
- Lovely job.
- It seemed a lot coming off the boat.
But now we've got it here, it doesn't seem that much.
This isn't going to last us throughout the winter and this hay loft is desperately small, so we're going to have to see, firstly, if we can source ourselves some hay locally, and, secondly, we'll have to find some way of storing it outside.
Alex is consulting their Edwardian farming manual on how to store hay outside.
It recommends building a hayrick.
We've acquired the most up-to-date version of The Book Of The Farm to help us through the year.
I'm just looking at some of the hayricks, or haystacks, as it's called here.
I'm quite interested in the shape of this one, which is very much what we're trying to achieve.
To keep the hay dry it advises that the rick is thatched.
Lucky we found these old timbers, Peter.
Yeah, they'll do just the job for our rack on which to build our rick.
But rain's not the only obstacle they have to overcome.
There's also vermin.
The solution is to build it off the ground, on staddle stones.
The design of this stone, and this goes back hundreds of years It is so designed, essentially, so that rats that climb up to here to get into your corn just can't get over the edge.
So it stops vermin, at least mammals anyway, getting into your corn.
The boys have bought some more hay from a local farm.
They need to build the rick before the wet weather sets in.
We'd better start getting this on the rick.
If the hay gets damp, indeed, if it gets saturated and we can't dry it out, it's quite simple - it rots and it loses all of its nutritional value.
So it's next to useless, so that's a disaster.
This is going to be the best part of a week's work, if not more.
But it's going feed our livestock for how long? Several months? It's going to be worth it in the end, Alex.
As well as hay, the livestock will also need grain.
In Devon farmers would have used granite troughs to keep the feed off the ground and prevent it being contaminated by animal excrement.
In Edwardian times they were hand-carved by the inmates of Dartmoor Prison.
Peter's come to see stonemason, Ian Piper, at a quarry on Bodmin Moor.
- Hello, Peter.
- Hi, Ian.
- How are you? Nice to meet you.
- You too.
- Are you keeping all right? - Very well.
The first job is to choose a suitable piece of granite.
- You didn't want it too large.
- No, not too large.
So what we're going to have to do is cut it down through there.
So we're going to drill a hole around there and down that side and cut it down.
Ian's using an Edwardian pneumatic crane to lift the granite block from the quarry.
It's a tense moment.
This crane hasn't been used in half a century.
Seems to be working! Now the stone must be cut down to size.
This is one of the hardest rocks in the world and it is one of the most amazing building materials.
But there is a grain in it, so you can't just chop it any way.
It'll be interesting to see how they do this.
Granite is cut by drilling a series of holes, by hand.
- This is the hand drill, is it? - It is.
That's all they had to do it with.
They had to drill all around like that by hand.
- How far does that have to go in? - You want to go down about 3.
5 to 4 inches.
3.
5 to 4 inches.
- That's a fair old way.
- Yeah.
Imagine coming to work and having to do that all day.
- I know.
- There were chaps doing that all day long.
- Hard life.
- They were hard men, no doubt about it.
I reckon you should give him a break.
It's time for Peter to try his hand at drilling granite.
Apparently, you get used to hitting your thumbs! That is an absolute killer.
Just doing that.
My Lord! With the cold hands as well.
With the professionals back on the job, within an hour the holes are drilled.
Now the stone can be split.
That's what we call the plug, plugs and feathers.
So, obviously, as you drive those, it'll split the stone out.
- You just keep hitting them? - Yeah, one after the other.
This is the most critical part of the whole procedure.
A clean break is essential but they've got one chance to get it right.
That's it.
He's gone down there.
- Fingers crossed.
- Yeah, fingers crossed.
There.
That's excellent.
With the granite block cut to size now, they can hollow it out to make the trough.
It's a job that will take days.
Do you reckon a farmer would have been able to split his own granite stone? No.
Farmers we know wouldn't be able to do it.
They're all right for milking a cow, but not splitting granite.
It's mid-September.
Alex and Peter hope they've stored enough hay to feed the livestock.
They must ensure it's kept dry all winter.
Edwardians would have thatched a rick, rather like a cottage.
Hello, Keith, good to see you again.
Thatchers Keith Paine and Bill Liversidge have come to help.
Nice to see you.
- So what do you think? - Well, I'm impressed, Alex.
It's so much neater than I thought it might be.
- Have a look at that.
- Good.
Alex has read about an ingenious way the Edwardians mechanised thatching.
The idea of that machine is that you can put reed through it, thatching reed.
It stitches it together and it comes out in a continuous mat.
- Wow! - I push the reed through, keeping it the same thickness all the way through.
Instead of spending weeks thatching a rick, they would only spend a few hours, which gave them time to do edging and stonewalling and things like that.
Yeah.
So, you know, it was a labour saver as well, really.
I'm actually feeding this through the same as you would cloth through a sewing machine.
Try not to pull it too much otherwise you might cock the works up.
Whoa! Oh, dear.
Bill, sorry.
I've just taken my eye off the ball here a second and we've dropped a stitch.
Well, you really have got to concentrate on what you're about, mind.
If this comes undone on the rick, we're going to have a wet spot on the rick, so if you could pay attention a bit more.
- I'm sorry.
- And stop looking around.
- There you are.
That's good as new.
- In she goes.
I reckon it'd be quicker to thatch it in the traditional way than employ you two to do it with this thatch mat-making machine.
Back, and then stop, and then Cut.
About there.
Ta.
Ruth's daughter, Eve, is visiting, and helping to make the cottage more homely.
We're trying to make a rag rug for the floor, The floors are pretty hard in here.
The base is a sack.
It's a Hessian sack.
And then it's whatever bits of old fabric you've got.
And you're better off with nice, warm wool, because that's going to be warmer underfoot.
They cost absolutely nothing, rag rugs.
Nobody's going to miss an old sack.
And it just makes the whole kitchen feel warm and comfortable and homely.
And it saves scrubbing the floor.
I'm getting so good at this.
Da da da-da dada! - It actually feels like a rug now, as well.
- Yeah.
Well, just carry on, dear! Cheers, Mum.
- There's the end.
- Right.
The thatch-making machine has produced enough matting to cover the rick.
Now the tricky part - attaching it.
- With these pegs, we want two along this edge.
- In here and in there.
Yeah, I'm going to twist them in the middle, so it'll become like a grip.
Double twist, nice and soft on your hands then.
Points upwards, then it doesn't course water into the middle of the stack.
- Coming in like that? - Go in on that top string.
- Try and catch that string with the first one.
- Like that? Yes, going uphill.
Drive them in with your hands.
- Put them in there like that.
- Lovely, and then give them a last tap.
Look at that.
No hands.
Show-off! Traditionally this rick would have been thatched by lashing bundles of straw to the roof, a process that would have taken six hours.
Using the machine-made mats takes just 40 minutes.
Oh, there we go! One waterproof rick.
- Good job.
- Well, lads, you've done an excellent job.
- I'm sure it'll be waterproof.
- Well, let's hope so.
Just one little thing that I think you ought to be wary of when you uncover it and feed it to the animals in the winter - just be aware of the spores, the white spores that come out, because it will give you a thing called farmer's lung.
And that will give you breathing problems in the future.
I would suggest that when you uncover it, you do wear a mask.
Other than that, I'm sure it will stay dry and the animals will appreciate in the winter the hard work you've put into it.
Making the rag rug has proved a much bigger job than Ruth imagined.
I'm almost there.
I'm so close.
The amount of fabric it's used in the end is Well, it's huge, actually.
I think, frankly, it would equate to about three double blankets.
There we go.
A new rag rug.
When it does eventually wear out, a thing that's made from scraps and other people's rubbish will go on the compost heap and be useful yet again.
The ewes have settled into life on the farm.
But to rear lambs they'll need a ram.
Matthew Cole has returned to Morwellham with a present for the boys.
- Good to see you again.
- And you.
- Who's this? - This is Cyril.
- Cyril? - That's fantastic.
That's what a ram should look like, Peter.
- Yeah.
- He's four, five years old.
His horns are like the rings on a tree.
You can see how old he his.
What's he going to give us in terms of the offspring? His offspring are going to be your next crop, if you like, in terms of lambs.
So you're looking for a good, broad body.
In their backs through here, you've got all your chops.
You've got your two shoulders.
Plenty of meat there.
And then you've got your two expensive legs around at the back.
- That is the money end? - That's the money end.
To tell the thickness of the skin on a sheep, which tells you how hard he is, you just feel his ear and you feel how thick it is.
That's proper leathery, proper thick.
The thickness of that ear, basically, that's going to tell you how thick the skin is? That's right.
That will give you a representation of how well he's going to resist the weather.
Well, I think he's quite eager, by the looks of it.
- He's making my arms ache! - OK, let's get him out there.
- You've got control there, Alex.
- Yeah, sort of! Just hold him there.
Don't let the dog see the rabbit.
Ready to send him in? OK, then.
Go on, chap.
Go on, Cyril.
- There's no messing is there? - Oh, no, no.
Well, there we go.
You'll notice him walk behind them.
If she stands still, it's game on.
It doesn't look as if any of them are ready at the moment.
They might be a bit camera-shy.
They might be, yeah! Right, Matthew.
Thanks ever so much for bringing Cyril down.
No problem at all.
- We'll keep you posted on developments.
- I look forward to seeing how he gets on.
It'd be nice to see his offspring.
A week's passed since Peter commissioned the granite trough.
He's returning to the quarry to see how they've got on.
Has it taken a long time? A lot of work? About a week, a week and a half.
- A fair old time.
- Yeah.
So you're talking a lot of hours that have gone into it.
That is a work of art.
One, two, three Now Alex and Peter can deliver it to their flock of sheep.
I think you've got the short straw here.
Well, anything but lift it, mate.
Wait! So what do you think of the trough, then? Well, I have to admit when first saw it, I thought, "That's not a trough, Peter, that's a bird bath!" But, in fact, it's heavier than me, so I'm already learning to respect it.
Now we could just put the feed on the ground.
The danger with putting hard feed on the ground is that they come into contact with their own droppings, and droppings can carry worms.
The worms get inside the stomach, start eating the food away, and then your animals basically become emaciated.
With winter setting in, they'll die, so the trough is critical for hard feeding.
Oh! There we go.
Fantastic.
At first I was really sceptical about Peter's granite-trough endeavours, but I have to admit, it's the ideal trough to feed your animals in the field.
It's heavyweight, so they're not going to knock it over.
It's going to be there for decades.
So all in all, I think that was a good idea.
It's late September.
After a long search, Alex and Peter have found a smaller lime kiln that should produce the ten tons of quicklime they need.
Colin Richards is a quicklime expert and will supervise the burn.
- So this is it, yeah? - This is it.
I think this is far more manageable.
In this kiln limestone will be heated to 900 degrees.
It's easy to fire, so hopefully, at the end of the four days here, you'll have some lime to be able to use on your project.
Fantastic.
Stafford Holmes helped restore the kiln and will be in charge of loading it.
These kilns are in much better condition than the ones we've got down in Morwellham.
They should be.
They've been carefully repaired.
When were these kilns in operation? The last time they were burnt continuously was probably about the 1950s.
So this is limestone and we need to turn this into quicklime.
- That's right.
- And how do we do that? We apply heat to it, basically, and that involves, with this kiln, creating a fire at the bottom, which we start with wood.
Then we put a layer of coal and then layers of limestone and layers of coal right up to the top of the kiln.
Well, I suppose the fumes are toxic, coming out the top? That's right, yes.
It's something which you have to respect, the whole process.
It involves a lot of chemistry but the reality is it's a very caustic material, it can burn your skin.
So we've got to be very sensible about the way we go about this.
It's Peter's job to ensure the critical first layer of limestone is spread evenly.
Right.
Watch yourself.
Looking good.
Next, a layer of coal.
Then another layer of limestone.
That will be 25 shovelfuls.
Stafford's concerned that, unless the amounts in each layer are precise, a constant 900 degrees won't be maintained, and no quicklime will be produced.
So we're looking at quite a few layers here.
A total of 15 layers of fuel and 15 layers of stone.
100kg.
20 shovels.
20 shovels.
So every shovelful is counted in.
But the level of precision necessary means the loading is taking longer than the boys had hoped.
By early evening, there's barely a ton loaded.
The moon's out.
Let's hope we've got enough moonlight.
It's late and the kiln's barely half full.
Loading it by hand is taking its toll.
Oh, no! Stop! - Peter's becoming delirious.
- He is! Doing this completely by hand is giving us a real insight into what it must have been like to load these things.
They would have had trains delivering the materials here.
But these have to be stacked in this way, and it would have been a man with a shovel doing all the work.
After 18 hours of shovelling, 12 tons of limestone and three tons of coal have been loaded.
There we go.
That's it all in.
Finally it's time to light the kiln.
- Are you ready for an ember? - Where you do want it? Just here? On the paper, yeah.
Just get the paper going.
It's getting exciting here.
And it's starting to go.
Gases produced by burning limestone include the deadly carbon monoxide.
Wow! There's no going back now.
It's as if somebody down below is stoking some - Hell fire! - Yeah, some hellfire, some mysterious brew.
During the 19th and early part of the century, when there was a lot of rural poverty around, people who were on the road would come and sleep around the kilns.
And if the carbon monoxide rendered them unconscious and they turned over and rolled into the furnace, there was no way back and they were roasted alive.
Now they must take it in turns to keep watch on the lime kiln for three days and three nights.
I'm lost.
Oh, my word! You can just really get a sense now of what it would have been like to have been lime-burning in these kilns over a hundred years ago.
But as they check the fire below, it's clear all's not well.
The fire has burned too low.
You need it to be burning higher.
We should see glowing cherry-red limestone.
At the moment we're just seeing blackness, darkness, and it's all cold in there.
They need to get as much air into the kiln as possible to make it burn hotter.
If the fire goes out now, it would be disastrous.
Back at Morwellham Quay, Ruth's cooking up a treat for their return - sheep's head stew.
I think this is one of the most gruesome things I've ever had to do.
The recipe I'm using comes from this fantastic little booklet called The Best Way.
"The cheapest cookery book in the world," it says.
"After preparing the head in the usual way, put it in the stew pan with the tongue and cover with the water.
" That whole sentence, "Prepare the sheep's head in the usual way," really points out what a common dish this was for the less well-off.
Unsurprisingly, the head of the sheep is pretty much the cheapest cut on it.
So if you've got to buy meat, or if you have got beasts and you need to sell most of them on, this is pretty much the cheapest cut.
There is quite a lot of meat on it.
Funnily enough, in the Edwardian period, people were doing this a little bit less than they had before.
Ship technology and refrigeration technology began to make it possible for meat to be brought halfway round the world and frozen lamb from Australia and New Zealand began to become the sheep meat of most ordinary Britons, rather than our native, home-grown sheep.
With New Zealand lamb being cheaper, you could actually have a lump, a joint, for the same sort of price as you might have something like a head.
This idea of getting as much as possible out of a really small amount of meat is such a theme through Edwardian cooking.
People are mostly living on really starchy, solid things like large bowls of potato, lots of bread, lots of oatmeal, which is cheap and fills you up, but it's a really bland, boring diet.
So a little bit of meat, even if it's something like a sheep's head, just adds so much flavour into these really, really boring, stodgy basics.
For two days the lime burners have been tending the kiln, trying to get as much air into the fire as possible.
But Colin's still concerned.
The worry is that if there's not enough air going in, it can actually go out.
So we would have to shovel everything out and that would be it, a failure? Yeah, it would mean raking it out.
We had a big hole to put it in at the top and a little one to get it out at the bottom.
- Yeah, it would take ages.
- It would.
All they can do is hope their efforts haven't been in vain.
There's one sure way to test whether this limestone has been burnt or not, and that's to add it to water.
If it's been burnt through, it should slake.
If it hasn't been burnt through, it will just remain as a stone.
OK, let's see it go in, then.
- Not a lot going on there, is there? - No, the water's gone.
- There it goes! - Ooh! You doubted it! Wow! - There it goes! - Look at that! That's excellent! It's amazing.
That's the transformation from limestone to quicklime to lime putty, which is what we're after.
And if the rest of the kiln's like that, then we're in business.
It's the third day of the burn and all the limestone should have turned into quicklime.
Now the dangerous part, unloading the kiln.
Quicklime dust reacts violently with moisture, so if it touches skin or is inhaled, it will burn.
Time for some Edwardian health and safety.
As I am likely to sweat an awful lot whilst doing this, cos of the heat of the kiln and just the physical activity, I've made myself some protective gear.
So I have my hood.
People will laugh but I think I shall have the last laugh.
I even made myself some mittens.
Long-sleeved numbers.
Oh! I've got an apron here.
I'm going all out for this.
I can't see a thing! Last thing - goggles.
I say goggles.
They're more like shades! There we go.
I'm ready to deal with the quicklime.
Let me take these off so I can see you! You look like a giant teddy bear.
Right, well, with all that gear, I suppose you should be the one that's right in at the stoke hole, yeah? Yeah, the coal face.
The burn should have produced ten tons of quicklime, all of which must be unloaded by hand.
This truly is an awful job.
The mesh is used to separate the quality quicklime from the spoil.
Oh, this is killing me! Probably quite literally.
Right! So here we go.
It's the final process of the day.
This highly caustic substance is going into our barrel.
And then we can get this back to the farm, but it's an absolute joy to have got so far.
Here we have it.
Caustic lime.
It's what we came for and it's what we're going to come away with.
After three days of back-breaking work, they've produced ten tons of quicklime.
Now they must get it onto the field.
Steady, boy.
This is what it's all about.
This is why we did the lime burn.
To get this on the fields.
Stand still.
Whoa! Steady! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Steady! Steady! Steady, boy! Whoa! It's been a long few days.
Stand there, boy! But it seems that this fella is as new to lime spreading as we are.
That's it.
Ready? Oi, oi, oi! Steady! In Edwardian Devon it was often part of a tenant farmer's contract to lime his fields to neutralise the acidic soil.
This really does kick-start our arable project.
We're getting the fertiliser on.
This will start slaking.
We'll work it into the ground.
And then all of this lime will invigorate the organic matter in the soil and create that fertility that we'll need to grow our crops.
Whoa, stand there.
Just easy, easy, easy.
It's all right, it's good.
Rain's on the way so they've got to work fast to avoid disaster.
This is going to start slaking in the back of our tip cart, which means the tip cart might catch on fire.
There are accounts of wagons full of quicklime caught in rain like this, and whoosh! OK, last one? Yeah.
Pretty good.
With seconds to spare, they get the last of the lime onto the field.
The exhausted boys have returned to the cottage.
It's a chance to catch up with Ruth over the sheep's head stew.
How did it go? - Very well, thank you.
- Very well.
Remarkably well.
I have to say, Ruth, your rug looks tasty but I'm not so sure about that.
I'm not normally queasy about food, but I've got to say I did wonder about taking the head out and not telling you what was in it.
Oh, dear! But then I thought, "They're big tough boys.
" How cruel! So tell me about this lime, then.
There wasn't much to see after the loading, other than an awful lot of smoke.
But the stuff we got out the bottom seems to be top-notch.
We've got some pretty good lime, actually.
So are you pleased to have the cottage up and running now? I certainly am.
It's marvellous.
Now I can get on with things.
It certainly looks a lot more homely than it did the first time we stepped in here.
It does, doesn't it? Nice and warm as well, actually.
That range is really kicking it out.
- I can feel that heat on my hand.
- Yeah, you can.
It's pretty good.
I feel now, a month under our belts, it's all ready to start, isn't it? We've got all sorts of enterprises we've got to start kicking off.
One of the big things in the Edwardian period was this market garden.
So we've really got to get our heads round how to approach that in the coming months.
Cheers.
So we've got our rick, we've got all our hay there.
You know, we are ready to start getting some more livestock in and we're kind of prepped for winter, almost.
We've got the team all assembled, so Edwardian Britain, here we come! Yeah, it's great to be back in the saddle.
Well, it's all here.
It's just a case of bringing it back to life.
Now Morwellham Quay is to be brought back to life as it would have been during the reign of King Edward VII.
Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, and historian Ruth Goodman, will be living the lives of Edwardian farmers for a full calendar year.
That's fantastic, all hand-forged.
It's going to be an enormous challenge.
Wa-hay! Wa-hoo! To get to grips with the skills and crafts of the early 20th century.
Here on the banks of the River Tamar, farming was about far more than just livestock and crops.
Farmers had to diversify into fishing Wow! We've got something! Mining, market gardening, and master the industrial advances of the Edwardian age.
It was a time of inventers and entrepreneurs and great social change.
Over the next 12 episodes the team are going back to an age that saw the dawn of our modern world, and a time of new and exciting ventures on the Edwardian Farm.
It's September and Alex, Ruth and Peter must establish themselves in Edwardian Britain.
This means setting up home.
Oh, my goodness.
Can't live with it like this.
The arrival of their first livestock.
- You've got control there, Alex.
- Yeah.
Sort of! And fertilising the fields to grow crops.
For this they must make deadly quicklime.
- Wow! - There's no going back now.
A hazardous but essential job.
Oh, dear.
This is killing me! On the Edwardian Farm.
The team are getting ready for their new adventure.
My dad called me "Oddhead" for a number of years.
That was kind.
The Edwardian age began with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, when her son, Edward VII, became king.
It was to last until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
Are you excited about our adventure, Peter? Very much so.
If you think about it, it's an incredibly exciting age, isn't it? The age of the wireless.
There's an explosion in daily newspapers.
And the motor car means people can get around that much quicker.
Flight.
And the difference between the rich and the poor, too.
At this point it's at its most extreme, the social divides between aristocrats and, you know, the next layers down.
It's an age of exuberance.
The salad days, you might say, before the hell of the First World War.
I really like the beard but I think it should go.
I never realised how handsome you were, Peter.
Thank you very much.
That's fantastic.
- That looks weird, different.
- Time to step into Edwardian Britain.
The River Tamar, the border between Devon and Cornwall.
- The adventure begins.
- Mm.
The team are sailing from Plymouth 18 miles upriver to their new home at Morwellham.
Is that it, through the mist? This is obviously it.
Gosh.
Quite eerie.
- Like a ghost town, isn't it? - It is.
- A huge water wheel, as well.
- Oh, yeah! Look at this place.
- Stunning, isn't it? - Absolutely fantastic.
Right, well, first ashore, me and Sonny.
Yeah.
- After you, Ruth.
- Thanks ever so much.
Right-ho, sir.
This is Morwellham Quay.
At its height, this was one of the busiest ports in Britain, shipping locally mined copper ore to South Wales for smelting.
- Welcome to Morwellham.
- Pleased to meet you.
Anthony Powers will be their land agent for the year.
- Pleasant journey? - Very much so.
- What a place! - Well, absolutely, yes.
And you've exactly the right way, on the river, cos the river is so important to this place.
It was a way of getting out all the minerals from the mine around here, cos this is a hugely important mining district.
Ships are going up and down here, carrying all sorts of goods: Copper, tin, arsenic, lead, limestone.
- All sorts of things.
- Really heavy stuff.
- Really heavy stuff.
- Much easier to do on a river.
Absolutely, yes.
Apart from all the mining, what else was going on? You've got a farm, of course, really to feed the industrial workforce that was in the area.
Then we've got market gardening coming in, really coming on full steam in the Edwardian period, and they're growing cherries, strawberries, daffodils.
- Cash crops really.
- Fantastic.
Would we be expected to turn our hands to everything? I think you would.
I think it's a time where people's traditional forms of earning a living are getting a bit dodgy, so they're looking for other things as well.
Well, all these other industries aside, our core industry is going to be the farm.
So I think Peter and I had better go off and have a look at that.
I'd like to see where we're living, actually.
I think I'd rather get that sorted out first.
A bit of work to do there, but we'll have a look.
This is where the team will experience Edwardian domestic life.
- A little bit basic.
- Yeah! There was a reasonable-sized family here.
Probably you had a family of two parents and six children in this house.
- So you need a big kitchen.
- You need a fairly big space, don't you? Especially as this is the room you spend most of your time living and working in.
- It's a pretty small range, isn't it? - It's very small.
- There's no hot water tank on it, is there? - Not at all, no.
I think they must have been heating water on the top in pans there.
That's small! - And I've got a sink.
Have I got water? - You have got a sink.
You haven't got water, no.
- There's no running water down here.
- OK, so it's back to carrying buckets.
So I've got my work cut out, haven't I? You have, yeah.
The team are taking charge of Morwellham Farm, originally built to feed the people that worked and lived at the port.
Whoa! Wow, Peter! Look at this selection of vehicles.
Cor, look at this! This water wheel once powered the farm's machinery.
Big, isn't it? It's clear that farming in Devon will be different from anything they've experienced before, so they'll need local knowledge.
They're calling on someone with a lifetime's farming experience, Mr Francis Mudge.
The Mudge family have farmed the land here in Devon for generations.
So this is our farm for the year.
Yeah, we're going to look around and see it all.
The most pressing concern is working out what crops to grow.
Do you think this would make a good arable field? Oh, yeah, this one is not too bad, really, for that sort of thing.
You can put any crop in here from corn, potatoes, kale.
Mangles, anything you like, you know.
We were thinking of putting in a grain, either barley or oats? And maybe a crop of potatoes.
Basically, one to thrash and one to mash.
You would be better to till oats, really, because you can feed your horses and that with oats and what's leftover you give your cattle and things like that.
So we're looking for some oats as our cereal crop? Peter and I are both thinking about potatoes because it was a bit of a cash crop in the period.
Oh, yeah, you could till a few potatoes there.
They would grow well here, you know.
Then provided you kept your You'd have to keep your lime up.
In Devon Edwardian farmers applied alkaline quicklime to their fields.
This neutralised the acidity of the soil caused by the granite bedrock of neighbouring Dartmoor.
If we decided to short-cut this and not lime the fields, what would happen? You'd only get half a crop.
You wouldn't have a good crop.
How much lime do you think we'll need for this field? Well, I would say you want to put about two tons to the acre on it.
We're probably looking at up to about ten tons here, if we go for the whole field.
Between five and six tons if we do two-thirds, half? You do all that and you should have good luck with your crops and everything else.
OK, then.
- We'll get to it and find ourselves some lime.
- Yeah.
This is a huge challenge.
To successfully grow crops, Alex and Peter must find a way of making ten tons of quicklime fertiliser.
At the cottage, Ruth's already busy.
The Edwardian way of scrubbing a floor is quite precise.
Instead of just sploshing water everywhere, you work square by square.
So each square is scrubbed wet and dried off, rinsed, rescrubbed and dried off before you move on to the next square.
It's been a while since this was done.
Look at the filth coming off.
What it means is I can maintain me and my clothes reasonably clean, cos it means I'm not swimming about, kneeling down in a whole load of water all the time.
There's lots of references to many farmhouse wives doing his twice a day.
I don't think I'm going to be that house-proud.
Once will do plenty.
Right.
That's that done.
- Where shall we put this? - Over this way, yeah.
This will do fine, won't it? We can always move it.
My dreaded sewing machine.
Ha, ha! All the pretty stuff goes on here.
I'm really pleased with this.
It's a really nice cottage Edwardian dresser, you know, made out of pine and stained and pretending to be out of oak.
Now, I'm quite excited about this, you know.
- So what's in here? - Edwardian provisions.
Looks like we're not going to have to make many products.
Pickled onions.
Marmalade.
This is starting to look like my mother's cupboard at home.
A lot of familiar designs.
I'm just amazed at how many companies are still in business.
Oh, Brasso, look at that.
There were branded products in the Victorian period but it's just gone crazy by the Edwardian.
There's just so many more of them.
And they're beginning to sort of target them at different groups of people.
You're getting some advertising aiming at the working classes, things like the Sunlight soap being aimed at everybody, and some things that are really being aimed at the middle classes.
There we go.
End of a long journey for you guys.
This is the first of our livestock on the farm.
These are my chickens I've brought over.
Light Sussex is the breed.
They'll mix in with these Buff Orpingtons for a while, but I really fancy getting together a nice industrial sort of poultry concern on an Edwardian scale.
There we go, boy.
He's a fighter, this one.
So now we're going to have to look out for some cows, some pigs and some sheep and get this farm properly stocked.
Well, this is home for a year.
It's looking nice.
Yeah, it is, isn't it? We have struck upon the most fantastic location.
We've got everything, the river, the coast, a fantastic farm, a fantastic mining heritage and the market garden heritage.
There's going to be so much to do, so much to keep us busy.
It's quite an opportunity really, a place that is so abandoned.
The chance to bring it back, to turn the clock back and make a place live and breathe and hum, busy with people and life again.
I think that myself, Alex and Ruth have burning ambition inside us.
And perhaps we do bite off a little more than we can chew.
But I just hope that I'll be able to learn new skills, do right by the animals, and try my hardest.
Until the range is up and running, they can't cook or have hot water.
But there's a problem.
Don't sneak out.
Ooh! Can't live with it like this.
Ruth turns to their land agent, Anthony, for advice.
- Hi, Anthony.
- Hello.
How are you? I'm having a nightmare with it.
I've given it a really good clean - well, as best as I can - and it's clogged solid, absolutely solid.
The chimney needs cleaning for a start.
I cleaned the chimney in there last year, and had to get on the roof and knock a plug about this wide down through the chimney.
Cos there's jackdaws' twigs and all sorts of stuff.
A blockage in the chimney may be sending the smoke back into the room.
You all right, Alex? Yeah, I'm good.
How's it going with our little volunteer? Yeah, he's looking ripe and ready for it.
To sweep it, Alex has a cunning plan.
One of the traditional ways to clean your chimney out was with a chicken.
And what you'd do is get him here and you literally stuff him down the chimney.
And what he does is he tries to flap up the chimney, to fly up the chimney, and in doing so, his claws scratch the inside of the flue and bring down all the soot with him.
But I've got to be honest.
I really can't bear to do it to the little fella, cos he's so gorgeous, so I'm just going to let him get about his business.
And we're going to go for plan B.
- What went wrong with plan A? - Lack of volunteers.
Plan B involves holly, rather than a chicken, to clean the chimney.
- OK.
OK.
- Right, we're ready.
End's in.
Start hauling.
Pull it up.
Here we go.
This is a really old method of cleaning chimneys.
It goes back to the medieval period.
Stuff a holly bush down.
There's loads coming down just as you pull it up.
- Don't pull him off.
- I won't pull him off! - You can pull it back down now, then, Peter.
- OK.
Pulling away.
There, you see.
He's Oh! He's the man with the muscles.
How's it going? Worked a treat.
I think we've doubled the size of the chimney.
At the farm the most pressing concern is neutralising the acidic soil with quicklime, ten tons of it.
Quicklime was a wonder material of the Edwardian age.
Not only was it used in farming, but it was the basis of cement and plaster.
It's made by heating limestone, essentially chalk, to over 900 degrees in a kiln.
Our first bit of lime.
Something almost every Edwardian town would have had.
These are the raw materials for our lime burn.
We've got the limestone here and the coal, all brought in by barge, the most effective way to bring it in.
So now we've got the raw materials, Peter, we just have to find ourselves a kiln.
So here's our lime kiln, then.
Anthony's brought the boys to the kilns at Morwellham Quay.
Actually, it's one of two and they probably were being used up until the Edwardian period.
Limestone brought up from quarries from Oreston on the outskirts of Plymouth, all built over now, and coal from South Wales.
To make quicklime, which is what you need for your fields, you basically burn layers of limestone with coal.
It converts the limestone into this stuff called quicklime, the lump lime, quite small pieces, which you can then pull out from the bottom and spread on your fields.
Mr Mudge reckons we need approximately ten tons of lump lime to go on our fields.
Do we need to measure it and find out exactly how much this is going to make? I think we should.
We could end up with heaps of it all over the place and goodness knows what we'd do with it.
- Rather than a little bit extra.
- Yes.
At the cottage it's the moment of truth.
Here we go.
That's it.
Crackle, baby, crackle.
Oh, I can see the smoke going sideways! That's a good sign.
That is warm already.
That's how it's supposed to be.
On the continent by the Edwardian period people were abandoning coal cooking like nobody's business, moving over to the new gas.
But here we hung onto ranges a lot longer, so that they're still manufacturing them right up until the end of the 1930s.
I wonder if you can see it going up the chimney.
If I have a look in this inspection Yeah, you can, zooming up there.
Look at the draw on that! Measuring the kiln is proving to be a mathematical challenge.
- Five times five is 25.
- Yeah.
Times by pi.
What's pi? 3.
14? - Make it three.
- OK, 75.
- Times that by the depth.
- How are we going to work out the depth? If you hold one end and abseil down So 20 times 75, that's two times 750.
- 1500.
- 1500.
That's cubic feet.
- How many tons is that? - I've no idea! That's over 50 tons of quicklime.
They need just ten.
It's highly caustic stuff, Peter.
A ton of it is bad enough, and you want 50 tons of it? We OK, OK.
It's the end of the first week on the Edwardian Farm, and already the challenges are mounting up.
We're next to one of the world's biggest granite deposits, which means the entirety of the soil around here is going to be acidic.
So we're going to have to combat that.
If we're to stand any chance of growing anything in it, we're going to need a whole load of lime.
Quicklime, and they have the lime kilns down there.
We're right next to a set of lime kilns.
Well, I think those are a little bit too big.
- Is the worm turning? - No, the worm's not When Peter first clapped eyes on those lime kilns, he was like, "We're going to do a burn.
We're going to do a burn.
" His eyes lit up, and I'm like, "Peter, what's the tonnage?" Well, there's a critical mass, you see, so you can't You can't just do a teeny bit? So if we're going to do three-quarters full, we're looking at 45 tons of lime to ten tons of coal to 12 feet of wood.
I was going to say I could do with some lime, but I don't need that much.
So, you're sort of backing out, Peter, here? I think we'll probably end up doing a smaller kiln, just because of the amount of lime we actually need.
In Edwardian times there were thousands of lime kilns across Britain.
Now there's just a handful.
So finding a smaller kiln that's still working isn't going to be easy.
Until they get some lime, their arable project's on hold.
So the farmers turn their attention to livestock.
Go on, girls.
Go on.
Local farmer, Matthew Cole, is delivering an Edwardian breed of sheep that's particular to this region.
Stay there, stay there, stay there.
Stay there, stay there.
Meg, Meg.
Good dogs, good dogs.
- Lovely-looking animals.
- Yes.
And these are white-faced Dartmoors.
These sheep have been on these hills for centuries.
They look quite small.
- Yeah, they are hill sheep.
- Right.
They've evolved on Dartmoor, which is a large granite outcrop.
The wind blows and the rain comes down and these girls have evolved to cope with that.
As a result, their body size isn't that big, but they make good use of the rough forage and what's available to them, really.
They've evolved for the area.
And are they bred just for their meat? These would probably have been one of the first dual-purpose animals.
Not only do they grow a good, heavy fleece, but the meat is also of very high quality.
- They call it angel meat, it's that - Angel meat? Angel meat.
It's that tasty.
Great, well, they're certainly settling in.
- Thank you very much for bringing them down.
- Yeah, thanks ever so much.
- Thank you, Meg, as well.
- Yeah! - She did the hard work.
- Yeah! Crucial to the success of their sheep enterprise will be keeping them well fed over winter.
In Edwardian times, this river was the only way to deliver heavy cargo into Morwellham, deep in the Tamar Valley.
This is our first consignment of hay.
We'll need plenty to keep our cattle and our sheep fed throughout the winter.
And fortunately, in the Edwardian period, it came ready baled.
So we've got a nice empty hay loft to get filled up.
And we should nearly be there for our winter feed.
Today the only Tamar barge that's fully operational is this one, the Shamrock, skippered by Peter Allington.
It's funny.
You look at a sailing barge with no engines and you think, "Out of date by the Edwardian period.
" But that's just not true is it? An awful lot of sailing barges were still in use.
I think the barge skipper relied on three things: Wind power, muscle power and tidal power.
Or probably a combination.
Several of them.
I mean, apart from the railway, which, of course, is several miles that way, getting anything in or out of this valley, this is really the only way to do it.
Particularly with any bulk cargo.
If you're talking of Morwellham, people immediately think of copper ore.
Yeah.
But you could have barges bringing in coal.
Some of the coasting schooners that came up here - came from as far away as Russia with timber.
- Yeah, that's an interesting thought.
- I think it was quite cosmopolitan.
- This is an international link.
This is not some little backwater.
This is really connected.
Having taken delivery of the hay, it must be stored in a dry place.
- Climb up there, mate.
- Right.
- Are you ready for this? - Yeah.
Right, here we go.
- Lovely job.
- It seemed a lot coming off the boat.
But now we've got it here, it doesn't seem that much.
This isn't going to last us throughout the winter and this hay loft is desperately small, so we're going to have to see, firstly, if we can source ourselves some hay locally, and, secondly, we'll have to find some way of storing it outside.
Alex is consulting their Edwardian farming manual on how to store hay outside.
It recommends building a hayrick.
We've acquired the most up-to-date version of The Book Of The Farm to help us through the year.
I'm just looking at some of the hayricks, or haystacks, as it's called here.
I'm quite interested in the shape of this one, which is very much what we're trying to achieve.
To keep the hay dry it advises that the rick is thatched.
Lucky we found these old timbers, Peter.
Yeah, they'll do just the job for our rack on which to build our rick.
But rain's not the only obstacle they have to overcome.
There's also vermin.
The solution is to build it off the ground, on staddle stones.
The design of this stone, and this goes back hundreds of years It is so designed, essentially, so that rats that climb up to here to get into your corn just can't get over the edge.
So it stops vermin, at least mammals anyway, getting into your corn.
The boys have bought some more hay from a local farm.
They need to build the rick before the wet weather sets in.
We'd better start getting this on the rick.
If the hay gets damp, indeed, if it gets saturated and we can't dry it out, it's quite simple - it rots and it loses all of its nutritional value.
So it's next to useless, so that's a disaster.
This is going to be the best part of a week's work, if not more.
But it's going feed our livestock for how long? Several months? It's going to be worth it in the end, Alex.
As well as hay, the livestock will also need grain.
In Devon farmers would have used granite troughs to keep the feed off the ground and prevent it being contaminated by animal excrement.
In Edwardian times they were hand-carved by the inmates of Dartmoor Prison.
Peter's come to see stonemason, Ian Piper, at a quarry on Bodmin Moor.
- Hello, Peter.
- Hi, Ian.
- How are you? Nice to meet you.
- You too.
- Are you keeping all right? - Very well.
The first job is to choose a suitable piece of granite.
- You didn't want it too large.
- No, not too large.
So what we're going to have to do is cut it down through there.
So we're going to drill a hole around there and down that side and cut it down.
Ian's using an Edwardian pneumatic crane to lift the granite block from the quarry.
It's a tense moment.
This crane hasn't been used in half a century.
Seems to be working! Now the stone must be cut down to size.
This is one of the hardest rocks in the world and it is one of the most amazing building materials.
But there is a grain in it, so you can't just chop it any way.
It'll be interesting to see how they do this.
Granite is cut by drilling a series of holes, by hand.
- This is the hand drill, is it? - It is.
That's all they had to do it with.
They had to drill all around like that by hand.
- How far does that have to go in? - You want to go down about 3.
5 to 4 inches.
3.
5 to 4 inches.
- That's a fair old way.
- Yeah.
Imagine coming to work and having to do that all day.
- I know.
- There were chaps doing that all day long.
- Hard life.
- They were hard men, no doubt about it.
I reckon you should give him a break.
It's time for Peter to try his hand at drilling granite.
Apparently, you get used to hitting your thumbs! That is an absolute killer.
Just doing that.
My Lord! With the cold hands as well.
With the professionals back on the job, within an hour the holes are drilled.
Now the stone can be split.
That's what we call the plug, plugs and feathers.
So, obviously, as you drive those, it'll split the stone out.
- You just keep hitting them? - Yeah, one after the other.
This is the most critical part of the whole procedure.
A clean break is essential but they've got one chance to get it right.
That's it.
He's gone down there.
- Fingers crossed.
- Yeah, fingers crossed.
There.
That's excellent.
With the granite block cut to size now, they can hollow it out to make the trough.
It's a job that will take days.
Do you reckon a farmer would have been able to split his own granite stone? No.
Farmers we know wouldn't be able to do it.
They're all right for milking a cow, but not splitting granite.
It's mid-September.
Alex and Peter hope they've stored enough hay to feed the livestock.
They must ensure it's kept dry all winter.
Edwardians would have thatched a rick, rather like a cottage.
Hello, Keith, good to see you again.
Thatchers Keith Paine and Bill Liversidge have come to help.
Nice to see you.
- So what do you think? - Well, I'm impressed, Alex.
It's so much neater than I thought it might be.
- Have a look at that.
- Good.
Alex has read about an ingenious way the Edwardians mechanised thatching.
The idea of that machine is that you can put reed through it, thatching reed.
It stitches it together and it comes out in a continuous mat.
- Wow! - I push the reed through, keeping it the same thickness all the way through.
Instead of spending weeks thatching a rick, they would only spend a few hours, which gave them time to do edging and stonewalling and things like that.
Yeah.
So, you know, it was a labour saver as well, really.
I'm actually feeding this through the same as you would cloth through a sewing machine.
Try not to pull it too much otherwise you might cock the works up.
Whoa! Oh, dear.
Bill, sorry.
I've just taken my eye off the ball here a second and we've dropped a stitch.
Well, you really have got to concentrate on what you're about, mind.
If this comes undone on the rick, we're going to have a wet spot on the rick, so if you could pay attention a bit more.
- I'm sorry.
- And stop looking around.
- There you are.
That's good as new.
- In she goes.
I reckon it'd be quicker to thatch it in the traditional way than employ you two to do it with this thatch mat-making machine.
Back, and then stop, and then Cut.
About there.
Ta.
Ruth's daughter, Eve, is visiting, and helping to make the cottage more homely.
We're trying to make a rag rug for the floor, The floors are pretty hard in here.
The base is a sack.
It's a Hessian sack.
And then it's whatever bits of old fabric you've got.
And you're better off with nice, warm wool, because that's going to be warmer underfoot.
They cost absolutely nothing, rag rugs.
Nobody's going to miss an old sack.
And it just makes the whole kitchen feel warm and comfortable and homely.
And it saves scrubbing the floor.
I'm getting so good at this.
Da da da-da dada! - It actually feels like a rug now, as well.
- Yeah.
Well, just carry on, dear! Cheers, Mum.
- There's the end.
- Right.
The thatch-making machine has produced enough matting to cover the rick.
Now the tricky part - attaching it.
- With these pegs, we want two along this edge.
- In here and in there.
Yeah, I'm going to twist them in the middle, so it'll become like a grip.
Double twist, nice and soft on your hands then.
Points upwards, then it doesn't course water into the middle of the stack.
- Coming in like that? - Go in on that top string.
- Try and catch that string with the first one.
- Like that? Yes, going uphill.
Drive them in with your hands.
- Put them in there like that.
- Lovely, and then give them a last tap.
Look at that.
No hands.
Show-off! Traditionally this rick would have been thatched by lashing bundles of straw to the roof, a process that would have taken six hours.
Using the machine-made mats takes just 40 minutes.
Oh, there we go! One waterproof rick.
- Good job.
- Well, lads, you've done an excellent job.
- I'm sure it'll be waterproof.
- Well, let's hope so.
Just one little thing that I think you ought to be wary of when you uncover it and feed it to the animals in the winter - just be aware of the spores, the white spores that come out, because it will give you a thing called farmer's lung.
And that will give you breathing problems in the future.
I would suggest that when you uncover it, you do wear a mask.
Other than that, I'm sure it will stay dry and the animals will appreciate in the winter the hard work you've put into it.
Making the rag rug has proved a much bigger job than Ruth imagined.
I'm almost there.
I'm so close.
The amount of fabric it's used in the end is Well, it's huge, actually.
I think, frankly, it would equate to about three double blankets.
There we go.
A new rag rug.
When it does eventually wear out, a thing that's made from scraps and other people's rubbish will go on the compost heap and be useful yet again.
The ewes have settled into life on the farm.
But to rear lambs they'll need a ram.
Matthew Cole has returned to Morwellham with a present for the boys.
- Good to see you again.
- And you.
- Who's this? - This is Cyril.
- Cyril? - That's fantastic.
That's what a ram should look like, Peter.
- Yeah.
- He's four, five years old.
His horns are like the rings on a tree.
You can see how old he his.
What's he going to give us in terms of the offspring? His offspring are going to be your next crop, if you like, in terms of lambs.
So you're looking for a good, broad body.
In their backs through here, you've got all your chops.
You've got your two shoulders.
Plenty of meat there.
And then you've got your two expensive legs around at the back.
- That is the money end? - That's the money end.
To tell the thickness of the skin on a sheep, which tells you how hard he is, you just feel his ear and you feel how thick it is.
That's proper leathery, proper thick.
The thickness of that ear, basically, that's going to tell you how thick the skin is? That's right.
That will give you a representation of how well he's going to resist the weather.
Well, I think he's quite eager, by the looks of it.
- He's making my arms ache! - OK, let's get him out there.
- You've got control there, Alex.
- Yeah, sort of! Just hold him there.
Don't let the dog see the rabbit.
Ready to send him in? OK, then.
Go on, chap.
Go on, Cyril.
- There's no messing is there? - Oh, no, no.
Well, there we go.
You'll notice him walk behind them.
If she stands still, it's game on.
It doesn't look as if any of them are ready at the moment.
They might be a bit camera-shy.
They might be, yeah! Right, Matthew.
Thanks ever so much for bringing Cyril down.
No problem at all.
- We'll keep you posted on developments.
- I look forward to seeing how he gets on.
It'd be nice to see his offspring.
A week's passed since Peter commissioned the granite trough.
He's returning to the quarry to see how they've got on.
Has it taken a long time? A lot of work? About a week, a week and a half.
- A fair old time.
- Yeah.
So you're talking a lot of hours that have gone into it.
That is a work of art.
One, two, three Now Alex and Peter can deliver it to their flock of sheep.
I think you've got the short straw here.
Well, anything but lift it, mate.
Wait! So what do you think of the trough, then? Well, I have to admit when first saw it, I thought, "That's not a trough, Peter, that's a bird bath!" But, in fact, it's heavier than me, so I'm already learning to respect it.
Now we could just put the feed on the ground.
The danger with putting hard feed on the ground is that they come into contact with their own droppings, and droppings can carry worms.
The worms get inside the stomach, start eating the food away, and then your animals basically become emaciated.
With winter setting in, they'll die, so the trough is critical for hard feeding.
Oh! There we go.
Fantastic.
At first I was really sceptical about Peter's granite-trough endeavours, but I have to admit, it's the ideal trough to feed your animals in the field.
It's heavyweight, so they're not going to knock it over.
It's going to be there for decades.
So all in all, I think that was a good idea.
It's late September.
After a long search, Alex and Peter have found a smaller lime kiln that should produce the ten tons of quicklime they need.
Colin Richards is a quicklime expert and will supervise the burn.
- So this is it, yeah? - This is it.
I think this is far more manageable.
In this kiln limestone will be heated to 900 degrees.
It's easy to fire, so hopefully, at the end of the four days here, you'll have some lime to be able to use on your project.
Fantastic.
Stafford Holmes helped restore the kiln and will be in charge of loading it.
These kilns are in much better condition than the ones we've got down in Morwellham.
They should be.
They've been carefully repaired.
When were these kilns in operation? The last time they were burnt continuously was probably about the 1950s.
So this is limestone and we need to turn this into quicklime.
- That's right.
- And how do we do that? We apply heat to it, basically, and that involves, with this kiln, creating a fire at the bottom, which we start with wood.
Then we put a layer of coal and then layers of limestone and layers of coal right up to the top of the kiln.
Well, I suppose the fumes are toxic, coming out the top? That's right, yes.
It's something which you have to respect, the whole process.
It involves a lot of chemistry but the reality is it's a very caustic material, it can burn your skin.
So we've got to be very sensible about the way we go about this.
It's Peter's job to ensure the critical first layer of limestone is spread evenly.
Right.
Watch yourself.
Looking good.
Next, a layer of coal.
Then another layer of limestone.
That will be 25 shovelfuls.
Stafford's concerned that, unless the amounts in each layer are precise, a constant 900 degrees won't be maintained, and no quicklime will be produced.
So we're looking at quite a few layers here.
A total of 15 layers of fuel and 15 layers of stone.
100kg.
20 shovels.
20 shovels.
So every shovelful is counted in.
But the level of precision necessary means the loading is taking longer than the boys had hoped.
By early evening, there's barely a ton loaded.
The moon's out.
Let's hope we've got enough moonlight.
It's late and the kiln's barely half full.
Loading it by hand is taking its toll.
Oh, no! Stop! - Peter's becoming delirious.
- He is! Doing this completely by hand is giving us a real insight into what it must have been like to load these things.
They would have had trains delivering the materials here.
But these have to be stacked in this way, and it would have been a man with a shovel doing all the work.
After 18 hours of shovelling, 12 tons of limestone and three tons of coal have been loaded.
There we go.
That's it all in.
Finally it's time to light the kiln.
- Are you ready for an ember? - Where you do want it? Just here? On the paper, yeah.
Just get the paper going.
It's getting exciting here.
And it's starting to go.
Gases produced by burning limestone include the deadly carbon monoxide.
Wow! There's no going back now.
It's as if somebody down below is stoking some - Hell fire! - Yeah, some hellfire, some mysterious brew.
During the 19th and early part of the century, when there was a lot of rural poverty around, people who were on the road would come and sleep around the kilns.
And if the carbon monoxide rendered them unconscious and they turned over and rolled into the furnace, there was no way back and they were roasted alive.
Now they must take it in turns to keep watch on the lime kiln for three days and three nights.
I'm lost.
Oh, my word! You can just really get a sense now of what it would have been like to have been lime-burning in these kilns over a hundred years ago.
But as they check the fire below, it's clear all's not well.
The fire has burned too low.
You need it to be burning higher.
We should see glowing cherry-red limestone.
At the moment we're just seeing blackness, darkness, and it's all cold in there.
They need to get as much air into the kiln as possible to make it burn hotter.
If the fire goes out now, it would be disastrous.
Back at Morwellham Quay, Ruth's cooking up a treat for their return - sheep's head stew.
I think this is one of the most gruesome things I've ever had to do.
The recipe I'm using comes from this fantastic little booklet called The Best Way.
"The cheapest cookery book in the world," it says.
"After preparing the head in the usual way, put it in the stew pan with the tongue and cover with the water.
" That whole sentence, "Prepare the sheep's head in the usual way," really points out what a common dish this was for the less well-off.
Unsurprisingly, the head of the sheep is pretty much the cheapest cut on it.
So if you've got to buy meat, or if you have got beasts and you need to sell most of them on, this is pretty much the cheapest cut.
There is quite a lot of meat on it.
Funnily enough, in the Edwardian period, people were doing this a little bit less than they had before.
Ship technology and refrigeration technology began to make it possible for meat to be brought halfway round the world and frozen lamb from Australia and New Zealand began to become the sheep meat of most ordinary Britons, rather than our native, home-grown sheep.
With New Zealand lamb being cheaper, you could actually have a lump, a joint, for the same sort of price as you might have something like a head.
This idea of getting as much as possible out of a really small amount of meat is such a theme through Edwardian cooking.
People are mostly living on really starchy, solid things like large bowls of potato, lots of bread, lots of oatmeal, which is cheap and fills you up, but it's a really bland, boring diet.
So a little bit of meat, even if it's something like a sheep's head, just adds so much flavour into these really, really boring, stodgy basics.
For two days the lime burners have been tending the kiln, trying to get as much air into the fire as possible.
But Colin's still concerned.
The worry is that if there's not enough air going in, it can actually go out.
So we would have to shovel everything out and that would be it, a failure? Yeah, it would mean raking it out.
We had a big hole to put it in at the top and a little one to get it out at the bottom.
- Yeah, it would take ages.
- It would.
All they can do is hope their efforts haven't been in vain.
There's one sure way to test whether this limestone has been burnt or not, and that's to add it to water.
If it's been burnt through, it should slake.
If it hasn't been burnt through, it will just remain as a stone.
OK, let's see it go in, then.
- Not a lot going on there, is there? - No, the water's gone.
- There it goes! - Ooh! You doubted it! Wow! - There it goes! - Look at that! That's excellent! It's amazing.
That's the transformation from limestone to quicklime to lime putty, which is what we're after.
And if the rest of the kiln's like that, then we're in business.
It's the third day of the burn and all the limestone should have turned into quicklime.
Now the dangerous part, unloading the kiln.
Quicklime dust reacts violently with moisture, so if it touches skin or is inhaled, it will burn.
Time for some Edwardian health and safety.
As I am likely to sweat an awful lot whilst doing this, cos of the heat of the kiln and just the physical activity, I've made myself some protective gear.
So I have my hood.
People will laugh but I think I shall have the last laugh.
I even made myself some mittens.
Long-sleeved numbers.
Oh! I've got an apron here.
I'm going all out for this.
I can't see a thing! Last thing - goggles.
I say goggles.
They're more like shades! There we go.
I'm ready to deal with the quicklime.
Let me take these off so I can see you! You look like a giant teddy bear.
Right, well, with all that gear, I suppose you should be the one that's right in at the stoke hole, yeah? Yeah, the coal face.
The burn should have produced ten tons of quicklime, all of which must be unloaded by hand.
This truly is an awful job.
The mesh is used to separate the quality quicklime from the spoil.
Oh, this is killing me! Probably quite literally.
Right! So here we go.
It's the final process of the day.
This highly caustic substance is going into our barrel.
And then we can get this back to the farm, but it's an absolute joy to have got so far.
Here we have it.
Caustic lime.
It's what we came for and it's what we're going to come away with.
After three days of back-breaking work, they've produced ten tons of quicklime.
Now they must get it onto the field.
Steady, boy.
This is what it's all about.
This is why we did the lime burn.
To get this on the fields.
Stand still.
Whoa! Steady! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Steady! Steady! Steady, boy! Whoa! It's been a long few days.
Stand there, boy! But it seems that this fella is as new to lime spreading as we are.
That's it.
Ready? Oi, oi, oi! Steady! In Edwardian Devon it was often part of a tenant farmer's contract to lime his fields to neutralise the acidic soil.
This really does kick-start our arable project.
We're getting the fertiliser on.
This will start slaking.
We'll work it into the ground.
And then all of this lime will invigorate the organic matter in the soil and create that fertility that we'll need to grow our crops.
Whoa, stand there.
Just easy, easy, easy.
It's all right, it's good.
Rain's on the way so they've got to work fast to avoid disaster.
This is going to start slaking in the back of our tip cart, which means the tip cart might catch on fire.
There are accounts of wagons full of quicklime caught in rain like this, and whoosh! OK, last one? Yeah.
Pretty good.
With seconds to spare, they get the last of the lime onto the field.
The exhausted boys have returned to the cottage.
It's a chance to catch up with Ruth over the sheep's head stew.
How did it go? - Very well, thank you.
- Very well.
Remarkably well.
I have to say, Ruth, your rug looks tasty but I'm not so sure about that.
I'm not normally queasy about food, but I've got to say I did wonder about taking the head out and not telling you what was in it.
Oh, dear! But then I thought, "They're big tough boys.
" How cruel! So tell me about this lime, then.
There wasn't much to see after the loading, other than an awful lot of smoke.
But the stuff we got out the bottom seems to be top-notch.
We've got some pretty good lime, actually.
So are you pleased to have the cottage up and running now? I certainly am.
It's marvellous.
Now I can get on with things.
It certainly looks a lot more homely than it did the first time we stepped in here.
It does, doesn't it? Nice and warm as well, actually.
That range is really kicking it out.
- I can feel that heat on my hand.
- Yeah, you can.
It's pretty good.
I feel now, a month under our belts, it's all ready to start, isn't it? We've got all sorts of enterprises we've got to start kicking off.
One of the big things in the Edwardian period was this market garden.
So we've really got to get our heads round how to approach that in the coming months.
Cheers.
So we've got our rick, we've got all our hay there.
You know, we are ready to start getting some more livestock in and we're kind of prepped for winter, almost.
We've got the team all assembled, so Edwardian Britain, here we come! Yeah, it's great to be back in the saddle.
Well, it's all here.
It's just a case of bringing it back to life.