Edwardian Farm (2010) s01e10 Episode Script
Episode 10
Here in Devon, in the tranquil Tamar Valley, is a port that once bustled with industry.
Over ground, farmers supplied Britain's growing towns and cities with fresh produce Daffodils set for London.
while, underground, miners extracted copper and precious minerals.
Firing! Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, and historian Ruth Goodman, are living the lives of Edwardian farmers for a full calendar year.
Oh, look at them! Look at all of them! They're so sweet! They're getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth to Devon.
- Oh! - Oh, wow! We got something! There's a good Last month, the team ventured into the county's famous dairy trade Oh, that is different, isn't it? Well, we like it! planted new crops in their arable field and cashed in on the valley's booming tourist industry.
- Hip, hip! - Hooray! Now it's June, a time when farmers in the valley traditionally took their sheep onto Dartmoor for summer grazing.
Here! Come! Come! Here the team will explore an ancient landscape I have to say, on a day like today, this is one of the best jobs I've come across.
learn how to profit from Devon's once-booming wool industry I'm just finding this really nerve-wracking, actually.
and old friends arrive on holiday.
There they are! My goodness, you know how to arrive in style! In the Tamar Valley, the arrival of summer brought new challenges for Edwardian farmers.
June was the month when they could profit from one of Devon's traditional agricultural industries - wool.
But this was also the time when farmers had to make use of any dry weather to harvest winter feed for their livestock.
Traditionally, hay would have been made with all of this lovely, succulent grass.
But we're going to try for something different this year.
Something new and radical in the Edwardian age.
With the increasing use of science in Edwardian agriculture, the government of the day advised farmers to make silage, a method of starving the freshly-cut grass of oxygen.
This way the green and succulent grass is preserved, while still retaining vital nutrients.
Now, we always associate silage with very, very modern farming - polythene-wrapped bales in the field, and polythene clamping the silage in the farmyard.
But in fact, actually, it says here, this was first widely adopted in the year 1888.
So the Board Of Agriculture And Fisheries are actively promoting silage during the Edwardian period, simply because it has got such good nutritional value and succulence for your herd and your sheep throughout the winter months.
To make silage, the team must gather in all the cut grass before it begins to dry in the field.
I never thought I'd find myself in a field, in June, trying to stop grass drying out.
Yeah! Perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
See, it's nice and green.
It's that smell of freshly-cut, freshly-mown lawns.
- It's that smell of fermentation.
- Yeah, that's what we're looking for.
To preserve the fresh grass, Alex and Peter will need to build an airtight container, known as a clamp.
The whole idea of the clamp is essentially to prevent the oxygen from getting to this organic material, because if it's just left out in the open, this material would start to rot down.
And what these straw mats will do is they'll just stop the soil, that we lay on top to ultimately seal the clamp, from getting into the grass, cos if does that, it creates the kind of conditions that Listeria bacteria will thrive in.
But that's it.
That is the roof on.
Are you happy with that? I'm happy with that.
That's the easy bit.
That's quick.
That's the easy bit, yeah.
Shifting the earth is gonna be the hard bit.
To prevent oxygen getting to the grass, Alex and Peter now have to seal the clamp with earth.
Unopened, the silage should remain edible for several years.
Well, there we go.
Earth on.
Oxygen out.
Silage made.
It should keep the sheep and the cattle fed throughout winter, so, yeah, pleased to get this one out of the way.
On the Edwardian Farm, the team are reaping the benefits of the Tamar Valley's mild climate.
Their oat and potato crops are thriving, looking set for a bumper harvest later in the summer.
Super, super crop.
But the warm weather isn't so welcome for the farm's flock of ewes.
Now the sun's come out, the flies have come out.
Yeah.
Sheep suffer particularly from something called blowfly.
They get in amongst the back end of those sheep.
Larvae can actually start eating into the flesh of the sheep.
It not only destroys the fleece, but, of course, the animal itself is severely traumatised, stops eating.
- It can kill the sheep as well.
- In the worst case scenario, it can kill them.
To try and escape the flies in the warm and humid valley, Alex and Peter have taken their sheep onto the highest grounds of the farm.
But with a huge expanse of open moorland nearby, Edwardian farmers traditionally drove their flocks onto Dartmoor.
It's fascinating, isn't it, the whole situation with the seasonal summer grazing of Dartmoor? It'd be a fantastic thing to go and explore, wouldn't it? Rising up to over 2,000 feet above sea level, and covering 368 square miles, the vast, barren moorlands are a stark contrast to Devon's green and verdant valleys.
Dartmoor is a wilderness.
I mean, you've got granite tors sticking out of mossy, peaty bogs.
And the farming that goes on there has been sculpted by the landscape itself.
Dartmoor was once a mighty forest.
Over the past 5,000 years, farmers have worked the land to create pastures for livestock.
Dartmoor, for me, is a fantastic, romantic landscape.
To really engage with the farming of Dartmoor as it would have been 100 years ago, is just going to be unique.
- Would you mind keeping the farm ticking over? - Of course.
The annual pilgrimage of sheep farmers to the moor meant that women were often left to look after the farms.
Right, here we go.
Now, Ruth, whilst there's no signs of blight on the potatoes yet, a pre-emptive spray is in order.
- You've not used this before, have you? - No.
No, but, you know For farms to prosper, traditionally male or female tasks were often interchangeable.
If it hadn't happened all the time, can you imagine what would have occurred for World War I? Britain would have fallen apart.
It was only because women had been doing bits and bobs quietly, of pretty much everything, albeit in odd situations, that there was a skill base there.
So that when the men have gone, life can go on.
For Alex and Peter's Dartmoor expedition, Ruth's rustling up some supplies.
Including biscuits and a popular drink of the time - mahogany.
We need the zest and the juice of one lemon.
And as much rum and brandy as you can force in a bottle.
And a good dollop of sugar to sweeten it.
So when you're, you know, up on the moors, you can take some of the mahogany, pop it into a cup and top it up with boiling water, and you've got yourself a really good sort of hot toddy thing.
Come on.
Oh! Delicious.
- Well, there you go, then.
Don't starve.
- A feast.
OK.
- See you in a couple of days.
- Good luck, Ruth.
- See you! - See you, then.
Ruth will join Alex and Peter on the moor in a few days'time.
- So are you looking forward to the moor, Peter? - I love Dartmoor.
It's only five miles from the farm at Morwellham Quay to Dartmoor.
So are we nearly there yet? I've got my eyes on that mahogany wine.
Alex and Peter are travelling to a traditional farmstead on the lower region of the moor, that's witnessed centuries of Dartmoor farming.
This is why I've come to Dartmoor.
- This is fascinating, isn't it? - It's fantastic.
An original Dartmoor farm.
Wow! This is rare.
This farm has seen generation upon generation of Dartmoor farmer.
- You can see all the different occupation levels.
- All these different phases of building.
You'd have a stable up the end.
That would be your living quarters.
We're missing the chimneys.
And then the shippen - the cattle byre - would be down here.
And they've even got the bracken, look, which they would have used for bedding.
Look at some of those stones there in that doorway.
That doorway will be 500 years old.
Wow! Wow, look at that! That cider press is huge.
- There's an apple loft.
- Apple loft on top.
Your horse gin.
Your press.
This is as it would have been 100 years ago.
- It's amazing! - And also loads of barrels of vintage cider! Result! Amazing.
The farm belongs to Colin Pearse, a sheep farmer who believes passionately in preserving the traditions of the moor.
These are the sheep, one of England's oldest breeds of sheep.
Colin farms the white-faced Dartmoor, the native breed of sheep whose long wool fleeces once played a vital role in the economy of the moor.
It's easy to forget that we built a nation on the wealth generated from the wool trade.
- We did.
- Churches and bridges.
Wonderful names come up, like Bridge On Wool, and it was the profits of wool, the culture, the economy, the prosperity, and the wool, of course, paid the rent for these little farms.
This was a wonderful day when you came to shear, because you've waited 12 months for this fleece to mature.
Well, we look forward to helping.
Let's see if we can't throw a bit of fun into the bargain.
By fun, do you mean competition? - Yeah, I think so.
- Yeah.
I have surprisingly weak forearms, despite what people say, so I wouldn't mind being paired with the slightly better shearer.
To teach Alex and Peter the craft of hand shearing, Colin has called in champion Devon blade shearer, George Mudge, and his son, Andrew.
I think that it tends to run in families.
My father was a good shearer and all his brothers.
- Yeah.
- And now Andrew's good at it as well.
There you go, then, there she is.
Travelling from farm to farm, an Edwardian blade shearer would have hoped to remove a fleece in less than five minutes.
You must be very careful.
- Right.
- Not to cut them.
- You've gotta really know a sheep's body.
- Absolutely.
You know, you've got a pair of blades here which are six inches long.
- Take your finger off.
- Yeah! You could take your finger off quite easily.
- She's all right with this? She's not traumatised? - No, not at all.
And I mean, generally speaking, when the weather's hot, they're really glad to get it off.
So the way you're shearing here is essentially so that the fleece all comes off in one piece? It's a bit like when you're shaving, you know, you have to keep the old skin tight.
- You have to sort of draw your face.
- That's it.
- To get the razor over it.
- Yeah.
And also when you're shearing, you should avoid, as near as possible, skin cuts and second cuts of the wool.
Are hand shears still in use much around the world? In countries like South Africa, still about 65% of the sheep are shorn with a blade.
The best blade shearers in the world.
And they, like shearers everywhere, get paid on a headage basis.
So the more they shear, the more they earn.
And, you know, wherever people are shearing in the world, nobody wants to be the slowest.
- That's it.
- There she goes.
- Off she goes, a different animal, actually, but - It looks half the size, doesn't it? - Unrecognisable! - Yeah.
So that whole process took us five minutes? Probably something like that, I suppose, yeah.
Right, so how many do you think you could do in a day? Well, a good shearer with the hand shears would do probably about 50 of these, I suppose.
I think 50 would be quite enough.
I think five would be my It's like a barber shop, isn't it? They're all lining up! - She's looking at you, Peter.
- Better give them a magazine to read! Down in the valley, Ruth's been left to look after the farm's valuable potato crop, making sure that the plants don't get blight.
So lime water copper sulphate.
Ruth's turned to the government advice leaflets to make Bordeaux mixture, a fungicide developed in France.
The story goes that there was this French farmer who grew grapes and one side of his vineyard was along the road.
And people walking down the road were forever helping themselves to grapes as they passed, and he was getting fed up of this, so he thought, "I know, I'll get the so-and-so's.
I'll put something that tastes really foul on the grapes along that edge, and then they won't eat my ruddy grapes!" And he presumably had these things knocking about in his farmhouse, sprayed it on, and it did indeed stop the people nicking his grapes.
But he also noticed at the end of the season that whilst the rest of his field had mildew problems, that row didn't.
After devastating potato famines in the mid 19th century, Bordeaux mixture revolutionised arable farming.
Quite a lot of crops suffer from problems from various mildews and fungi.
The most important of which, of course, is potato and tomato blight, which just absolutely decimates.
It arrives on the wind in damp air, little spores.
They touch the edge of a crop.
Once you've got it on one crop, it's gonna sweep through the rest of your crop in very, very short time.
So keeping blight off was deeply important.
Bordeaux mixture is a diluted solution of lime and copper sulphate.
To get it onto the potatoes, Ruth will use a crop sprayer.
Whoops.
Well, that'll do to start with.
Oddly, this feels like women's work.
I am reminded of washing dollies! And barrel churns.
Ooh.
Wow.
It really works, this! I'm quite impressed.
I wonder how long I've got before it runs out of oomph? Sorry! Snip away.
On the Dartmoor farm, it's Alex and Peter's turn to shear, and they're getting competitive.
Are you dancing over there, Peter? - Yeah.
- Come Shear With Me? Something for the weekend.
I'm just finding this really nerve-wracking, actually.
She can sense my anxiety.
It's all about handling the animal.
And, well, I've got the feistiest sheep.
She's doing very well.
The sheep's behaving herself as well, which is a surprise.
She must feel safe.
Whoops.
Hang on, we've got a little bit left.
Back here, sheep.
There.
Job done.
Job done.
It's taken Peter 20 minutes to shear his sheep.
- Alex? - Yeah.
- Have you got the time there? - Oh, just a minute.
I just don't want to lose concentration at the last minute.
Up she comes.
- There she goes! - Brilliant, Alex.
- Very well done.
- Andrew, thank you very much for that.
Cor, that is knackering! Shearers are not only judged on their speed, but on the quality of the fleece.
I was quick.
But it's not pretty, is it? It's supposed to be a fleece, Peter, not a jigsaw.
I don't see that one laid out in front of your fireplace, Peter.
I think we should let the masters take over, though.
- Let's go grab another two sheep.
- Yeah.
While Alex and Peter get on with the shearing, Ruth's making cheese, a sideline that could earn an Edwardian farmer a decent income.
Small-scale dairying in Edwardian Britain was undergoing an enormous amount of change.
For centuries and centuries, tiny little farmhouse kitchens had been able to commercially make a little batch now and again, sell a few at market, keep a few for the home.
By the Edwardian period, little local rustic cheeses are pretty much dead.
It's all about mass-produced, standardised cheese, or at least, those are the only things that are selling.
To help dairies produce standardised cheeses, the government advice leaflets recommend specific recipes.
The one I thought I'd make is this last one.
Soft cheese number two.
What a glamorous name.
"It is an English variety and is in demand during warm months.
" And you can eat it the day after you've made it.
I've been warming my milk on the stove.
I need it between 92 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
Which, if I had a thermometer, would be really easy to measure.
As I haven't, I've been doing it with my finger.
I want it a little bit warmer than blood heat.
I want it so it feels warm but not hot.
Now, the rennet is the thing that changes it from milk into curds and whey.
I've got to spread the rennet through the whole mass.
A tiny drop of rennet, loads of milk.
But as well as that, the stirring is really important in ensuring the final texture of the cheese.
Because if you don't stir it at this stage, the fat, or the cream, can rise and you'll get bits of the curd that are very creamy and bits that are very thin.
It's amazingly calming, making cheese.
It's quite relaxing.
If you get over-excited, you don't make terribly good cheese.
Ruth now has to wait four hours until the curd which will form the final cheese is fully separated.
Ooh, yes, I've got a decent set on that.
What I want to do is take crusts of curd that are hardly untouched, so they're very sort of, still junkety and jellylike, and lay them in.
So I'm sort of just breaking through the curd and lifting it out in great big jelly pieces.
Look at that.
And they go straight into my mould.
It's like dealing with a living thing.
All the remaining liquid whey drains into buckets beneath the mould.
But that's gonna sink, as the whey comes out, the curd is gonna slowly collapse down.
It's so mesmerising.
After a hard day of shearing on Dartmoor, the team are finishing the last of the ewes.
- Away you go.
- Well, that was excellent.
- Thank you very much, George.
- That's all right.
For the evening's entertainment, Colin has laid on a traditional West Country game of skittles.
I'd just like to thank the team and all the hard work done by the shearers, the skill that goes into it, for looking after my sheep, and for making it a perfect day.
- Cheers, lads.
- Cheers.
Oh, oh, it's ripping! Oh, no! Oh, dear me! Think I'd better stick to shearing.
Well done.
While Alex and Peter settle in to life on Dartmoor, down in the Tamar Valley, Ruth's up early to check if her cheese has set and drained.
Don't collapse, don't collapse, don't collapse.
Be good, be a nice Hooray! Good cheese.
Oh, no, don't go wrong! Oh! Serves me right for being impatient.
Oh! And that's the thing with cheese-making.
You have to be so precise.
I shouldn't be surprised if my first attempt at a new style of cheese goes a bit I was gonna say pear shaped, but splat shaped would be more likely.
It's mid-June, and on Dartmoor, with the shearing season in full swing, this was the time when Edwardian farmers finally cashed in on their flocks' valuable fleeces.
With wool needing to be taken to the mill, Ruth joins up with Alex and Peter on the Dartmoor farm.
There you are.
Found you! - There's the wool.
- That's nice! Crimp on it and all.
It's a bit dusty and a bit dirty.
I think it's had quite a hard winter.
Do you think they should be washed before we take it to the mill? Well, you're in a sticky situation, really, because it's obviously gonna go on weight, isn't it? - Yeah.
- So if you wash out all the lanolin - All the dirt! - And all the dirt, yeah.
you're gonna lose a lot of the weight.
But if it's dirty, they'll knock money off at the mill.
Exactly.
Edwardian times, things were a lot fussier.
Certainly the wool clip was worth more - Yeah.
per fleece than it is today.
So then the farmer would think, "We'll do what we're told.
" If there's a stream next to the farm boundary, ideal.
Oh! I'm gonna just have to get the petticoat wet.
Keep your fleece tucked in there.
- Else you're gonna lose bits of it.
- Oh, yeah, there's a bit escaping.
Come back here, you.
Do a wringing process like a lady does with her washing.
Keep folding it in, yeah.
There's a great big piece of blackberry bramble there.
I have to say, on a day like today, this is one of the best jobs I've come across! No wonder the sheep are glad to get rid of that.
The irritation from that on its back must be That's why they very often, as they do, get on their back and have a good old itch.
- Right.
- Cos they're still feeling that sore on their back.
Beautiful Dartmoor scene, this is.
Beside a babbling brook.
The peacefulness, the serenity, the slow pace of life.
And I think it shaped the character of the people.
All right.
Oh, incredible.
Where do you want it, then? I don't know.
Up in the sun, I suppose.
Do you know what? I feel like a kid on holiday.
High above the lowland farms on Dartmoor is the vast expanse of open moorland where, for centuries, local farmers have had common rights to graze their livestock.
Get up, right, right! Get up! Often having to move their flocks over large distances, here sheep farmers have had to rely heavily on their dogs.
Get up! Yes, yes, get up! Eager to understand how this relationship between man and dog works, Alex and Peter have come to meet lifelong Dartmoor shepherd, Kenny Watson, and his border collies, Wag and Roy.
Sit down.
How do you tell the dogs to go left and right? They've got what we call their sides, their commands.
Like, right hand is, "Ra!" And that's always their right, not your right.
Always.
And if you want them to come left? Come! Come! Come! There he goes.
Round he goes.
Quite an important one on the moor is, "Look back.
" Cos sometimes on the hill sheep will go away, and you'll see two or three moving behind.
- Behind the dogs? - Behind the dogs.
Go back! Go back! They've gone off to look for the sheep.
There are sheep up there.
They think there's something back there.
I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on with our extremely small pen in this extremely large field.
- Well, I'll do my best.
- OK.
Here, here, hey! Get up! Way! Way! It's real precision work, isn't it? We don't think of sheep dog work as a craft, but it is.
She's feisty.
By there.
No.
Here we go, last one.
Hey.
Sit down.
Sit down.
Brilliant.
And is there a trick to this, at all? I think the biggest advantage is to be a farmer.
To know how to handle the sheep, to know when to move the dog, to stop them at the right time.
- But do the dogs enjoy themselves? - Oh, they're always happy to work.
Always happy to work.
I'd rather have one dog than ten men.
Cos they know the place, they know the sheep.
They're so quick and that.
I couldn't manage without them.
The washed fleeces are ready to be taken to the local wool mill.
They're surprisingly heavy, even when they're dry.
They are heavy.
It's the grease, probably, that comes up in these fleeces, and they're long wool fleeces, of course, as well.
But this is their last journey.
All that work! All that work, but now we hope for payday.
Payday for Dartmoor's white gold, its precious fleeces.
I promise I'll look after it.
I'll keep a very good eye on it.
Mind they don't fall out the back.
All the best to you, Ruth.
- See you.
- All the best.
Thank you.
Ruth has arranged to deliver the fleeces to Peter Fisher at Coldharbour Mill.
- Hi.
- Hello, Ruth.
- Pleased to meet you.
- What a wonderful place.
- You found us all right? - Yes.
I followed the chimney.
Well, it's a bit Now a working museum, in the early 1900s, Coldharbour Mill was at the forefront of Devon's woollen industry.
It established the company Fox Brothers and Co as a renowned global exporter of woollen goods, including puttees for the armed forces.
So this is what this mill was making - the yarn for these? They were, yes, I mean obviously all the British regiments, and Commonwealth countries as well - Empire countries as they were then.
And then later on, even the Germans had them.
Devon wool.
I think that's really quite rather nice, isn't it? Devon wool all over the world.
Using water power to drive its heavy machines, the mechanised mill turned fleeces into high quality yarn.
Right, Ruth, well here's your fleece going into the hopper.
To remove any remaining dirt, and to separate the fibres, the wool is fed through a carding machine.
- The fleece is just gradually drawn in.
- Yeah.
And then it just really goes from roller to roller.
Each time being combed over and over and over again.
That's right.
Sort of separating all the fibres, making it fluffy, letting the dirt fall out.
Oh, and I can see it coming out the far end.
It looks so different, doesn't it? It gradually works its way round to the other end.
See the difference.
All sort of knotty and tight up, and this is all sort of fluffy and organised.
After the wool has been carded, it's drawn out to eight times its original length.
It's being drawn out through the rollers.
As it comes down the flying arm, a bit of twist is put into it.
- So we've got sort of fat, fluffy string? - That's right, that's called the slubbing.
- From this machine onto the next? - That's right.
We can start spinning.
In the spinning process the wool is twisted and drawn out to create a thinner yarn.
So these are off the last machine, the big fluffy string.
Here's our slubbings on the top, drawn out between the two sets of rollers.
- Much more twist being put into them now.
- They're spinning much, much faster.
Amazing, I'm looking at all these conveyor belts and things.
- This is all driven by water power? - Driven by the waterwheel.
All these belt and rollers, the whole blinking, noisy, clackering lot.
So these threads have been spun, but they're pretty useless in that state.
If you take the tension off, if I just sort of open a bit up, you can see it wants to sort of go all knotty and kinky.
To produce a knitting yarn, three threads are folded together on a twisting frame.
So all the twist in that goes one way.
- That's right.
- And then this, when you put it on here - Yeah.
spins the other way.
- And they lock each other in position.
- The same as making ropes.
So that's the finished yarn.
So if I untwist it you can see, there it is, three completely separate bits of stuff, and you can sort of see in my fingers, they're wanting to knot.
As soon as they're untwisted, they're wanting to go into horrible little knots.
Let the twist go back in and it's perfectly comfortable.
I just really like this about, you know, textiles.
It's really simple but clever, isn't it? I mean, it's the basis of everything.
String, rope, textiles, clothes.
You know, suspension bridges are built using this technology.
With wire.
In its heyday, Coldharbour Mill employed over 100 people to work its machines.
Woah! They worked long hours in dangerous and noisy conditions, for minimal wages.
Boy, is it noisy! You would go deaf if you worked in this for any length of time.
In a weaving shed, you'd have many more than this.
In fact, you'd have 400 looms.
I know that the weavers were usually adults, but in a mill like this, in the Edwardian period, an awful lot of the work is being done by quite young workers, isn't it? Usually female.
- Mainly female - because they got paid less.
- They were cheaper.
What that must have done to them in their, sort of, growing years.
- Incredible.
- They got their cloth ears quickly.
Yeah, cloth ears.
Yeah, you would, wouldn't you? Thank you so much.
This has been so interesting.
You know, it's really nice seeing the fleeces going through the whole process.
Seeing what they become.
All those sheep.
All that grass.
All that sunshine.
Hopefully it makes this story a little more understandable.
Devon's wool industry not only brought wealth to the county, but it also shaped its landscape.
On Dartmoor, where fresh grass struggles to grow beneath gorse and heather, farmers have created fresh pastures for their flocks by the ancient practice of swayling.
- What exactly is swayling? - Well, it's a very simple practice.
It's the practice of burning off old vegetation to create young grass.
- Right.
So they burned back this area.
- That's right.
And you can see some black sticks here, which were probably the gorse remaining.
Goes back to just the tradition that was for ever.
"Sway" means to yield.
"Ling" comes from the heather.
It's a Norse word.
So a practice which might have just been a Norseman that rubbed some flints together, realised he could burn the moor and it would sweeten up.
Against all odds, for thousands of years, farmers have managed to tame this otherwise inhospitable moorland.
While he's on Dartmoor, archaeologist Alex is keen to explore this ancient landscape.
What is so fascinating about Dartmoor is the way in which the relief and the geology has shaped the landscape.
These stones have become a part of the occupation and the settlement of the moor.
And here I'm standing in the middle of a hut circle.
And this goes back to prehistoric times.
They probably would have had a central hearth, and you would have had rafters running up from the stones, a conical-shaped roof, probably thatched with the gorse and the rushes from around here, and a fantastic view looking out.
And this wall here, this row of stones, is probably, in fact, an enclosure wall, where the people here would have kept their precious livestock, their sheep and their cows.
It's just fascinating to think of the role these stones have played in the story of Dartmoor.
They've really become part of the way of life, and they've helped to tame this landscape.
With the largest deposit of granite in southern Britain, generations of farmers have used the stone on Dartmoor to build enclosures for their livestock.
Alex has come to meet Wilf Hutchins and his team of dry stone wallers.
- Hi, there Wilf.
- Hi Alex.
- How are you? - Very well.
Hello, chaps.
So what are the qualities of a good dry stone waller, Wilf? The main thing is the eye for the stone.
Right.
Which only comes with experience, really.
I mean, I started on the farm when I was a kid.
Playing at it, really.
But over the years you develop a skill where you can see a particular shape and fit that stone to that shape.
Anybody can put a stone one on top of the other, but to get a nice job, to get a nice finish, to get the strength, to get the lines right, you don't learn it in five minutes, it's a - I'm still learning.
And I'm 60.
- Right! I see Bill and Jason getting stuck in there.
Have you got some work for me to do today? - There's plenty of work.
- Great stuff.
Just head on up there and pitch in.
- Well, I think he's a bit wobbly.
- A bit wobbly? Needs trigging, putting a chip in behind the stone to firm it up.
What I like about this is it's sort of rough and ready.
- It doesn't have to be pretty, just functional.
- That's right.
It's a great, great way of building.
Just come this way.
So how many metres would a good dry stone waller be expected to do in a day? Just a single face like this.
- I'd like to think we could do ten metres a day.
- Ten metres.
The landowners would bring in a gang of people and say, "Right, do that wall.
" The men would build the walls and the ladies would bring the stone in wheelbarrows to the men to build.
- I can't get my wife to do it.
- No! Right.
- I'll slip a - Watch your fingers.
Dry stone walls vary hugely from region to region.
- Put it in like that? Or is that a bit too high? - Too high, yeah.
Some walls are easier to build than others, depending on the size, shape and type of local stone.
With a flatter stone, obviously, you don't need the chips, the trigs, in behind.
But with the rounder ones, obviously, it's just a balancing act.
They didn't have safety specs back in the Edwardian days, did they? I doubt it.
It needs a bit more off there.
Right.
That's looking nice, that is.
- Well, that's a lovely bit of work, lads.
Really is.
- Thank you.
I can see how that's gonna keep stock out.
- No sore fingers? - I have, actually.
They're sort of roughing up a bit.
- No black nails, it has to be said.
- No.
But, no, it's been great.
It's been a great day.
So thanks ever so much for having me up here.
I feel I've learned something.
I'm gonna go home now and have a play in my own back garden.
Governed by the geography and geology of its landscape, for centuries the farming way of life on the moor had changed little.
But by the early 20th century, a new industry on Dartmoor had emerged.
With the invention of the motorcar, and the expansion of the railways, for the first time the scenic moorlands became easily accessible to tourists.
Driven by vintage car owner Ivan Jones, Shropshire landowner Rupert Acton has come to Dartmoor on holiday with his wife Louise and daughter Florence.
There they are! And he's eager to meet up with his old tenant farmers.
- Hello! - Hi! - Fantastic! - My goodness, you know how to arrive in style! - Hello.
- Hello, Ruth.
Rupert is following in the footsteps of his Edwardian ancestors, who regularly came to Devon on holiday, and were among the first in their county to own a motorcar.
Well, it's sort of like a beast of a thing, isn't it? - It's a machine, madam.
- Oh, sorry! A machine.
It's a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost with coachwork by Barker.
- You bought a Rolls-Royce for about £1,100.
- Right.
- Which was an awful lot of money.
- Big money at that date.
About ten years' wages for somebody like yourself.
Then you paid £500 or £600 to have Barkers build your coachwork, to your specification.
Oh, look, it's even pretty in there! The noise, it's so quiet.
It's almost like hearing a milk float when you're travelling in the back.
When it pulls away.
You don't hear the engine at all.
Although this was beyond the means of Edwardian farmers, Alex, Ruth and Peter can't resist a spin in the most sought-after car of its day.
If you were gonna be some super rich person at any point in history, I think I'd go for the Edwardian era.
It's gotta be the Edwardian age, hasn't it? How fast can it go, Ivan? Well, 65 reasonably comfortably, really.
- How many miles per gallon are you getting? - Ten to twelve.
- Ten to twelve! - Ten to twelve miles per gallon! But it's surprising, isn't it, there were petrol stations already by 1909, dotted around this part of the world because so many people came touring, doing exactly this.
- The writing's on the wall for the horse and cart.
- It was.
Give them a little toot as you go by.
The arrival of the motorcar not only opened up the countryside to tourists, but also enabled the wealthier members of Edwardian society to indulge their passion for picnicking.
You ought to get the Pimm's out, darling.
Who wants lobster? - Oh! They are huge too.
- Look at the claws! It's sort of almost iconic, isn't it, the Edwardian picnic.
When you think of that period of history, it's of one of those things that springs to mind.
Endless food under hot summer skies in beautiful places.
I suppose one of the most famous kind of Edwardian picnics has gotta be the Wind In The Willows, where - is it Ratty? - is listing every single item in the picnic basket, and it's just one continuous list.
Inspired by authors like Kenneth Grahame, the Edwardian picnic was part of a newly romanticised view of the British countryside.
As a growing number of people turned to the countryside for recreation, and to escape the industrial towns and cities, the unspoiled landscape of Dartmoor became an increasingly popular setting for a new pastime - rambling.
Picked an absolutely stunning day for it.
Rupert is keen to explore the high moor on foot, and along with Peter and Alex, has met up with rambler and guide, Roger Paul.
- Where are you taking us today? - We're gonna go through there.
- Right.
- To Cranmere Pool.
- Right.
- Which is the remotest section on Dartmoor.
Nine or ten walking miles from anywhere.
And we're at about 1,800 feet.
Head on down here.
We'll see our last bit of water in a minute.
- Are you looking forward to this, Rupert? - Yes.
I could do with a good walk.
Getting to Cranmere Pool involves walking over the moor's treacherous terrain.
This is where we're getting slightly heavy going, because we're going down in these dips and up again.
The peat-rich ground on Dartmoor acts as a giant sponge, absorbing over 100 inches of rain every year.
The whole land is moving, isn't it? It's squelching under foot.
In the winter, this goes up and down like a yoyo.
And you've only gotta stop and look at this lot.
- When you think there, look.
- Oh, wow! - You will go right down.
- But this is all right at the moment cos it's dry? If you do get stuck, is there a method of getting out of the mud? If you just lay down flat.
And if you Exactly.
If you had a haversack on, you could chuck that in front of you.
So you'd rest on there, and then you'd just crawl yourself out.
- Pull yourself out.
- I hope we don't need to.
I've only ever done it once! Of course, the other option is just walk behind someone.
Yeah! I've noticed you doing that, Peter.
- Dips, actually.
- Oh, blimey! I'm not gonna do that.
After an hour's walk, the team finally arrive at Cranmere Pool, a destination that once challenged even the most intrepid Edwardian.
- So this is it.
- So this is it.
Cranmere Pool.
Let's see if we can open this box.
Although the water at Cranmere Pool had long since gone, this lonely, bleak spot on the moor still pulled in the visitors.
In 1854, it'd become the birthplace of letterboxing, an orienteering pursuit that's now popular around the world.
They would have put a postcard in here, addressed to themselves or somebody in the family.
And they would have relied on somebody else to come along, pick the postcard up, and post it off.
Proof that you'd been to Cranmere Pool, which, at that time, as it is now, is one of the remotest spots in the UK.
So there's your book.
Sign in as a visitor.
- Right, OK.
- That's your log book, is it? - That's your log book.
There's your stamp.
- Prove you've been here.
- Have you got some postcards? - Let's have a look at these.
- We could send it to Ruth.
- OK, then.
So we can prove to her we weren't at the pub all afternoon.
Send some sandwiches.
Just about make that out.
Would they have waited long for that postcard to arrive? Well, I would have said comparatively not, because if you look in the first year that the book was put in the tin, 1905, there was something like between 600 and 700 visitors in the first year.
And within three years, that had risen to nearly 2,000 visitors.
Wow! There is a record, I think, in the very first year, within a couple of months, of a Frenchman signing in and putting a postcard in to himself back in France.
Right, here we go, then.
Put these in there.
And then the next visitor to here should post them for us.
- Let's hope.
Fingers crossed.
- Yeah.
Are you going to guide us back, or we on our own? - He's gonna see what we've learned.
- Yeah.
Is there a quicker way home? It's almost time for the team to return to the valley.
But there's still one last important job to be done.
When the shearing season was over, the white tide of Dartmoor began.
Once, hundreds of lowland sheep farmers would have driven their flocks onto the highest pastures of the moor for summer grazing, an annual pilgrimage dating back to the Middle Ages.
Here! Here! Come! Come! With the help of Kenny, and his dogs Wag and Roy, Alex and Peter have joined the last farmers to still carry on this tradition - Patrick Coker and his family.
My family have been coming up here, I understand, from about 1850.
- Really? - Yeah.
It's a very long time.
And we just keep up this tradition, but unfortunately I think we're about the only family left that are doing it.
- Really? - Yeah.
Cos you do this every year, some sheep know where they're going.
They know exactly where they're going.
As soon as you come up that lane, they come straight out here.
It's their summer holiday, really! Come! Come! Having done all that work to get them ready for the moor, you're confident they'll do well for a couple of months? Oh, yes.
They won't put on a lot of flesh.
But they'll be healthy.
That's the main thing.
They lose that hardiness if you don't put them there year after year.
And we can get on with a few other jobs - hay making, silaging.
And it gives the farm a rest, as well, that's the other thing.
The sheep will stay on the highlands of Dartmoor until the autumn, when they will once again return to their lowland farms.
Putting your sheep on Dartmoor doesn't mean you can forget about them.
So if you were a shepherd and you had a flock, you'd want to spend time up here with them, make sure they've settled in, make sure they're not getting into trouble.
It's an absolutely stunning location.
The sun setting.
The moon rising.
And the expanse of ancient Dartmoor.
While the team are out on the moor, Ruth is busy preparing lamby pie, a traditional West Country dish.
Dartmoor lamb eats Dartmoor grass, and all the wonderful little plants that are in it, which is a completely different mix of food from lambs down in the lowlands.
And what they eat flavours the meat.
With few trees on the moor to build fires, Edwardians burned dried peat, partially-decayed vegetation that forms over thousands of years in the boggy wetlands.
Today you're not allowed to cut peat on Dartmoor.
We brought this down from Scotland.
But back in the Edwardian period, it was still a common thing to do up on this moor.
Food cooked on a peat fire does not taste the same as food cooked on a wood fire.
I think nowadays people think that all the flavour in food comes from the ingredients.
Well, this is an ingredient, too.
I do like the smell of peat.
Of course, the thing it really smells of is whisky.
Or at least that smoky flavour you get with whisky.
I'm gonna make the pastry.
Not with butter, not with lard, not with any of the usual fats.
I'm gonna make it with clotted cream.
Cream absorbs flavour.
If you put cream or milk open in your fridge next to something else, it absorbs.
If you had an onion, a garlic, or a lemon in your fridge, all those flavours get taken on by the milk and cream.
So, as you can imagine, it takes peat smoke smell really well.
And Edwardian visitors, those in the know, would really look out for a cream tea on Dartmoor.
Because a cream tea on Dartmoor meant that the cream would actually be produced over a low peat fire.
It's absolutely amazing.
Really is.
This is a stone row.
The termination of an ancestral highway.
And there's no doubt that this monument would have had a role to play at Midsummer.
And here, this is the sacred place, where the rituals would have been played out.
And, of course, in the Edwardian period, they speculated wildly about what would have happened here.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who of course wrote the Hound Of The Baskervilles, who was famous for haunting this moor, he was ever so interested in all this stuff and he wrote prolifically about the many demons, and the druidic ways, of the moor.
So I've sort of just mixed my herbs and my seasoning and my cream together.
And now I just lay it in layers.
In areas where you're cooking on peat, you don't get much roasted meat.
You get an awful lot of slow, simmered, pot stews - think Irish stew - that sort of long, slow, gentle cooking.
Our regional cooking is the sort of memory of regional farming and regional fuel.
Woah! Wow! That is fab.
That's part of that slice.
Hot.
It is a fantastic location, isn't it? It's a million miles away from Morwellham, isn't it? I think the stone row and the standing stone there is the most interesting thing for me, because Conan Doyle's story Hugo de Baskerville has got his eye on this young maid down in the village, and he wants to have her for his own, so he kidnaps her and locks her in the tower.
And while she's there he gets all his mates up for a sort of ripping party, and they're feasting away.
And then one of his manservants tells him, "She's escaped!" So he jumps on his horse and he races after her, and he races across the moor.
Of course, all his friends are like, "Oh, God, we must follow him.
" And they eventually find him.
Above him, tearing his throat out, is the hound, this black dog.
And, of course, it's happening at the standing stone.
- Ruth.
- Yes? Have you got the reigns to the pony? I'm off.
It's a spooky place.
Over ground, farmers supplied Britain's growing towns and cities with fresh produce Daffodils set for London.
while, underground, miners extracted copper and precious minerals.
Firing! Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, and historian Ruth Goodman, are living the lives of Edwardian farmers for a full calendar year.
Oh, look at them! Look at all of them! They're so sweet! They're getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth to Devon.
- Oh! - Oh, wow! We got something! There's a good Last month, the team ventured into the county's famous dairy trade Oh, that is different, isn't it? Well, we like it! planted new crops in their arable field and cashed in on the valley's booming tourist industry.
- Hip, hip! - Hooray! Now it's June, a time when farmers in the valley traditionally took their sheep onto Dartmoor for summer grazing.
Here! Come! Come! Here the team will explore an ancient landscape I have to say, on a day like today, this is one of the best jobs I've come across.
learn how to profit from Devon's once-booming wool industry I'm just finding this really nerve-wracking, actually.
and old friends arrive on holiday.
There they are! My goodness, you know how to arrive in style! In the Tamar Valley, the arrival of summer brought new challenges for Edwardian farmers.
June was the month when they could profit from one of Devon's traditional agricultural industries - wool.
But this was also the time when farmers had to make use of any dry weather to harvest winter feed for their livestock.
Traditionally, hay would have been made with all of this lovely, succulent grass.
But we're going to try for something different this year.
Something new and radical in the Edwardian age.
With the increasing use of science in Edwardian agriculture, the government of the day advised farmers to make silage, a method of starving the freshly-cut grass of oxygen.
This way the green and succulent grass is preserved, while still retaining vital nutrients.
Now, we always associate silage with very, very modern farming - polythene-wrapped bales in the field, and polythene clamping the silage in the farmyard.
But in fact, actually, it says here, this was first widely adopted in the year 1888.
So the Board Of Agriculture And Fisheries are actively promoting silage during the Edwardian period, simply because it has got such good nutritional value and succulence for your herd and your sheep throughout the winter months.
To make silage, the team must gather in all the cut grass before it begins to dry in the field.
I never thought I'd find myself in a field, in June, trying to stop grass drying out.
Yeah! Perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
See, it's nice and green.
It's that smell of freshly-cut, freshly-mown lawns.
- It's that smell of fermentation.
- Yeah, that's what we're looking for.
To preserve the fresh grass, Alex and Peter will need to build an airtight container, known as a clamp.
The whole idea of the clamp is essentially to prevent the oxygen from getting to this organic material, because if it's just left out in the open, this material would start to rot down.
And what these straw mats will do is they'll just stop the soil, that we lay on top to ultimately seal the clamp, from getting into the grass, cos if does that, it creates the kind of conditions that Listeria bacteria will thrive in.
But that's it.
That is the roof on.
Are you happy with that? I'm happy with that.
That's the easy bit.
That's quick.
That's the easy bit, yeah.
Shifting the earth is gonna be the hard bit.
To prevent oxygen getting to the grass, Alex and Peter now have to seal the clamp with earth.
Unopened, the silage should remain edible for several years.
Well, there we go.
Earth on.
Oxygen out.
Silage made.
It should keep the sheep and the cattle fed throughout winter, so, yeah, pleased to get this one out of the way.
On the Edwardian Farm, the team are reaping the benefits of the Tamar Valley's mild climate.
Their oat and potato crops are thriving, looking set for a bumper harvest later in the summer.
Super, super crop.
But the warm weather isn't so welcome for the farm's flock of ewes.
Now the sun's come out, the flies have come out.
Yeah.
Sheep suffer particularly from something called blowfly.
They get in amongst the back end of those sheep.
Larvae can actually start eating into the flesh of the sheep.
It not only destroys the fleece, but, of course, the animal itself is severely traumatised, stops eating.
- It can kill the sheep as well.
- In the worst case scenario, it can kill them.
To try and escape the flies in the warm and humid valley, Alex and Peter have taken their sheep onto the highest grounds of the farm.
But with a huge expanse of open moorland nearby, Edwardian farmers traditionally drove their flocks onto Dartmoor.
It's fascinating, isn't it, the whole situation with the seasonal summer grazing of Dartmoor? It'd be a fantastic thing to go and explore, wouldn't it? Rising up to over 2,000 feet above sea level, and covering 368 square miles, the vast, barren moorlands are a stark contrast to Devon's green and verdant valleys.
Dartmoor is a wilderness.
I mean, you've got granite tors sticking out of mossy, peaty bogs.
And the farming that goes on there has been sculpted by the landscape itself.
Dartmoor was once a mighty forest.
Over the past 5,000 years, farmers have worked the land to create pastures for livestock.
Dartmoor, for me, is a fantastic, romantic landscape.
To really engage with the farming of Dartmoor as it would have been 100 years ago, is just going to be unique.
- Would you mind keeping the farm ticking over? - Of course.
The annual pilgrimage of sheep farmers to the moor meant that women were often left to look after the farms.
Right, here we go.
Now, Ruth, whilst there's no signs of blight on the potatoes yet, a pre-emptive spray is in order.
- You've not used this before, have you? - No.
No, but, you know For farms to prosper, traditionally male or female tasks were often interchangeable.
If it hadn't happened all the time, can you imagine what would have occurred for World War I? Britain would have fallen apart.
It was only because women had been doing bits and bobs quietly, of pretty much everything, albeit in odd situations, that there was a skill base there.
So that when the men have gone, life can go on.
For Alex and Peter's Dartmoor expedition, Ruth's rustling up some supplies.
Including biscuits and a popular drink of the time - mahogany.
We need the zest and the juice of one lemon.
And as much rum and brandy as you can force in a bottle.
And a good dollop of sugar to sweeten it.
So when you're, you know, up on the moors, you can take some of the mahogany, pop it into a cup and top it up with boiling water, and you've got yourself a really good sort of hot toddy thing.
Come on.
Oh! Delicious.
- Well, there you go, then.
Don't starve.
- A feast.
OK.
- See you in a couple of days.
- Good luck, Ruth.
- See you! - See you, then.
Ruth will join Alex and Peter on the moor in a few days'time.
- So are you looking forward to the moor, Peter? - I love Dartmoor.
It's only five miles from the farm at Morwellham Quay to Dartmoor.
So are we nearly there yet? I've got my eyes on that mahogany wine.
Alex and Peter are travelling to a traditional farmstead on the lower region of the moor, that's witnessed centuries of Dartmoor farming.
This is why I've come to Dartmoor.
- This is fascinating, isn't it? - It's fantastic.
An original Dartmoor farm.
Wow! This is rare.
This farm has seen generation upon generation of Dartmoor farmer.
- You can see all the different occupation levels.
- All these different phases of building.
You'd have a stable up the end.
That would be your living quarters.
We're missing the chimneys.
And then the shippen - the cattle byre - would be down here.
And they've even got the bracken, look, which they would have used for bedding.
Look at some of those stones there in that doorway.
That doorway will be 500 years old.
Wow! Wow, look at that! That cider press is huge.
- There's an apple loft.
- Apple loft on top.
Your horse gin.
Your press.
This is as it would have been 100 years ago.
- It's amazing! - And also loads of barrels of vintage cider! Result! Amazing.
The farm belongs to Colin Pearse, a sheep farmer who believes passionately in preserving the traditions of the moor.
These are the sheep, one of England's oldest breeds of sheep.
Colin farms the white-faced Dartmoor, the native breed of sheep whose long wool fleeces once played a vital role in the economy of the moor.
It's easy to forget that we built a nation on the wealth generated from the wool trade.
- We did.
- Churches and bridges.
Wonderful names come up, like Bridge On Wool, and it was the profits of wool, the culture, the economy, the prosperity, and the wool, of course, paid the rent for these little farms.
This was a wonderful day when you came to shear, because you've waited 12 months for this fleece to mature.
Well, we look forward to helping.
Let's see if we can't throw a bit of fun into the bargain.
By fun, do you mean competition? - Yeah, I think so.
- Yeah.
I have surprisingly weak forearms, despite what people say, so I wouldn't mind being paired with the slightly better shearer.
To teach Alex and Peter the craft of hand shearing, Colin has called in champion Devon blade shearer, George Mudge, and his son, Andrew.
I think that it tends to run in families.
My father was a good shearer and all his brothers.
- Yeah.
- And now Andrew's good at it as well.
There you go, then, there she is.
Travelling from farm to farm, an Edwardian blade shearer would have hoped to remove a fleece in less than five minutes.
You must be very careful.
- Right.
- Not to cut them.
- You've gotta really know a sheep's body.
- Absolutely.
You know, you've got a pair of blades here which are six inches long.
- Take your finger off.
- Yeah! You could take your finger off quite easily.
- She's all right with this? She's not traumatised? - No, not at all.
And I mean, generally speaking, when the weather's hot, they're really glad to get it off.
So the way you're shearing here is essentially so that the fleece all comes off in one piece? It's a bit like when you're shaving, you know, you have to keep the old skin tight.
- You have to sort of draw your face.
- That's it.
- To get the razor over it.
- Yeah.
And also when you're shearing, you should avoid, as near as possible, skin cuts and second cuts of the wool.
Are hand shears still in use much around the world? In countries like South Africa, still about 65% of the sheep are shorn with a blade.
The best blade shearers in the world.
And they, like shearers everywhere, get paid on a headage basis.
So the more they shear, the more they earn.
And, you know, wherever people are shearing in the world, nobody wants to be the slowest.
- That's it.
- There she goes.
- Off she goes, a different animal, actually, but - It looks half the size, doesn't it? - Unrecognisable! - Yeah.
So that whole process took us five minutes? Probably something like that, I suppose, yeah.
Right, so how many do you think you could do in a day? Well, a good shearer with the hand shears would do probably about 50 of these, I suppose.
I think 50 would be quite enough.
I think five would be my It's like a barber shop, isn't it? They're all lining up! - She's looking at you, Peter.
- Better give them a magazine to read! Down in the valley, Ruth's been left to look after the farm's valuable potato crop, making sure that the plants don't get blight.
So lime water copper sulphate.
Ruth's turned to the government advice leaflets to make Bordeaux mixture, a fungicide developed in France.
The story goes that there was this French farmer who grew grapes and one side of his vineyard was along the road.
And people walking down the road were forever helping themselves to grapes as they passed, and he was getting fed up of this, so he thought, "I know, I'll get the so-and-so's.
I'll put something that tastes really foul on the grapes along that edge, and then they won't eat my ruddy grapes!" And he presumably had these things knocking about in his farmhouse, sprayed it on, and it did indeed stop the people nicking his grapes.
But he also noticed at the end of the season that whilst the rest of his field had mildew problems, that row didn't.
After devastating potato famines in the mid 19th century, Bordeaux mixture revolutionised arable farming.
Quite a lot of crops suffer from problems from various mildews and fungi.
The most important of which, of course, is potato and tomato blight, which just absolutely decimates.
It arrives on the wind in damp air, little spores.
They touch the edge of a crop.
Once you've got it on one crop, it's gonna sweep through the rest of your crop in very, very short time.
So keeping blight off was deeply important.
Bordeaux mixture is a diluted solution of lime and copper sulphate.
To get it onto the potatoes, Ruth will use a crop sprayer.
Whoops.
Well, that'll do to start with.
Oddly, this feels like women's work.
I am reminded of washing dollies! And barrel churns.
Ooh.
Wow.
It really works, this! I'm quite impressed.
I wonder how long I've got before it runs out of oomph? Sorry! Snip away.
On the Dartmoor farm, it's Alex and Peter's turn to shear, and they're getting competitive.
Are you dancing over there, Peter? - Yeah.
- Come Shear With Me? Something for the weekend.
I'm just finding this really nerve-wracking, actually.
She can sense my anxiety.
It's all about handling the animal.
And, well, I've got the feistiest sheep.
She's doing very well.
The sheep's behaving herself as well, which is a surprise.
She must feel safe.
Whoops.
Hang on, we've got a little bit left.
Back here, sheep.
There.
Job done.
Job done.
It's taken Peter 20 minutes to shear his sheep.
- Alex? - Yeah.
- Have you got the time there? - Oh, just a minute.
I just don't want to lose concentration at the last minute.
Up she comes.
- There she goes! - Brilliant, Alex.
- Very well done.
- Andrew, thank you very much for that.
Cor, that is knackering! Shearers are not only judged on their speed, but on the quality of the fleece.
I was quick.
But it's not pretty, is it? It's supposed to be a fleece, Peter, not a jigsaw.
I don't see that one laid out in front of your fireplace, Peter.
I think we should let the masters take over, though.
- Let's go grab another two sheep.
- Yeah.
While Alex and Peter get on with the shearing, Ruth's making cheese, a sideline that could earn an Edwardian farmer a decent income.
Small-scale dairying in Edwardian Britain was undergoing an enormous amount of change.
For centuries and centuries, tiny little farmhouse kitchens had been able to commercially make a little batch now and again, sell a few at market, keep a few for the home.
By the Edwardian period, little local rustic cheeses are pretty much dead.
It's all about mass-produced, standardised cheese, or at least, those are the only things that are selling.
To help dairies produce standardised cheeses, the government advice leaflets recommend specific recipes.
The one I thought I'd make is this last one.
Soft cheese number two.
What a glamorous name.
"It is an English variety and is in demand during warm months.
" And you can eat it the day after you've made it.
I've been warming my milk on the stove.
I need it between 92 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
Which, if I had a thermometer, would be really easy to measure.
As I haven't, I've been doing it with my finger.
I want it a little bit warmer than blood heat.
I want it so it feels warm but not hot.
Now, the rennet is the thing that changes it from milk into curds and whey.
I've got to spread the rennet through the whole mass.
A tiny drop of rennet, loads of milk.
But as well as that, the stirring is really important in ensuring the final texture of the cheese.
Because if you don't stir it at this stage, the fat, or the cream, can rise and you'll get bits of the curd that are very creamy and bits that are very thin.
It's amazingly calming, making cheese.
It's quite relaxing.
If you get over-excited, you don't make terribly good cheese.
Ruth now has to wait four hours until the curd which will form the final cheese is fully separated.
Ooh, yes, I've got a decent set on that.
What I want to do is take crusts of curd that are hardly untouched, so they're very sort of, still junkety and jellylike, and lay them in.
So I'm sort of just breaking through the curd and lifting it out in great big jelly pieces.
Look at that.
And they go straight into my mould.
It's like dealing with a living thing.
All the remaining liquid whey drains into buckets beneath the mould.
But that's gonna sink, as the whey comes out, the curd is gonna slowly collapse down.
It's so mesmerising.
After a hard day of shearing on Dartmoor, the team are finishing the last of the ewes.
- Away you go.
- Well, that was excellent.
- Thank you very much, George.
- That's all right.
For the evening's entertainment, Colin has laid on a traditional West Country game of skittles.
I'd just like to thank the team and all the hard work done by the shearers, the skill that goes into it, for looking after my sheep, and for making it a perfect day.
- Cheers, lads.
- Cheers.
Oh, oh, it's ripping! Oh, no! Oh, dear me! Think I'd better stick to shearing.
Well done.
While Alex and Peter settle in to life on Dartmoor, down in the Tamar Valley, Ruth's up early to check if her cheese has set and drained.
Don't collapse, don't collapse, don't collapse.
Be good, be a nice Hooray! Good cheese.
Oh, no, don't go wrong! Oh! Serves me right for being impatient.
Oh! And that's the thing with cheese-making.
You have to be so precise.
I shouldn't be surprised if my first attempt at a new style of cheese goes a bit I was gonna say pear shaped, but splat shaped would be more likely.
It's mid-June, and on Dartmoor, with the shearing season in full swing, this was the time when Edwardian farmers finally cashed in on their flocks' valuable fleeces.
With wool needing to be taken to the mill, Ruth joins up with Alex and Peter on the Dartmoor farm.
There you are.
Found you! - There's the wool.
- That's nice! Crimp on it and all.
It's a bit dusty and a bit dirty.
I think it's had quite a hard winter.
Do you think they should be washed before we take it to the mill? Well, you're in a sticky situation, really, because it's obviously gonna go on weight, isn't it? - Yeah.
- So if you wash out all the lanolin - All the dirt! - And all the dirt, yeah.
you're gonna lose a lot of the weight.
But if it's dirty, they'll knock money off at the mill.
Exactly.
Edwardian times, things were a lot fussier.
Certainly the wool clip was worth more - Yeah.
per fleece than it is today.
So then the farmer would think, "We'll do what we're told.
" If there's a stream next to the farm boundary, ideal.
Oh! I'm gonna just have to get the petticoat wet.
Keep your fleece tucked in there.
- Else you're gonna lose bits of it.
- Oh, yeah, there's a bit escaping.
Come back here, you.
Do a wringing process like a lady does with her washing.
Keep folding it in, yeah.
There's a great big piece of blackberry bramble there.
I have to say, on a day like today, this is one of the best jobs I've come across! No wonder the sheep are glad to get rid of that.
The irritation from that on its back must be That's why they very often, as they do, get on their back and have a good old itch.
- Right.
- Cos they're still feeling that sore on their back.
Beautiful Dartmoor scene, this is.
Beside a babbling brook.
The peacefulness, the serenity, the slow pace of life.
And I think it shaped the character of the people.
All right.
Oh, incredible.
Where do you want it, then? I don't know.
Up in the sun, I suppose.
Do you know what? I feel like a kid on holiday.
High above the lowland farms on Dartmoor is the vast expanse of open moorland where, for centuries, local farmers have had common rights to graze their livestock.
Get up, right, right! Get up! Often having to move their flocks over large distances, here sheep farmers have had to rely heavily on their dogs.
Get up! Yes, yes, get up! Eager to understand how this relationship between man and dog works, Alex and Peter have come to meet lifelong Dartmoor shepherd, Kenny Watson, and his border collies, Wag and Roy.
Sit down.
How do you tell the dogs to go left and right? They've got what we call their sides, their commands.
Like, right hand is, "Ra!" And that's always their right, not your right.
Always.
And if you want them to come left? Come! Come! Come! There he goes.
Round he goes.
Quite an important one on the moor is, "Look back.
" Cos sometimes on the hill sheep will go away, and you'll see two or three moving behind.
- Behind the dogs? - Behind the dogs.
Go back! Go back! They've gone off to look for the sheep.
There are sheep up there.
They think there's something back there.
I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on with our extremely small pen in this extremely large field.
- Well, I'll do my best.
- OK.
Here, here, hey! Get up! Way! Way! It's real precision work, isn't it? We don't think of sheep dog work as a craft, but it is.
She's feisty.
By there.
No.
Here we go, last one.
Hey.
Sit down.
Sit down.
Brilliant.
And is there a trick to this, at all? I think the biggest advantage is to be a farmer.
To know how to handle the sheep, to know when to move the dog, to stop them at the right time.
- But do the dogs enjoy themselves? - Oh, they're always happy to work.
Always happy to work.
I'd rather have one dog than ten men.
Cos they know the place, they know the sheep.
They're so quick and that.
I couldn't manage without them.
The washed fleeces are ready to be taken to the local wool mill.
They're surprisingly heavy, even when they're dry.
They are heavy.
It's the grease, probably, that comes up in these fleeces, and they're long wool fleeces, of course, as well.
But this is their last journey.
All that work! All that work, but now we hope for payday.
Payday for Dartmoor's white gold, its precious fleeces.
I promise I'll look after it.
I'll keep a very good eye on it.
Mind they don't fall out the back.
All the best to you, Ruth.
- See you.
- All the best.
Thank you.
Ruth has arranged to deliver the fleeces to Peter Fisher at Coldharbour Mill.
- Hi.
- Hello, Ruth.
- Pleased to meet you.
- What a wonderful place.
- You found us all right? - Yes.
I followed the chimney.
Well, it's a bit Now a working museum, in the early 1900s, Coldharbour Mill was at the forefront of Devon's woollen industry.
It established the company Fox Brothers and Co as a renowned global exporter of woollen goods, including puttees for the armed forces.
So this is what this mill was making - the yarn for these? They were, yes, I mean obviously all the British regiments, and Commonwealth countries as well - Empire countries as they were then.
And then later on, even the Germans had them.
Devon wool.
I think that's really quite rather nice, isn't it? Devon wool all over the world.
Using water power to drive its heavy machines, the mechanised mill turned fleeces into high quality yarn.
Right, Ruth, well here's your fleece going into the hopper.
To remove any remaining dirt, and to separate the fibres, the wool is fed through a carding machine.
- The fleece is just gradually drawn in.
- Yeah.
And then it just really goes from roller to roller.
Each time being combed over and over and over again.
That's right.
Sort of separating all the fibres, making it fluffy, letting the dirt fall out.
Oh, and I can see it coming out the far end.
It looks so different, doesn't it? It gradually works its way round to the other end.
See the difference.
All sort of knotty and tight up, and this is all sort of fluffy and organised.
After the wool has been carded, it's drawn out to eight times its original length.
It's being drawn out through the rollers.
As it comes down the flying arm, a bit of twist is put into it.
- So we've got sort of fat, fluffy string? - That's right, that's called the slubbing.
- From this machine onto the next? - That's right.
We can start spinning.
In the spinning process the wool is twisted and drawn out to create a thinner yarn.
So these are off the last machine, the big fluffy string.
Here's our slubbings on the top, drawn out between the two sets of rollers.
- Much more twist being put into them now.
- They're spinning much, much faster.
Amazing, I'm looking at all these conveyor belts and things.
- This is all driven by water power? - Driven by the waterwheel.
All these belt and rollers, the whole blinking, noisy, clackering lot.
So these threads have been spun, but they're pretty useless in that state.
If you take the tension off, if I just sort of open a bit up, you can see it wants to sort of go all knotty and kinky.
To produce a knitting yarn, three threads are folded together on a twisting frame.
So all the twist in that goes one way.
- That's right.
- And then this, when you put it on here - Yeah.
spins the other way.
- And they lock each other in position.
- The same as making ropes.
So that's the finished yarn.
So if I untwist it you can see, there it is, three completely separate bits of stuff, and you can sort of see in my fingers, they're wanting to knot.
As soon as they're untwisted, they're wanting to go into horrible little knots.
Let the twist go back in and it's perfectly comfortable.
I just really like this about, you know, textiles.
It's really simple but clever, isn't it? I mean, it's the basis of everything.
String, rope, textiles, clothes.
You know, suspension bridges are built using this technology.
With wire.
In its heyday, Coldharbour Mill employed over 100 people to work its machines.
Woah! They worked long hours in dangerous and noisy conditions, for minimal wages.
Boy, is it noisy! You would go deaf if you worked in this for any length of time.
In a weaving shed, you'd have many more than this.
In fact, you'd have 400 looms.
I know that the weavers were usually adults, but in a mill like this, in the Edwardian period, an awful lot of the work is being done by quite young workers, isn't it? Usually female.
- Mainly female - because they got paid less.
- They were cheaper.
What that must have done to them in their, sort of, growing years.
- Incredible.
- They got their cloth ears quickly.
Yeah, cloth ears.
Yeah, you would, wouldn't you? Thank you so much.
This has been so interesting.
You know, it's really nice seeing the fleeces going through the whole process.
Seeing what they become.
All those sheep.
All that grass.
All that sunshine.
Hopefully it makes this story a little more understandable.
Devon's wool industry not only brought wealth to the county, but it also shaped its landscape.
On Dartmoor, where fresh grass struggles to grow beneath gorse and heather, farmers have created fresh pastures for their flocks by the ancient practice of swayling.
- What exactly is swayling? - Well, it's a very simple practice.
It's the practice of burning off old vegetation to create young grass.
- Right.
So they burned back this area.
- That's right.
And you can see some black sticks here, which were probably the gorse remaining.
Goes back to just the tradition that was for ever.
"Sway" means to yield.
"Ling" comes from the heather.
It's a Norse word.
So a practice which might have just been a Norseman that rubbed some flints together, realised he could burn the moor and it would sweeten up.
Against all odds, for thousands of years, farmers have managed to tame this otherwise inhospitable moorland.
While he's on Dartmoor, archaeologist Alex is keen to explore this ancient landscape.
What is so fascinating about Dartmoor is the way in which the relief and the geology has shaped the landscape.
These stones have become a part of the occupation and the settlement of the moor.
And here I'm standing in the middle of a hut circle.
And this goes back to prehistoric times.
They probably would have had a central hearth, and you would have had rafters running up from the stones, a conical-shaped roof, probably thatched with the gorse and the rushes from around here, and a fantastic view looking out.
And this wall here, this row of stones, is probably, in fact, an enclosure wall, where the people here would have kept their precious livestock, their sheep and their cows.
It's just fascinating to think of the role these stones have played in the story of Dartmoor.
They've really become part of the way of life, and they've helped to tame this landscape.
With the largest deposit of granite in southern Britain, generations of farmers have used the stone on Dartmoor to build enclosures for their livestock.
Alex has come to meet Wilf Hutchins and his team of dry stone wallers.
- Hi, there Wilf.
- Hi Alex.
- How are you? - Very well.
Hello, chaps.
So what are the qualities of a good dry stone waller, Wilf? The main thing is the eye for the stone.
Right.
Which only comes with experience, really.
I mean, I started on the farm when I was a kid.
Playing at it, really.
But over the years you develop a skill where you can see a particular shape and fit that stone to that shape.
Anybody can put a stone one on top of the other, but to get a nice job, to get a nice finish, to get the strength, to get the lines right, you don't learn it in five minutes, it's a - I'm still learning.
And I'm 60.
- Right! I see Bill and Jason getting stuck in there.
Have you got some work for me to do today? - There's plenty of work.
- Great stuff.
Just head on up there and pitch in.
- Well, I think he's a bit wobbly.
- A bit wobbly? Needs trigging, putting a chip in behind the stone to firm it up.
What I like about this is it's sort of rough and ready.
- It doesn't have to be pretty, just functional.
- That's right.
It's a great, great way of building.
Just come this way.
So how many metres would a good dry stone waller be expected to do in a day? Just a single face like this.
- I'd like to think we could do ten metres a day.
- Ten metres.
The landowners would bring in a gang of people and say, "Right, do that wall.
" The men would build the walls and the ladies would bring the stone in wheelbarrows to the men to build.
- I can't get my wife to do it.
- No! Right.
- I'll slip a - Watch your fingers.
Dry stone walls vary hugely from region to region.
- Put it in like that? Or is that a bit too high? - Too high, yeah.
Some walls are easier to build than others, depending on the size, shape and type of local stone.
With a flatter stone, obviously, you don't need the chips, the trigs, in behind.
But with the rounder ones, obviously, it's just a balancing act.
They didn't have safety specs back in the Edwardian days, did they? I doubt it.
It needs a bit more off there.
Right.
That's looking nice, that is.
- Well, that's a lovely bit of work, lads.
Really is.
- Thank you.
I can see how that's gonna keep stock out.
- No sore fingers? - I have, actually.
They're sort of roughing up a bit.
- No black nails, it has to be said.
- No.
But, no, it's been great.
It's been a great day.
So thanks ever so much for having me up here.
I feel I've learned something.
I'm gonna go home now and have a play in my own back garden.
Governed by the geography and geology of its landscape, for centuries the farming way of life on the moor had changed little.
But by the early 20th century, a new industry on Dartmoor had emerged.
With the invention of the motorcar, and the expansion of the railways, for the first time the scenic moorlands became easily accessible to tourists.
Driven by vintage car owner Ivan Jones, Shropshire landowner Rupert Acton has come to Dartmoor on holiday with his wife Louise and daughter Florence.
There they are! And he's eager to meet up with his old tenant farmers.
- Hello! - Hi! - Fantastic! - My goodness, you know how to arrive in style! - Hello.
- Hello, Ruth.
Rupert is following in the footsteps of his Edwardian ancestors, who regularly came to Devon on holiday, and were among the first in their county to own a motorcar.
Well, it's sort of like a beast of a thing, isn't it? - It's a machine, madam.
- Oh, sorry! A machine.
It's a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost with coachwork by Barker.
- You bought a Rolls-Royce for about £1,100.
- Right.
- Which was an awful lot of money.
- Big money at that date.
About ten years' wages for somebody like yourself.
Then you paid £500 or £600 to have Barkers build your coachwork, to your specification.
Oh, look, it's even pretty in there! The noise, it's so quiet.
It's almost like hearing a milk float when you're travelling in the back.
When it pulls away.
You don't hear the engine at all.
Although this was beyond the means of Edwardian farmers, Alex, Ruth and Peter can't resist a spin in the most sought-after car of its day.
If you were gonna be some super rich person at any point in history, I think I'd go for the Edwardian era.
It's gotta be the Edwardian age, hasn't it? How fast can it go, Ivan? Well, 65 reasonably comfortably, really.
- How many miles per gallon are you getting? - Ten to twelve.
- Ten to twelve! - Ten to twelve miles per gallon! But it's surprising, isn't it, there were petrol stations already by 1909, dotted around this part of the world because so many people came touring, doing exactly this.
- The writing's on the wall for the horse and cart.
- It was.
Give them a little toot as you go by.
The arrival of the motorcar not only opened up the countryside to tourists, but also enabled the wealthier members of Edwardian society to indulge their passion for picnicking.
You ought to get the Pimm's out, darling.
Who wants lobster? - Oh! They are huge too.
- Look at the claws! It's sort of almost iconic, isn't it, the Edwardian picnic.
When you think of that period of history, it's of one of those things that springs to mind.
Endless food under hot summer skies in beautiful places.
I suppose one of the most famous kind of Edwardian picnics has gotta be the Wind In The Willows, where - is it Ratty? - is listing every single item in the picnic basket, and it's just one continuous list.
Inspired by authors like Kenneth Grahame, the Edwardian picnic was part of a newly romanticised view of the British countryside.
As a growing number of people turned to the countryside for recreation, and to escape the industrial towns and cities, the unspoiled landscape of Dartmoor became an increasingly popular setting for a new pastime - rambling.
Picked an absolutely stunning day for it.
Rupert is keen to explore the high moor on foot, and along with Peter and Alex, has met up with rambler and guide, Roger Paul.
- Where are you taking us today? - We're gonna go through there.
- Right.
- To Cranmere Pool.
- Right.
- Which is the remotest section on Dartmoor.
Nine or ten walking miles from anywhere.
And we're at about 1,800 feet.
Head on down here.
We'll see our last bit of water in a minute.
- Are you looking forward to this, Rupert? - Yes.
I could do with a good walk.
Getting to Cranmere Pool involves walking over the moor's treacherous terrain.
This is where we're getting slightly heavy going, because we're going down in these dips and up again.
The peat-rich ground on Dartmoor acts as a giant sponge, absorbing over 100 inches of rain every year.
The whole land is moving, isn't it? It's squelching under foot.
In the winter, this goes up and down like a yoyo.
And you've only gotta stop and look at this lot.
- When you think there, look.
- Oh, wow! - You will go right down.
- But this is all right at the moment cos it's dry? If you do get stuck, is there a method of getting out of the mud? If you just lay down flat.
And if you Exactly.
If you had a haversack on, you could chuck that in front of you.
So you'd rest on there, and then you'd just crawl yourself out.
- Pull yourself out.
- I hope we don't need to.
I've only ever done it once! Of course, the other option is just walk behind someone.
Yeah! I've noticed you doing that, Peter.
- Dips, actually.
- Oh, blimey! I'm not gonna do that.
After an hour's walk, the team finally arrive at Cranmere Pool, a destination that once challenged even the most intrepid Edwardian.
- So this is it.
- So this is it.
Cranmere Pool.
Let's see if we can open this box.
Although the water at Cranmere Pool had long since gone, this lonely, bleak spot on the moor still pulled in the visitors.
In 1854, it'd become the birthplace of letterboxing, an orienteering pursuit that's now popular around the world.
They would have put a postcard in here, addressed to themselves or somebody in the family.
And they would have relied on somebody else to come along, pick the postcard up, and post it off.
Proof that you'd been to Cranmere Pool, which, at that time, as it is now, is one of the remotest spots in the UK.
So there's your book.
Sign in as a visitor.
- Right, OK.
- That's your log book, is it? - That's your log book.
There's your stamp.
- Prove you've been here.
- Have you got some postcards? - Let's have a look at these.
- We could send it to Ruth.
- OK, then.
So we can prove to her we weren't at the pub all afternoon.
Send some sandwiches.
Just about make that out.
Would they have waited long for that postcard to arrive? Well, I would have said comparatively not, because if you look in the first year that the book was put in the tin, 1905, there was something like between 600 and 700 visitors in the first year.
And within three years, that had risen to nearly 2,000 visitors.
Wow! There is a record, I think, in the very first year, within a couple of months, of a Frenchman signing in and putting a postcard in to himself back in France.
Right, here we go, then.
Put these in there.
And then the next visitor to here should post them for us.
- Let's hope.
Fingers crossed.
- Yeah.
Are you going to guide us back, or we on our own? - He's gonna see what we've learned.
- Yeah.
Is there a quicker way home? It's almost time for the team to return to the valley.
But there's still one last important job to be done.
When the shearing season was over, the white tide of Dartmoor began.
Once, hundreds of lowland sheep farmers would have driven their flocks onto the highest pastures of the moor for summer grazing, an annual pilgrimage dating back to the Middle Ages.
Here! Here! Come! Come! With the help of Kenny, and his dogs Wag and Roy, Alex and Peter have joined the last farmers to still carry on this tradition - Patrick Coker and his family.
My family have been coming up here, I understand, from about 1850.
- Really? - Yeah.
It's a very long time.
And we just keep up this tradition, but unfortunately I think we're about the only family left that are doing it.
- Really? - Yeah.
Cos you do this every year, some sheep know where they're going.
They know exactly where they're going.
As soon as you come up that lane, they come straight out here.
It's their summer holiday, really! Come! Come! Having done all that work to get them ready for the moor, you're confident they'll do well for a couple of months? Oh, yes.
They won't put on a lot of flesh.
But they'll be healthy.
That's the main thing.
They lose that hardiness if you don't put them there year after year.
And we can get on with a few other jobs - hay making, silaging.
And it gives the farm a rest, as well, that's the other thing.
The sheep will stay on the highlands of Dartmoor until the autumn, when they will once again return to their lowland farms.
Putting your sheep on Dartmoor doesn't mean you can forget about them.
So if you were a shepherd and you had a flock, you'd want to spend time up here with them, make sure they've settled in, make sure they're not getting into trouble.
It's an absolutely stunning location.
The sun setting.
The moon rising.
And the expanse of ancient Dartmoor.
While the team are out on the moor, Ruth is busy preparing lamby pie, a traditional West Country dish.
Dartmoor lamb eats Dartmoor grass, and all the wonderful little plants that are in it, which is a completely different mix of food from lambs down in the lowlands.
And what they eat flavours the meat.
With few trees on the moor to build fires, Edwardians burned dried peat, partially-decayed vegetation that forms over thousands of years in the boggy wetlands.
Today you're not allowed to cut peat on Dartmoor.
We brought this down from Scotland.
But back in the Edwardian period, it was still a common thing to do up on this moor.
Food cooked on a peat fire does not taste the same as food cooked on a wood fire.
I think nowadays people think that all the flavour in food comes from the ingredients.
Well, this is an ingredient, too.
I do like the smell of peat.
Of course, the thing it really smells of is whisky.
Or at least that smoky flavour you get with whisky.
I'm gonna make the pastry.
Not with butter, not with lard, not with any of the usual fats.
I'm gonna make it with clotted cream.
Cream absorbs flavour.
If you put cream or milk open in your fridge next to something else, it absorbs.
If you had an onion, a garlic, or a lemon in your fridge, all those flavours get taken on by the milk and cream.
So, as you can imagine, it takes peat smoke smell really well.
And Edwardian visitors, those in the know, would really look out for a cream tea on Dartmoor.
Because a cream tea on Dartmoor meant that the cream would actually be produced over a low peat fire.
It's absolutely amazing.
Really is.
This is a stone row.
The termination of an ancestral highway.
And there's no doubt that this monument would have had a role to play at Midsummer.
And here, this is the sacred place, where the rituals would have been played out.
And, of course, in the Edwardian period, they speculated wildly about what would have happened here.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who of course wrote the Hound Of The Baskervilles, who was famous for haunting this moor, he was ever so interested in all this stuff and he wrote prolifically about the many demons, and the druidic ways, of the moor.
So I've sort of just mixed my herbs and my seasoning and my cream together.
And now I just lay it in layers.
In areas where you're cooking on peat, you don't get much roasted meat.
You get an awful lot of slow, simmered, pot stews - think Irish stew - that sort of long, slow, gentle cooking.
Our regional cooking is the sort of memory of regional farming and regional fuel.
Woah! Wow! That is fab.
That's part of that slice.
Hot.
It is a fantastic location, isn't it? It's a million miles away from Morwellham, isn't it? I think the stone row and the standing stone there is the most interesting thing for me, because Conan Doyle's story Hugo de Baskerville has got his eye on this young maid down in the village, and he wants to have her for his own, so he kidnaps her and locks her in the tower.
And while she's there he gets all his mates up for a sort of ripping party, and they're feasting away.
And then one of his manservants tells him, "She's escaped!" So he jumps on his horse and he races after her, and he races across the moor.
Of course, all his friends are like, "Oh, God, we must follow him.
" And they eventually find him.
Above him, tearing his throat out, is the hound, this black dog.
And, of course, it's happening at the standing stone.
- Ruth.
- Yes? Have you got the reigns to the pony? I'm off.
It's a spooky place.