The good old days of back-breaking labour (BBC documentary)
'We smell and we ache," says Alex Langlands. "It's been a huge undertaking - and it's freezing up here in winter. But it's also been a real thrill."
Adjusting to hard physical work in wild weather was not the only challenge for the team of two archaeologists and a historian who retreated to deepest Shropshire to live for a year as Victorian farmers.
"Braces were a revelation," says Langlands, one of the archaeologists. "They used to wear their trousers much higher in those days, Simon Cowell-style.
At first we were using belts - seriously uncomfortable. The switch was a godsend."
It was the urge to get out of the library and find out more about the gritty details of the "forgotten voices" of rural life 150 years ago that led the group to conduct the experiment as a follow-up to a television series shown in 2005.
Tales From The Green Valley featured the same enthusiastic trio recreating life on a 17th-century farm on the Welsh borders. Once again the year-long project has been filmed for the BBC.
With everyone dressed head-to-foot in period costume, the farm looks so convincingly like something straight from the pages of Thomas Hardy it is almost eerie. Watching their mighty 17.2-hand shire horse Clumper pulling a log through shin-deep wild garlic with Langlands at his head feels spookily close to time travel
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Adjusting to hard physical work in wild weather was not the only challenge for the team of two archaeologists and a historian who retreated to deepest Shropshire to live for a year as Victorian farmers.
"Braces were a revelation," says Langlands, one of the archaeologists. "They used to wear their trousers much higher in those days, Simon Cowell-style.
At first we were using belts - seriously uncomfortable. The switch was a godsend."
It was the urge to get out of the library and find out more about the gritty details of the "forgotten voices" of rural life 150 years ago that led the group to conduct the experiment as a follow-up to a television series shown in 2005.
Tales From The Green Valley featured the same enthusiastic trio recreating life on a 17th-century farm on the Welsh borders. Once again the year-long project has been filmed for the BBC.
With everyone dressed head-to-foot in period costume, the farm looks so convincingly like something straight from the pages of Thomas Hardy it is almost eerie. Watching their mighty 17.2-hand shire horse Clumper pulling a log through shin-deep wild garlic with Langlands at his head feels spookily close to time travel