Edwardian Farm (2010) s01e03 Episode Script
Episode 3
1 Here in Devon, in the tranquil Tamar Valley, is a port that once bustled with industry.
Overground, farmers supplied Britain's growing towns and cities with fresh produce.
Daffodils set for London.
While underground, miners extracted copper and precious minerals.
Firing! Now at Morwellham Quay, archaeologists Alex Langland and Peter Ginn, and historian Ruth Goodman, are going back in time to the early 1900s, to live the lives of Edwardian farmers for a full calendar year.
They'll not just be farming, but getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth to Devon.
- Ooh! - Oh, wow! We got something! So far, the team's endeavours have laid the foundations of a working Edwardian farm.
Look at that.
Gorgeous.
They've brought in new livestock Be good to get some new blood into the flock.
stocked up the larder in preparation for a long winter Looks like we might actually have something to eat this winter.
and planted high value crops.
- In it goes.
- Oh, it's quite exciting really, isn't it? - Come on, Tom.
Walk on.
- Get on, boy.
Now it's November, and if the team are to prosper as Edwardian farmers, they'll have to turn to the latest farming practices of the age Loud! Really, really loud! get to grips with the technologies of the time It's almost like a steam engine! and use Edwardian science to set up an exciting new venture.
You're playing God without really knowing what God should be doing.
On the Edwardian Farm, the time has come to plough the land.
Alex and Peter want to grow oats, essential as feed for their livestock, and potatoes, a reliable source of income.
Good lad.
New technology was on the horizon.
But most farmers still relied heavily on horsepower.
Walk on.
Walk on.
Coming into the season where these fellas really earn their keep.
Because it's out to the fields, it's working in heavy clay.
And this is, this is really what the shire was bred for, it was the heavy draught work.
- Come on, Tom.
Walk on.
- Get on, boy.
Come on, boy.
Let's go.
- Good boys.
Come on, lads.
- Come on, boys.
Shires, Tom and Prince, have never pulled a plough before.
- Come to me.
- Walk on.
- Whoa! - Hey, Tom.
- Go on.
- Steady lads, come on.
Come on, boys.
Lifelong ploughman, Will Williams, has been called in to help them on their way.
- Tom.
- Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, steady.
And that's a nice straight line you've done.
- That's marvellous.
- I think it's more luck than anything! You think it's more luck than judgement? That is I dreamed of having lines this straight so early on in the day, Will.
And how long have you been doing it? Well, I was brought up, really, from childhood.
Right.
Phew! How old are you now? - I'm 77.
- 77? Right.
- So a fair old time, then? - Yep.
- Come on, boys.
- Good lads.
Yeah, good The two shires are working together well.
But Will is unhappy with the plough.
- It's not deep enough.
- Not deep enough? - Whoa! - Whoa, lad.
That's right.
It's very important to get that to cut in the right place.
We've noticed we've got a problem here.
Whilst our sheep have been out here and eating this down, we've still got quite a lot of growth on the field, and that's not good if that's showing, because all that'll do over the winter period and into the spring is that'll grow, and that'll affect whatever seed we put in here.
That'll essentially, that'll hamper the growth of that seed.
So what we're doing here is we're setting the depth of this little accessory here - it's called the skimmer.
And what the skimmer will do is it'll go in and it'll cut off the first inch and a half or so, so that'll actually cut that, sort of through there, upside down, and roll it right in.
- Where the - Are you happy? Yeah? For definite, see how it goes, whether it's too deep or too narrow.
This is what I really like about ploughing.
Because we just we don't really recognise what an art it is.
Every furrow should be like turning over a page in a book.
- Right.
- Should by lying exactly the same.
- Gonna be straighter than anything we do! - Aye! This is it.
This is what makes a farmer.
It's an art, it's a skill, it's a science.
It's an industry, it's a livelihood, it's a way of life.
But it was a way of life that was rapidly changing.
The days of farming with horses were numbered.
What's that noise? In 1903, a revolutionary new piece of Edwardian technology hit the marketplace, promising to change the face of farming.
Oh, my word! What have we here? Look, what we have! Wow! In the age that gave rise to the travelling salesman, tractor enthusiast David White hopes to convince the team to trade in their horses and join the petrol revolution.
Good morning, lady and gentlemen.
- Morning.
- Good morning.
I've come to demonstrate the new Ivel Agricultural Motor to your good selves.
Agricultural motor, yeah? Furnished with a two-cylinder engine running on petroleum motor spirit.
Start and stop at will, it needs no rest, and you don't need to change as you need to change a horse team.
So let's get this straight: The internal combustion engine has arrived on the agricultural scene with this machine, yeah? This is the future, sir.
Today this ex-demonstrator model is the oldest working tractor in the world.
You've brought your ploughman along with you? - Good morning! - Hello, Mr Williams.
- Now with a good team of horses - Yeah.
I'd say you'd plough an acre of land in eight hours.
This will plough two acres in four hours.
- Two acres in four hours.
- So it takes a quarter of the time.
- Yeah.
Allow us to demonstrate.
- Excellent.
Ooh! I'm dubious as to whether they will be able to plough.
You're dubious about it? Oh! Here we go.
I think he could do with a push.
Oh, it's sticking at exactly the same spot, isn't it? What's happening is as we're going this way we're only ploughing one furrow, because the plough is sliding on the bank.
Right, I see.
And then that way he's getting stuck over there, isn't he? It's obviously the ploughman.
So far it's looking like the Ivel will be a tough sell.
It's not the prettiest bit of ploughing I've ever seen.
We spent all this time trying to lift the soil up to get the air into it, only then to drive machines across it.
You know, these are people that have spent their lives working with horses.
Their fathers, their grandfathers, we're going back hundreds of years working with animals who can disperse their weight.
Whereas this thing, it's struggling.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Something's wrong.
Well, this has come Did you notice how he said "whoa" to the tractor? What was that? I noticed how you said whoa to the tractor! It's quite a lot of faff, isn't it? - It's a relentless form of ploughing.
- It is.
It's just push it's using power to push through.
And whereas the ploughman would be using his brain, his body, to react against the slope to work with it, here he's doing it all by levers.
It's so loud! Really, really loud! This is the change of the countryside, I suppose, from being quite a peaceful, rural idyll, albeit very hard work, to being quite a noisy Industrial-sounding sort of a place.
Although one thing we don't know about it is the price.
That's true, we haven't asked.
Let's Before we have a heart attack over the price, let's see what it can do in the barn.
Cos it might it might redeem itself somewhat.
While the men take the lvel up to the barn, Ruth has come to commiserate with Prince.
That nasty, noisy tractor.
Yeah? Busily superseding you.
At the beginning of the 20th century, well over a million shire horses still worked on farms and in industry.
But just 50 years later, the shire faced the very real threat of extinction.
So many people who remember working with horses talk about the joy going out of farming, to some extent, when they stopped using horses, moved over to tractors.
I mean, I know the tractors are more powerful, more versatile in many ways.
You can see why people moved over to them.
But - gosh - something was lost in the process.
Take the strain! In the barn the team are keen to see if the l vel will power an old Edwardian kibbler, a device used to grind down cereal crops into animal feed.
Previously requiring horsepower to drive the machine, the tractor could save the team a huge amount of work.
That's power, Peter! That's serious power.
Precarious power.
Look at that.
That is that is seriously fast.
If we come down here I mean, look at that.
This level of power on a farm could save an enormous amount of time.
I think, really, this is where the internal combustion engine is gonna come into its own.
Oh! Silence.
- How was that, gentlemen? - I'm super impressed.
I've never seen milled cereal come out of a machine that quickly before.
And we've worked with a fair few machines.
But that's brilliant, isn't it? Sounds to me you need a Ivel Agricultural Motor.
It's kind of redeemed itself.
I remain to be convinced on the ploughing front.
There's a couple of ticks in the plus column, put it that way.
- But the big question is - I need a competent ploughing operative.
How much? - It's a mere £300.
- £300? - So if I was buying that today, six years' wages.
- Six years' wages.
Wow! But I'm sure we could work out easy instalments for your good selves.
Sign on the dotted line, it could be yours in 40 years' time.
Yeah! With such a hefty price tag, only 500 Ivels were sold worldwide.
That's quite a machine, that.
It's quite a machine.
I think it's time to get on with some work, though, isn't it? Field's a mess.
For Edwardian farmers, new technology would become increasingly important to their survival.
Facing stiff competition from abroad for traditional crops, British farmers had to stay one step ahead of the game.
The latest scientific knowledge enabled entirely new forms of agriculture to emerge.
In 1901 the Tamar Valley became home to one of the country's first fish farms.
This is the River Tamar.
It is a formidable barrier that runs between Devon, where we are now, and Cornwall, over there.
And come the Edwardian period, the mining that happened in the hills around us, it polluted this river.
It was so bad you could take a horseshoe, pop it in the water, and a few days later it was copper-plated.
The pollution from mining wiped out fish stocks in the river.
So the Tamar's biggest landowner, the Duke of Bedford, turned to Edwardian science to farm fish in an artificial hatchery.
His aim, to breed salmon and trout, to restock the river.
My aim is setting up a fish hatchery here on our farm to explore that Edwardian science, which is now a multi-million pound industry.
First pioneered in Scotland in the late-19th century, today, over a quarter of all fish consumed in the world is farmed.
Peter is hoping to rear trout.
To understand the science behind it, he's travelled upriver to meet Rodney Hill, and 96-year-old Horace Adams, who worked at the hatchery on the Duke of Bedford's Devonshire estate.
So this hatchery was built around, as I say, well, about 1900 to 1910, around that period.
Horace is one of the few men who has bred fish the Edwardian way.
We had four boxes.
The water comes through here.
Here's the taps, and it runs into this box here.
Yeah.
And it flows through there, on through the next box.
And then the eggs were put into the hatchery.
In the old days they used to sit the eggs on the glass tubes, singly, and then latter days they used to put them in big trays.
Once you've laid them onto the tubes, full stop.
You mustn't interfere with them again.
- Right.
- You see? Unless there is a bad egg.
And then you've got to be very, very careful.
How will I know if an egg is dead? - If one starts to go bad, they go white.
- Right.
And if you leave them there for over a day, they used to throw out a kind of fungus, and that affects the other eggs, so you've got to make sure you get that egg out immediately, otherwise you can destroy the lot.
Right.
It's as simple as that.
And then they start hatching out, and they hatch out in from 39 to 41 days.
There's a little yolk sack, which feeds them for about 14 days.
And when that dissolves you start hand-feeding them with a dog's biscuits, liver, rabbits all minced up, and different offal, and all this and that.
In the summer blow flies would come in and, you know, you'd have hundreds of maggots, so it's quite a smelly business, but by God they go for the maggots! - You know? - Yeah.
I bet they could smell you a mile off! Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right! Yeah, you weren't allowed home with the same trousers on, sort of thing, cos you were smelly.
Quite smelly.
Do you have any confidence in me to build a hatchery? Well, not really! Bye-bye.
Well, Horace and Rodney, they've given me a lot of information.
But also given me a lot of doubt.
These eggs, they're so fragile.
If the box gets knocked, if it gets too cold, if the water is flowing through too quickly, they're all gonna die.
So it will all come to nothing.
While Peter contemplates the complexities of his new venture, on the farm Ruth is attempting her own project - breathing new life into the all-important privy.
A facility that in rural areas had changed little.
Although in the Edwardian age an awful lot of people were moving on from this sort of privy, water closets are getting really quite common, actually, in towns.
I mean, even really quite modest houses are having water closets installed.
But out in the countryside, most Edwardians were working on privy systems rather like this.
Rural privies were often found in the same building as the pigsties, so the farm's animal and human waste could be composted together, a system that was no longer viable in the increasingly populated towns and cities.
Towns have to move over to new forms of sanitation as their populations rise.
Push people in closer and closer together, you're gonna get more and more disease.
You've gotta find a new way of dealing with it.
Out here, where you've got plenty of fresh air to deal with all the fumes and stuff going off, plenty of space for composting, you can manage a hygienic system without needing the new technology.
To sterilise the privy seat, Ruth uses caustic soda.
And this will kill every last remaining little trace of bug.
In the late-Victorian and Edwardian period, people are first really getting to grips with what germs are, what bacteria is.
And microscopes are revealing all.
And as a result it sort of provoked, well, almost a paranoia about germs and bacteria and dirt.
So that you find really very, very, very rigorous cleaning regimes.
For the privy walls, Ruth uses a solution made from limestone.
Whitewash, being based on lime, is caustic and alkali, and it kills bugs.
It's a sterilising solution, as well as making an area lighter and brighter.
So it helps with being able to see in the dim light.
To build his trout hatchery, Peter will need timber, an important industry in the Tamar.
To keep pace with the demand for wood, Edwardian foresters processed the timber onsite, using steam-powered portable sawmills.
Farmer and sawyer, Roy Hebditch, runs this now-rare saw bench and traction engine.
Do these things travel around to different estates? Yeah.
They normally go into an estate and set up, and they stay there for two months.
Cut up a whole load of timber that would last the estate for sort of, like, say, four or five years.
You should also remember that moving around cost them money.
When they're on the roads they're not earning anything.
- Well, I'll show you how it works if you like? - Yeah, I wouldn't mind.
Come on, then! - Power from the engine - Right.
creates rotation motion through the shaft.
- That's driving the saw blade? - That's driving the saw blade direct, right? The shaft speed on this one is about between 420 and 430.
- Revolutions per - Revolutions per minute.
Gives you roughly, a top speed around 95, 100 mile an hour, that's right on the very tip there.
If you ever got your fingers caught in that, that'd be it.
I think I'll let you deal with that end of things! OK, Mags.
Roy's steam-driven traction engine powers both the four-foot six-inch blade and a sliding bench.
Fantastic.
Absolutely fantastic.
This enabled the Edwardian sawyer to cut through timber quicker and with greater precision than ever before.
That's ten, nine, eight, seven - There you go.
- Six.
Right, there you go, on six.
OK! This is timber-sawing, Edwardian-style.
None of your handsawing.
None of your physical effort.
This thing, it just eats through it.
It's all about setting it up and letting it go.
- There you go, you're now a sawyer! - Yeah.
You're a sawyer.
Congratulations! Thank you very much.
- I know, I got it it gets everywhere, doesn't it? - Yeah, it does.
It really does.
On the farm Ruth has been applying the finishing touches to the newly-refurbished privy.
I am making toilet paper.
So this is a really old tradition, people have been doing it for centuries.
In fact, there's even a Shakespearian line, talking about some other sort of literature as being, "fit only for bum fodder".
Now all the privy needs is some animal dung to compost with the human waste.
- Are these our two? - Yeah, these are our two large blacks.
- Hey, girls! - Hello, girls! Farmhand Megan Elliot has brought two sows for the pigsty.
- Come on.
Girls! - So large black, that's local? Yeah, in the late-1800s, large blacks, you know, were the breed of that time.
- Big, erm - A nice fat pig.
But, yeah, they've got this big loppy ears that go over their eyes.
And because they can't see so well, that makes them quite placid.
They are nice, easy pigs.
- Good girls.
- That's it, good girls.
- Good girls, just a bit more now, come on.
- Yeah.
That's it.
- Come on, then.
- In you go.
Come on, then! With the sows safely in their new home next to the privy, Ruth and Megan turn their attention to grooming.
Good.
You can't go wrong with them really.
So how often do you reckon we should do this oiling of the pigs? Well, it's just when you think when you look at their skin and you think, "Oh, they need a bit, they're looking a bit dry.
" Or if they're itching, you know, a fair bit.
Brushing a paraffin-based oil onto the pigs will help to condition their skin and kill parasites.
It's funny, actually, cos this works on people too.
Head lice, I get rid of them by just using any vegetable oil.
- Like, I just pour vegetable on my head.
- Yeah.
Rub it in, leave it for a while, and then wash it out.
Cos they breathe through their skins, the lice, a lot of these little parasites.
And so if you can clog their skin up with oil or fat they can't breathe, they suffocate.
They seem to enjoy it anyway! They do seem to like it, don't they? Better groomed than I am! Peter's been hard at work constructing his trout hatchery.
Three sections here.
And then the fish jump out here.
He's attempting to replicate the Edwardian design Horace and Rodney described to him.
So I finally finished my hatchery.
The water's gonna come in here through a pipe, and it'll slowly feed through these holes into these three chambers.
This first one is gonna have glass rods upon which the eggs will sit.
These other two I'm gonna put stones in, to mimic the riverbed.
Water will flow over the top, keep it all oxygenated, and hopefully we'll have little trout that will jump over here into the final box.
To waterproof the hatchery Peter uses pitch, which is extracted from the roots of pine trees.
This pitch is amazing stuff.
It's actually a liquid.
If we were to leave this long enough, there would be a pool on the floor.
But that'd be an awfully long time.
For the pitch to be used as a paint it has to be melted down, the same process used to waterproof boats.
It's looking good.
Time to get it on the hatchery.
Oh, yeah.
As far as I understand, the eggs are very, very fragile, they're very susceptible to vibrations, they're very susceptible to temperatures, they're very susceptible to pretty much anything.
I mean, I just really don't see this working, to be honest.
But it's worth a shot, isn't it? Peter has also built a baffle box, a device to filter out sediment from the stream, which could damage the fragile trout eggs.
Touch wood, the water will come through this pipe and end up in my hatching box over there.
From the baffle box, clean, oxygenated water is siphoned into the hatchery, where Peter's trout eggs will be stored.
The idea is to replicate a natural riverbed, but in a controlled environment.
Seems to be working.
The water's trickling over, moving, keeping it oxygenated.
And it's ready for the eggs.
But to get the eggs I need some fish that are ready to spawn, and I think I've got to strip them.
Whatever that is.
Whilst Peter sets up his hatchery concern, I've come up here onto Dartmoor to just get a good look at the Devon landscape.
And you'll just see how important the hedgerows are to this landscape.
It's almost as if when you look out there's a patchwork quilt that's been draped through these valleys.
And the reason you would want these hedge banks all over your farm is so that you could manage your stock more profitably.
You can stop them from getting into certain fields, hold back the pasture, and ensure that throughout the year you're giving your animals a regular feed.
And, of course, you also want to keep them off of your crops as well.
So these hedgerows are, in fact, fundamental to the farming industry of the southwest.
Not just today, but back in the Edwardian period and beyond.
Over the winter months it was vital for farmers to build and maintain their hedgerows, a craft that Alex is keen to learn.
But first, he will need the right cutting tool for the job - a Devon billhook.
He's come to see Roger Bonney at the Finch Foundry on Dartmoor.
- Good morning.
- Thanks ever so much for having me over.
So I've come here to see if we can get a traditional Devonshire-style billhook made up.
Yeah, well, you've certainly come to the right place.
Here's Simon, one of our smiths.
- Hello, Simon.
- Hello.
He's the chap that'll make the tool that you require.
We're just basically getting it roughly there.
But we're not gonna forge it right out yet, cos it's gonna be quite thin.
Right.
- OK, ready to go in the fire again.
- Back in again.
Tool-making had long been the job of the local village blacksmith.
But by the Edwardian age, larger, state-of-the-art forges began to take over.
At the Finch Foundry, blacksmiths manufactured over 400 tools a day.
They made a whole range of stuff, and we've got a catalogue, actually.
- This is from our period, this? - Yes.
Ah, fantastic! And you can see that they made tools for every occasion here.
- All sorts of things here.
- Selection of shovels, different patterns.
You'll notice there's a Cornish shovel and there's a Devon shovel.
Slightly smaller.
So we've got a Cornish shovel and a Devon shovel.
Cos they're bigger lads down in Cornwall.
We can't agree on anything either side of the Tamar, so there are two different patterns! This isn't just a cottage industry, is it? It's gone up a gear, up a step.
This is no longer what perhaps a lot of us remember as the village forge or a smithy.
- Yeah.
- This is mass production.
The forge uses water-power technology to drive heavy hammers and pump air into its fires.
Ah, now, this is the waterwheel here, which drives the fan.
And we're gonna open this one up using this lever here.
Whoa, fantastic! Brilliant.
Slowly it's starting to turn.
- And there it goes.
- There it is.
That's it.
That wheel drives through a lot of gearing inside the building here, a fan, and that fan was used to replace the original bellows which were used in the foundry.
The good news for me today is I'm not gonna be spending the whole day You're not gonna be spending the whole day pumping bellows.
- Water and gravity will do that for me.
- That's right.
Fantastic.
The water-powered machine blows air into the hearth, bringing the fire up to a temperature of 1500 degrees centigrade, hot enough to soften iron and steel.
So what are we actually starting with, the raw material? So what we've got here is a piece of wrought iron.
This normally came in big bars known as pigs.
Pigs? - Small piece, piglet.
- Piglet, right.
- But what we do with this - Yeah.
we hammer this out.
And we finish up with something like this - two pieces of wrought iron.
Yeah.
And running right down through the middle, a bit like the filling in a sandwich - Yeah.
is a piece of what's known as shear steel.
- Shear steel.
- Yeah.
Now that is a version of hardened metal.
And then, once it's ground, that hard steel edge is exposed.
- Comes through the middle.
- That's right.
So you start off with the sandwich like so and it grinds it down like that.
- And it comes to the point.
- And it comes to the point.
And that's your cutting edge.
And that was the secret of the success of this business.
Ah, I see.
- The mysterious art of the blacksmith.
- Yes.
- We're thinning the blade edge now, so - Right.
We're trying to keep it straight and maintain that shape.
If I go slowly, you go slowly.
After constructing his trout hatchery, Peter now needs fertilised eggs.
- These guys are ready to spawn, are they? - These fish are ready to spawn.
He's come to see fish farmer, Trevor Wyatt, who's netted some female brown trout.
Beautiful fish with lovely red spots down the flank.
Trevor plans to remove the unfertilised eggs from the trout, which she would normally lay on the riverbed.
So how can you tell when they're ready? Well, they're quite swollen and soft on the belly there, she's full of eggs.
- Right.
- So if you would hold the bowl for me.
Removing the eggs from the trout involves a delicate and harmless process known as stripping.
- She's ready to spawn there.
- Oh, blimey! And these are just the eggs coming out? These are the wonderful eggs.
So gently stroke the eggs towards the vent.
And they'll come out into the bowl quite naturally.
Wow! That's a lot of eggs.
It's an awful lot of eggs.
How many eggs are we looking at? This fish is about two pounds, and therefore should give us about 1500 to 1600 eggs.
- That's a lot of eggs.
- It's a lot of eggs.
And this, it doesn't hurt the fish at all? It doesn't harm them at all, as long as we're careful not to squeeze too tight.
Yeah.
- Then the fish are perfectly OK.
- Right.
And eventually we will see where the stomach is completely collapsed, all the eggs are out, and we can release the fish back into the river.
- She's going - Pop her back to where she came from.
- So we've got the female eggs in the bowl.
- Yes.
And we're now adding the male - it's the milt, isn't it? - The milt, yes.
- Right.
I suppose trout sperm? Trout sperm is exactly what it is.
In the wild a male trout would release his sperm onto the eggs lying in the riverbed.
Gently stir the milt into the eggs.
So from that moment onwards the young fish are starting to develop.
First cell divisions are taking place.
By doing a hatchery, I suppose you've got more control.
We have a lot more control, and, in actual fact, we can get 80 per cent or more of these eggs to be properly fertilised.
Wow.
Where in the wild, maybe only two or three per cent - Really? would be fertilised.
So I mean, in this way, if we manage to enhance the number of fish in the stream, then the stream can be restored to its former glory.
Just clean it up.
At the forge, Alex's Devon billhook is taking shape.
Right.
Now we need to take some material down quite rapidly.
- Right.
- Just to speed things up.
We can take that down with the trip hammers.
So we have the technology here, with the trip hammers.
And these are the very last surviving authentic trip hammers, which, with a little bit of luck, we can still see working.
The three-quarter of a ton hammer is powered by its own waterwheel.
- Wow! That's quite some engineering, isn't it? - It is.
Made in Tavistock.
The largest of our waterwheels.
It's uses something like about twelve and a half horsepower.
Oh, right, OK.
So that's when you think of the size of a shire horse - twelve and a half shire horses.
- Twelve and a half horses.
- That's really something.
And of course you don't have to feed this.
This is all free.
- It feeds itself.
- It feeds itself.
All we need is the water.
- We've got plenty of that today.
- Plenty of that in this part of the world.
Well, I suppose you'd better see it in motion.
I'll give you a shout.
I'll stand back.
Yes, please do, you'll get wet otherwise! So here we go, time to see the biggest wheel working.
OK, Roger, we're ready! So this is the moment then when Finch's Foundry comes to life.
And there we go.
Wow, look at that! Look at that filling up with And there, look.
Listen to that sound.
It's almost like a steam engine.
All the belts are turning.
Are you ready? The trip hammer helps to flatten out the billhook, saving the blacksmith valuable time and effort.
- Now it's done? - Yeah, I think it is.
What you saw was just a fraction of what it would have been.
Right.
So in our heyday, in mass production, this hammer would have been really hammering.
It would have actually been striking at 240 beats a minute.
240 beats a minute.
Pretty much a blur.
That one's three quarters of a ton.
Three quarters of a ton.
- This one - That bad boy.
is a ton and a quarter.
We daren't use this one, this would shake the whole building apart.
This was used to make plate, to make blades for shovels.
Right.
Oh, so you're really smacking down to get really thin That's right, you couldn't buy plate ready-made.
You've gotta make your own, from that same raw material.
- Do you remember? - Yeah.
- The pig? - So you've got the pig there.
- We're hammering that out to make a sheet.
- Yeah.
- And we end up with something a bit like this.
- Ah, fantastic.
That forms the basic shape of, in this case, the Devon shovel.
They are responsible for forming the Devon landscape, really.
They're that kind of odd shape because by and large, down here in the West Country, there's so much stone in the ground that the traditional garden spade is totally useless.
Right, just a general cleanup now.
In the foundry's heyday a blacksmith could make a billhook from scratch in half an hour.
Give it a good brush up.
And probably we'll run the rasp over, just to take in the rough edges.
You gonna pay the man? - Am I gonna pay? I ought to pay you.
- This is number seven, what's that? Number seven, twelve shillings.
- A dozen.
- A dozen.
- Shilling apiece.
- Yeah, so that's 5p each.
You've made yourself five pence today, Simon.
Well, you know what I'm gonna do with that? I'm gonna go to the pub.
- You're gonna go to the pub! - And I'll get a few pints for that.
Buy yourself a sip of cider.
- And if you flip it over again for me.
- There we are.
There it is.
My authentic Devonshire billhook.
That's fantastic, all hand forged.
- All with water power.
- All with water power as well.
You couldn't get more authentic than that, I don't think.
I hope that gives you many years of good service.
Gently does it.
This is your new home.
It's taken me ages to build this hatchery.
I hope you like it.
"Yes! It looks very nice!" Well, thank you for saying that.
Right.
If I pop you in here Peter must get his fertilised trout eggs into the fresh oxygenated water of his hatchery as quickly as possible before they begin to die.
All these eggs have a tiny little black dot in the centre of them.
And I'm hoping these little black dots are natural.
I'm hoping that's just the nucleus of the egg.
And I'm gonna lay these very carefully onto the glass rods.
Ooh! Easier said than done.
The idea of the glass rods, it will help us identify the bad eggs.
And then we can periodically get rid of them, because they turn white, they grow spores, and those spores will affect other eggs.
A bit like apples in a barrel.
That's a bad one there.
It's gone white.
Ooh! Just starting to go bad.
It's very, very fiddly.
But I can see the merits of the system.
It really is sort of man conquering his environment, isn't it? Playing God with fish.
Right, now that we've got a number of eggs on our glass rods, it's time to put them into the water.
I just hope at the end of all this we get at least one trout.
It's late November and the long winter evenings have set in.
Now that you're Devon's very own fish baron, I'd like to introduce you to my new toy.
Ruth has borrowed an Edwardian gramophone, an innovation in home entertainment that was rapidly gaining in popularity.
Wait till I'm old as Father, I'll show my dad something, my word, I will! Look, popular culture at our fingertips! Let's call it culture.
- I'll reserve to see whether it's popular! - How popular it is! For those who could afford it, the gramophone brought the sounds of London's music hall stars to a wider audience for the first time.
- So who is this? - Oh, this is the famous Billy Williams! - Who? - Surely you've heard of Billy Williams? He was this really great music hall star of the time.
And he's thought to be one of the most prolific makers of records, most prolifically recorded artist, maybe even of all time, certainly of his own time.
- Wow! - Didn't know you were such an expert! Would you believe it? Ha-ha-ha-ha! It's funny as well, to think those tunes are gonna get whistled around lanes all over the place.
You might hear the same tune being whistled here as you would in the Highlands of Scotland.
Yeah.
I can't work out whether this is smutty or not.
Just on the edge! - There's a touch - Slightly risqué.
It is, isn't it? There's a touch of innuendo in there! Armed with his brand-new Devon billhook, Alex is ready to take on the farm's unmanaged hedgerows.
This is exactly the problem that we're having here on the farm.
This hedge and this hedge bank simply hasn't been maintained properly.
And as a consequence we're getting vast gaps here which our sheep, tired of this field, they're running off into pastures that we actually want to use later in the winter.
And the reason this isn't working as a stop-proof barrier is simply because it isn't being laid properly, or pleated, as they say in this part of the world.
And it's a skill that we are rapidly losing, so I'm desperate to try my hand at it, to see if I can hedge as good as the next man.
And with my new billhook I'm hoping I shouldn't have any problems.
To teach him this ancient rural craft, hedge layers from the Blackdown Hills Hedge Association have arrived on the farm.
Hello, chaps.
Thanks ever so much for coming down.
And they've brought their own selection of billhooks for the job.
That's a typical Devon, some of them had more of a hook on.
- Right, OK.
- Tenterden patent.
Tenterden? That's Kent, isn't it? Kent way.
- Right.
Actually quite similar to that one, isn't it? - Quite similar.
- This is from Yorkshire.
- Yorkshire? - So it's a big - That's a big old beast, isn't it? So for a lot more - you can use it two-handed as well as single-handed.
- Right, OK.
- Erm, and it has a thin blade.
Yeah.
So you can get in where you can't get an axe in.
Between stems.
Right.
Oh, I see, I see.
That gives you an idea of the kind of variation you're getting throughout the country, in the different styles of billhook.
You cut it down in the direction you want it to go.
So if you want it to go straight up through, you put it 90 degrees that way.
George has been laying Devon hedges since he was a boy.
Yeah, I've been doing it 45 years and I'm still learning.
You never learn on this, every hedge is different.
Once any excess or dead foliage has been removed from the hedge, the bare stems, or pleachers as they're known, are laid flat.
It's still actually attached to the base, you can see this bit of bark wood in here.
That's allowing the goodness that the roots are collecting from the soil to travel up this part of the plant and along the horizontal.
Once the pleacher's down, all the dormant buds that are along there, they'll get the sunlight, so that's where they will grow up from.
- One, two, three.
All very evenly spaced.
- Yeah.
And what you're saying is, they're gonna chase the light.
They're gonna look for the light.
And that's gonna create our stockproof boundary.
- Is that the idea? - Yeah.
One thing I'm picking up on is the fact this isn't as simple as it looks, actually, just a case of laying All the decisions you're having to make as you're working with the hedge.
Trying to decide what you're gonna lay, how you're gonna use it, what you're gonna take out, how you're gonna use different species.
It's erm it's actually quite a lot to learn, so I'll just have to keep my wits about me today, and listen out, and hopefully I'll be able to pick up some of the tricks of the trade.
A well-maintained hedge acts not only as a stockproof boundary, but as a habitat for wildlife where fruit can thrive.
Ruth is taking advantage of a rare spell of November sunshine to forage for sloes.
Sloes are pretty much the last of the autumn hedgerow fruit.
So when everything else is finished and bare, you come out for your sloes.
Cos we're all starting to realise again now, just how important a resource these sorts of scrappy bits of hedge line are.
They are one of the joys of British countryside.
You get this lovely golden light through everything.
Just makes you feel good.
Oh, look at those cows.
And I've always loved doing this sort of picking of free food.
It's a really good excuse to be out.
Of course the health advice for Edwardian women was to be out and about walking as much as possible.
They were forever saying that the woman who walks out in the fresh air every day in a vigorous fashion is the one who has no problem with her monthly cycle, is the one who has babies nice and easily, is the one who remains in cheerful spirits.
It was supposed to be really good for you.
And for some reason women seem to need walking more than blokes.
Don't know why.
Ruth is going to use the fruit to make sloe gin.
And when the boys say, "So what have you been doing all day?" Nobody's going to argue with me when I say I've been making gin.
For Peter, the trout hatchery is becoming a full-time job.
He's checking on it twice a day.
All these leaves are getting swept down and they're clogging up these pipes.
I'm trying my hardest with chicken wire just to keep the pipe open, and the flow of water into the hatchery, continuous.
It's an everlasting battle.
There we go.
Got it.
Leaves are clogging up the baffle box, which is supposed to filter out sediment from the stream, keeping the hatchery and its fragile eggs clean.
Ah.
Everything's covered in sediment.
Do they all look pretty white to you? That is properly white.
That is a dead egg.
Every single day.
They're quite warm though.
The boots are quite waterproof.
They trap the water and it gets heated up.
It's nice.
Either that or I'm delusional.
It smells good.
Ruth is making sloe gin for Christmas, a practice that many Edwardians would have frowned upon.
I'm being really wicked here.
I'm being bad.
The Edwardian period is the absolute height of the temperance movement in Britain.
The Band of Hope.
People signing the pledge, refusing to take any more alcohol.
And great huge campaigns, lead by the Church, all of which were very, very, very anti-alcohol.
So how many have I got in there? Oh.
Cos I want it sort of up to about there.
Ba-bom, bom, bom You just prick all your sloes.
I'm using a knitting needle, cos not so pointy on the fingers as using a pin.
And you just fill the bottle up.
And then you add some gin and sugar, just as much or as little as you like really.
I'm so bad.
Right.
Cork.
Shove it in.
And slowly, slowly, over the next couple of weeks, all the juices from the berries will colour the gin and it'll go dark purple.
Then come Christmas it'll be absolutely delicious.
Don't tell the neighbours.
That'll stop the sheep from getting their noses up there.
- Put them in at a little bit of an angle.
- There's so much to remember here.
- Do you want me to write it out on some paper? - Yeah, if you could.
Alex and his team have laid a length of new hedge, known in the industry as a chain.
This is 22 yards, what a single hedge layer would deem to be a satisfactory day's work.
Yeah, we've done some very good cuts.
- You pleased? - Yeah, very good.
Cor! - And here we are, gents.
- Hiya, chaps.
- Hello.
Wow, this looks good, don't it? So you're gonna be renovating the entire ruddy farm now, are you? Takes a while.
I think it's cider time.
- Cheers! - Cheers.
- Cheers to a fantastic day's hedging.
- Long may the hedge live.
Long may the hedge live, yeah.
- It is a bit moreish, isn't it? - That's very nice I'd say.
It's been 41 days since Peter introduced the fertilised eggs to his hatchery.
The trout should now be hatching.
Let's see how they're doing.
There's quite a few dead eggs there.
I have to say, I mean, it's a real insight into the effort that went into a new enterprise.
Cos this has been a real struggle.
You're playing God without really knowing what God should be doing, if that makes sense.
There's so much silt coming through here.
Well, this one's silting up a lot.
An awful lot.
Ooh! Look! Just down here, I mean, you know, waxing lyrical about, "Oh, it might fail.
" That, if I'm not very much mistaken, are trout.
And they're moving and they've got the little sac.
They have hatched! We've got at least three.
At least three.
That is absolutely incredible.
They've got the egg sac, which is currently feeding them, but once they've finished eating that, a bit like a tadpole, they then have to find their own food.
And that's when I'm gonna have to build them a new tank.
And that's when I'm gonna have to start grinding up rabbit, and then we feed them to trout.
I think we have fought and we have won.
We have trout.
We have succeeded in our new enterprise.
Overground, farmers supplied Britain's growing towns and cities with fresh produce.
Daffodils set for London.
While underground, miners extracted copper and precious minerals.
Firing! Now at Morwellham Quay, archaeologists Alex Langland and Peter Ginn, and historian Ruth Goodman, are going back in time to the early 1900s, to live the lives of Edwardian farmers for a full calendar year.
They'll not just be farming, but getting to grips with the rural industries that once brought wealth to Devon.
- Ooh! - Oh, wow! We got something! So far, the team's endeavours have laid the foundations of a working Edwardian farm.
Look at that.
Gorgeous.
They've brought in new livestock Be good to get some new blood into the flock.
stocked up the larder in preparation for a long winter Looks like we might actually have something to eat this winter.
and planted high value crops.
- In it goes.
- Oh, it's quite exciting really, isn't it? - Come on, Tom.
Walk on.
- Get on, boy.
Now it's November, and if the team are to prosper as Edwardian farmers, they'll have to turn to the latest farming practices of the age Loud! Really, really loud! get to grips with the technologies of the time It's almost like a steam engine! and use Edwardian science to set up an exciting new venture.
You're playing God without really knowing what God should be doing.
On the Edwardian Farm, the time has come to plough the land.
Alex and Peter want to grow oats, essential as feed for their livestock, and potatoes, a reliable source of income.
Good lad.
New technology was on the horizon.
But most farmers still relied heavily on horsepower.
Walk on.
Walk on.
Coming into the season where these fellas really earn their keep.
Because it's out to the fields, it's working in heavy clay.
And this is, this is really what the shire was bred for, it was the heavy draught work.
- Come on, Tom.
Walk on.
- Get on, boy.
Come on, boy.
Let's go.
- Good boys.
Come on, lads.
- Come on, boys.
Shires, Tom and Prince, have never pulled a plough before.
- Come to me.
- Walk on.
- Whoa! - Hey, Tom.
- Go on.
- Steady lads, come on.
Come on, boys.
Lifelong ploughman, Will Williams, has been called in to help them on their way.
- Tom.
- Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, steady.
And that's a nice straight line you've done.
- That's marvellous.
- I think it's more luck than anything! You think it's more luck than judgement? That is I dreamed of having lines this straight so early on in the day, Will.
And how long have you been doing it? Well, I was brought up, really, from childhood.
Right.
Phew! How old are you now? - I'm 77.
- 77? Right.
- So a fair old time, then? - Yep.
- Come on, boys.
- Good lads.
Yeah, good The two shires are working together well.
But Will is unhappy with the plough.
- It's not deep enough.
- Not deep enough? - Whoa! - Whoa, lad.
That's right.
It's very important to get that to cut in the right place.
We've noticed we've got a problem here.
Whilst our sheep have been out here and eating this down, we've still got quite a lot of growth on the field, and that's not good if that's showing, because all that'll do over the winter period and into the spring is that'll grow, and that'll affect whatever seed we put in here.
That'll essentially, that'll hamper the growth of that seed.
So what we're doing here is we're setting the depth of this little accessory here - it's called the skimmer.
And what the skimmer will do is it'll go in and it'll cut off the first inch and a half or so, so that'll actually cut that, sort of through there, upside down, and roll it right in.
- Where the - Are you happy? Yeah? For definite, see how it goes, whether it's too deep or too narrow.
This is what I really like about ploughing.
Because we just we don't really recognise what an art it is.
Every furrow should be like turning over a page in a book.
- Right.
- Should by lying exactly the same.
- Gonna be straighter than anything we do! - Aye! This is it.
This is what makes a farmer.
It's an art, it's a skill, it's a science.
It's an industry, it's a livelihood, it's a way of life.
But it was a way of life that was rapidly changing.
The days of farming with horses were numbered.
What's that noise? In 1903, a revolutionary new piece of Edwardian technology hit the marketplace, promising to change the face of farming.
Oh, my word! What have we here? Look, what we have! Wow! In the age that gave rise to the travelling salesman, tractor enthusiast David White hopes to convince the team to trade in their horses and join the petrol revolution.
Good morning, lady and gentlemen.
- Morning.
- Good morning.
I've come to demonstrate the new Ivel Agricultural Motor to your good selves.
Agricultural motor, yeah? Furnished with a two-cylinder engine running on petroleum motor spirit.
Start and stop at will, it needs no rest, and you don't need to change as you need to change a horse team.
So let's get this straight: The internal combustion engine has arrived on the agricultural scene with this machine, yeah? This is the future, sir.
Today this ex-demonstrator model is the oldest working tractor in the world.
You've brought your ploughman along with you? - Good morning! - Hello, Mr Williams.
- Now with a good team of horses - Yeah.
I'd say you'd plough an acre of land in eight hours.
This will plough two acres in four hours.
- Two acres in four hours.
- So it takes a quarter of the time.
- Yeah.
Allow us to demonstrate.
- Excellent.
Ooh! I'm dubious as to whether they will be able to plough.
You're dubious about it? Oh! Here we go.
I think he could do with a push.
Oh, it's sticking at exactly the same spot, isn't it? What's happening is as we're going this way we're only ploughing one furrow, because the plough is sliding on the bank.
Right, I see.
And then that way he's getting stuck over there, isn't he? It's obviously the ploughman.
So far it's looking like the Ivel will be a tough sell.
It's not the prettiest bit of ploughing I've ever seen.
We spent all this time trying to lift the soil up to get the air into it, only then to drive machines across it.
You know, these are people that have spent their lives working with horses.
Their fathers, their grandfathers, we're going back hundreds of years working with animals who can disperse their weight.
Whereas this thing, it's struggling.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Something's wrong.
Well, this has come Did you notice how he said "whoa" to the tractor? What was that? I noticed how you said whoa to the tractor! It's quite a lot of faff, isn't it? - It's a relentless form of ploughing.
- It is.
It's just push it's using power to push through.
And whereas the ploughman would be using his brain, his body, to react against the slope to work with it, here he's doing it all by levers.
It's so loud! Really, really loud! This is the change of the countryside, I suppose, from being quite a peaceful, rural idyll, albeit very hard work, to being quite a noisy Industrial-sounding sort of a place.
Although one thing we don't know about it is the price.
That's true, we haven't asked.
Let's Before we have a heart attack over the price, let's see what it can do in the barn.
Cos it might it might redeem itself somewhat.
While the men take the lvel up to the barn, Ruth has come to commiserate with Prince.
That nasty, noisy tractor.
Yeah? Busily superseding you.
At the beginning of the 20th century, well over a million shire horses still worked on farms and in industry.
But just 50 years later, the shire faced the very real threat of extinction.
So many people who remember working with horses talk about the joy going out of farming, to some extent, when they stopped using horses, moved over to tractors.
I mean, I know the tractors are more powerful, more versatile in many ways.
You can see why people moved over to them.
But - gosh - something was lost in the process.
Take the strain! In the barn the team are keen to see if the l vel will power an old Edwardian kibbler, a device used to grind down cereal crops into animal feed.
Previously requiring horsepower to drive the machine, the tractor could save the team a huge amount of work.
That's power, Peter! That's serious power.
Precarious power.
Look at that.
That is that is seriously fast.
If we come down here I mean, look at that.
This level of power on a farm could save an enormous amount of time.
I think, really, this is where the internal combustion engine is gonna come into its own.
Oh! Silence.
- How was that, gentlemen? - I'm super impressed.
I've never seen milled cereal come out of a machine that quickly before.
And we've worked with a fair few machines.
But that's brilliant, isn't it? Sounds to me you need a Ivel Agricultural Motor.
It's kind of redeemed itself.
I remain to be convinced on the ploughing front.
There's a couple of ticks in the plus column, put it that way.
- But the big question is - I need a competent ploughing operative.
How much? - It's a mere £300.
- £300? - So if I was buying that today, six years' wages.
- Six years' wages.
Wow! But I'm sure we could work out easy instalments for your good selves.
Sign on the dotted line, it could be yours in 40 years' time.
Yeah! With such a hefty price tag, only 500 Ivels were sold worldwide.
That's quite a machine, that.
It's quite a machine.
I think it's time to get on with some work, though, isn't it? Field's a mess.
For Edwardian farmers, new technology would become increasingly important to their survival.
Facing stiff competition from abroad for traditional crops, British farmers had to stay one step ahead of the game.
The latest scientific knowledge enabled entirely new forms of agriculture to emerge.
In 1901 the Tamar Valley became home to one of the country's first fish farms.
This is the River Tamar.
It is a formidable barrier that runs between Devon, where we are now, and Cornwall, over there.
And come the Edwardian period, the mining that happened in the hills around us, it polluted this river.
It was so bad you could take a horseshoe, pop it in the water, and a few days later it was copper-plated.
The pollution from mining wiped out fish stocks in the river.
So the Tamar's biggest landowner, the Duke of Bedford, turned to Edwardian science to farm fish in an artificial hatchery.
His aim, to breed salmon and trout, to restock the river.
My aim is setting up a fish hatchery here on our farm to explore that Edwardian science, which is now a multi-million pound industry.
First pioneered in Scotland in the late-19th century, today, over a quarter of all fish consumed in the world is farmed.
Peter is hoping to rear trout.
To understand the science behind it, he's travelled upriver to meet Rodney Hill, and 96-year-old Horace Adams, who worked at the hatchery on the Duke of Bedford's Devonshire estate.
So this hatchery was built around, as I say, well, about 1900 to 1910, around that period.
Horace is one of the few men who has bred fish the Edwardian way.
We had four boxes.
The water comes through here.
Here's the taps, and it runs into this box here.
Yeah.
And it flows through there, on through the next box.
And then the eggs were put into the hatchery.
In the old days they used to sit the eggs on the glass tubes, singly, and then latter days they used to put them in big trays.
Once you've laid them onto the tubes, full stop.
You mustn't interfere with them again.
- Right.
- You see? Unless there is a bad egg.
And then you've got to be very, very careful.
How will I know if an egg is dead? - If one starts to go bad, they go white.
- Right.
And if you leave them there for over a day, they used to throw out a kind of fungus, and that affects the other eggs, so you've got to make sure you get that egg out immediately, otherwise you can destroy the lot.
Right.
It's as simple as that.
And then they start hatching out, and they hatch out in from 39 to 41 days.
There's a little yolk sack, which feeds them for about 14 days.
And when that dissolves you start hand-feeding them with a dog's biscuits, liver, rabbits all minced up, and different offal, and all this and that.
In the summer blow flies would come in and, you know, you'd have hundreds of maggots, so it's quite a smelly business, but by God they go for the maggots! - You know? - Yeah.
I bet they could smell you a mile off! Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right! Yeah, you weren't allowed home with the same trousers on, sort of thing, cos you were smelly.
Quite smelly.
Do you have any confidence in me to build a hatchery? Well, not really! Bye-bye.
Well, Horace and Rodney, they've given me a lot of information.
But also given me a lot of doubt.
These eggs, they're so fragile.
If the box gets knocked, if it gets too cold, if the water is flowing through too quickly, they're all gonna die.
So it will all come to nothing.
While Peter contemplates the complexities of his new venture, on the farm Ruth is attempting her own project - breathing new life into the all-important privy.
A facility that in rural areas had changed little.
Although in the Edwardian age an awful lot of people were moving on from this sort of privy, water closets are getting really quite common, actually, in towns.
I mean, even really quite modest houses are having water closets installed.
But out in the countryside, most Edwardians were working on privy systems rather like this.
Rural privies were often found in the same building as the pigsties, so the farm's animal and human waste could be composted together, a system that was no longer viable in the increasingly populated towns and cities.
Towns have to move over to new forms of sanitation as their populations rise.
Push people in closer and closer together, you're gonna get more and more disease.
You've gotta find a new way of dealing with it.
Out here, where you've got plenty of fresh air to deal with all the fumes and stuff going off, plenty of space for composting, you can manage a hygienic system without needing the new technology.
To sterilise the privy seat, Ruth uses caustic soda.
And this will kill every last remaining little trace of bug.
In the late-Victorian and Edwardian period, people are first really getting to grips with what germs are, what bacteria is.
And microscopes are revealing all.
And as a result it sort of provoked, well, almost a paranoia about germs and bacteria and dirt.
So that you find really very, very, very rigorous cleaning regimes.
For the privy walls, Ruth uses a solution made from limestone.
Whitewash, being based on lime, is caustic and alkali, and it kills bugs.
It's a sterilising solution, as well as making an area lighter and brighter.
So it helps with being able to see in the dim light.
To build his trout hatchery, Peter will need timber, an important industry in the Tamar.
To keep pace with the demand for wood, Edwardian foresters processed the timber onsite, using steam-powered portable sawmills.
Farmer and sawyer, Roy Hebditch, runs this now-rare saw bench and traction engine.
Do these things travel around to different estates? Yeah.
They normally go into an estate and set up, and they stay there for two months.
Cut up a whole load of timber that would last the estate for sort of, like, say, four or five years.
You should also remember that moving around cost them money.
When they're on the roads they're not earning anything.
- Well, I'll show you how it works if you like? - Yeah, I wouldn't mind.
Come on, then! - Power from the engine - Right.
creates rotation motion through the shaft.
- That's driving the saw blade? - That's driving the saw blade direct, right? The shaft speed on this one is about between 420 and 430.
- Revolutions per - Revolutions per minute.
Gives you roughly, a top speed around 95, 100 mile an hour, that's right on the very tip there.
If you ever got your fingers caught in that, that'd be it.
I think I'll let you deal with that end of things! OK, Mags.
Roy's steam-driven traction engine powers both the four-foot six-inch blade and a sliding bench.
Fantastic.
Absolutely fantastic.
This enabled the Edwardian sawyer to cut through timber quicker and with greater precision than ever before.
That's ten, nine, eight, seven - There you go.
- Six.
Right, there you go, on six.
OK! This is timber-sawing, Edwardian-style.
None of your handsawing.
None of your physical effort.
This thing, it just eats through it.
It's all about setting it up and letting it go.
- There you go, you're now a sawyer! - Yeah.
You're a sawyer.
Congratulations! Thank you very much.
- I know, I got it it gets everywhere, doesn't it? - Yeah, it does.
It really does.
On the farm Ruth has been applying the finishing touches to the newly-refurbished privy.
I am making toilet paper.
So this is a really old tradition, people have been doing it for centuries.
In fact, there's even a Shakespearian line, talking about some other sort of literature as being, "fit only for bum fodder".
Now all the privy needs is some animal dung to compost with the human waste.
- Are these our two? - Yeah, these are our two large blacks.
- Hey, girls! - Hello, girls! Farmhand Megan Elliot has brought two sows for the pigsty.
- Come on.
Girls! - So large black, that's local? Yeah, in the late-1800s, large blacks, you know, were the breed of that time.
- Big, erm - A nice fat pig.
But, yeah, they've got this big loppy ears that go over their eyes.
And because they can't see so well, that makes them quite placid.
They are nice, easy pigs.
- Good girls.
- That's it, good girls.
- Good girls, just a bit more now, come on.
- Yeah.
That's it.
- Come on, then.
- In you go.
Come on, then! With the sows safely in their new home next to the privy, Ruth and Megan turn their attention to grooming.
Good.
You can't go wrong with them really.
So how often do you reckon we should do this oiling of the pigs? Well, it's just when you think when you look at their skin and you think, "Oh, they need a bit, they're looking a bit dry.
" Or if they're itching, you know, a fair bit.
Brushing a paraffin-based oil onto the pigs will help to condition their skin and kill parasites.
It's funny, actually, cos this works on people too.
Head lice, I get rid of them by just using any vegetable oil.
- Like, I just pour vegetable on my head.
- Yeah.
Rub it in, leave it for a while, and then wash it out.
Cos they breathe through their skins, the lice, a lot of these little parasites.
And so if you can clog their skin up with oil or fat they can't breathe, they suffocate.
They seem to enjoy it anyway! They do seem to like it, don't they? Better groomed than I am! Peter's been hard at work constructing his trout hatchery.
Three sections here.
And then the fish jump out here.
He's attempting to replicate the Edwardian design Horace and Rodney described to him.
So I finally finished my hatchery.
The water's gonna come in here through a pipe, and it'll slowly feed through these holes into these three chambers.
This first one is gonna have glass rods upon which the eggs will sit.
These other two I'm gonna put stones in, to mimic the riverbed.
Water will flow over the top, keep it all oxygenated, and hopefully we'll have little trout that will jump over here into the final box.
To waterproof the hatchery Peter uses pitch, which is extracted from the roots of pine trees.
This pitch is amazing stuff.
It's actually a liquid.
If we were to leave this long enough, there would be a pool on the floor.
But that'd be an awfully long time.
For the pitch to be used as a paint it has to be melted down, the same process used to waterproof boats.
It's looking good.
Time to get it on the hatchery.
Oh, yeah.
As far as I understand, the eggs are very, very fragile, they're very susceptible to vibrations, they're very susceptible to temperatures, they're very susceptible to pretty much anything.
I mean, I just really don't see this working, to be honest.
But it's worth a shot, isn't it? Peter has also built a baffle box, a device to filter out sediment from the stream, which could damage the fragile trout eggs.
Touch wood, the water will come through this pipe and end up in my hatching box over there.
From the baffle box, clean, oxygenated water is siphoned into the hatchery, where Peter's trout eggs will be stored.
The idea is to replicate a natural riverbed, but in a controlled environment.
Seems to be working.
The water's trickling over, moving, keeping it oxygenated.
And it's ready for the eggs.
But to get the eggs I need some fish that are ready to spawn, and I think I've got to strip them.
Whatever that is.
Whilst Peter sets up his hatchery concern, I've come up here onto Dartmoor to just get a good look at the Devon landscape.
And you'll just see how important the hedgerows are to this landscape.
It's almost as if when you look out there's a patchwork quilt that's been draped through these valleys.
And the reason you would want these hedge banks all over your farm is so that you could manage your stock more profitably.
You can stop them from getting into certain fields, hold back the pasture, and ensure that throughout the year you're giving your animals a regular feed.
And, of course, you also want to keep them off of your crops as well.
So these hedgerows are, in fact, fundamental to the farming industry of the southwest.
Not just today, but back in the Edwardian period and beyond.
Over the winter months it was vital for farmers to build and maintain their hedgerows, a craft that Alex is keen to learn.
But first, he will need the right cutting tool for the job - a Devon billhook.
He's come to see Roger Bonney at the Finch Foundry on Dartmoor.
- Good morning.
- Thanks ever so much for having me over.
So I've come here to see if we can get a traditional Devonshire-style billhook made up.
Yeah, well, you've certainly come to the right place.
Here's Simon, one of our smiths.
- Hello, Simon.
- Hello.
He's the chap that'll make the tool that you require.
We're just basically getting it roughly there.
But we're not gonna forge it right out yet, cos it's gonna be quite thin.
Right.
- OK, ready to go in the fire again.
- Back in again.
Tool-making had long been the job of the local village blacksmith.
But by the Edwardian age, larger, state-of-the-art forges began to take over.
At the Finch Foundry, blacksmiths manufactured over 400 tools a day.
They made a whole range of stuff, and we've got a catalogue, actually.
- This is from our period, this? - Yes.
Ah, fantastic! And you can see that they made tools for every occasion here.
- All sorts of things here.
- Selection of shovels, different patterns.
You'll notice there's a Cornish shovel and there's a Devon shovel.
Slightly smaller.
So we've got a Cornish shovel and a Devon shovel.
Cos they're bigger lads down in Cornwall.
We can't agree on anything either side of the Tamar, so there are two different patterns! This isn't just a cottage industry, is it? It's gone up a gear, up a step.
This is no longer what perhaps a lot of us remember as the village forge or a smithy.
- Yeah.
- This is mass production.
The forge uses water-power technology to drive heavy hammers and pump air into its fires.
Ah, now, this is the waterwheel here, which drives the fan.
And we're gonna open this one up using this lever here.
Whoa, fantastic! Brilliant.
Slowly it's starting to turn.
- And there it goes.
- There it is.
That's it.
That wheel drives through a lot of gearing inside the building here, a fan, and that fan was used to replace the original bellows which were used in the foundry.
The good news for me today is I'm not gonna be spending the whole day You're not gonna be spending the whole day pumping bellows.
- Water and gravity will do that for me.
- That's right.
Fantastic.
The water-powered machine blows air into the hearth, bringing the fire up to a temperature of 1500 degrees centigrade, hot enough to soften iron and steel.
So what are we actually starting with, the raw material? So what we've got here is a piece of wrought iron.
This normally came in big bars known as pigs.
Pigs? - Small piece, piglet.
- Piglet, right.
- But what we do with this - Yeah.
we hammer this out.
And we finish up with something like this - two pieces of wrought iron.
Yeah.
And running right down through the middle, a bit like the filling in a sandwich - Yeah.
is a piece of what's known as shear steel.
- Shear steel.
- Yeah.
Now that is a version of hardened metal.
And then, once it's ground, that hard steel edge is exposed.
- Comes through the middle.
- That's right.
So you start off with the sandwich like so and it grinds it down like that.
- And it comes to the point.
- And it comes to the point.
And that's your cutting edge.
And that was the secret of the success of this business.
Ah, I see.
- The mysterious art of the blacksmith.
- Yes.
- We're thinning the blade edge now, so - Right.
We're trying to keep it straight and maintain that shape.
If I go slowly, you go slowly.
After constructing his trout hatchery, Peter now needs fertilised eggs.
- These guys are ready to spawn, are they? - These fish are ready to spawn.
He's come to see fish farmer, Trevor Wyatt, who's netted some female brown trout.
Beautiful fish with lovely red spots down the flank.
Trevor plans to remove the unfertilised eggs from the trout, which she would normally lay on the riverbed.
So how can you tell when they're ready? Well, they're quite swollen and soft on the belly there, she's full of eggs.
- Right.
- So if you would hold the bowl for me.
Removing the eggs from the trout involves a delicate and harmless process known as stripping.
- She's ready to spawn there.
- Oh, blimey! And these are just the eggs coming out? These are the wonderful eggs.
So gently stroke the eggs towards the vent.
And they'll come out into the bowl quite naturally.
Wow! That's a lot of eggs.
It's an awful lot of eggs.
How many eggs are we looking at? This fish is about two pounds, and therefore should give us about 1500 to 1600 eggs.
- That's a lot of eggs.
- It's a lot of eggs.
And this, it doesn't hurt the fish at all? It doesn't harm them at all, as long as we're careful not to squeeze too tight.
Yeah.
- Then the fish are perfectly OK.
- Right.
And eventually we will see where the stomach is completely collapsed, all the eggs are out, and we can release the fish back into the river.
- She's going - Pop her back to where she came from.
- So we've got the female eggs in the bowl.
- Yes.
And we're now adding the male - it's the milt, isn't it? - The milt, yes.
- Right.
I suppose trout sperm? Trout sperm is exactly what it is.
In the wild a male trout would release his sperm onto the eggs lying in the riverbed.
Gently stir the milt into the eggs.
So from that moment onwards the young fish are starting to develop.
First cell divisions are taking place.
By doing a hatchery, I suppose you've got more control.
We have a lot more control, and, in actual fact, we can get 80 per cent or more of these eggs to be properly fertilised.
Wow.
Where in the wild, maybe only two or three per cent - Really? would be fertilised.
So I mean, in this way, if we manage to enhance the number of fish in the stream, then the stream can be restored to its former glory.
Just clean it up.
At the forge, Alex's Devon billhook is taking shape.
Right.
Now we need to take some material down quite rapidly.
- Right.
- Just to speed things up.
We can take that down with the trip hammers.
So we have the technology here, with the trip hammers.
And these are the very last surviving authentic trip hammers, which, with a little bit of luck, we can still see working.
The three-quarter of a ton hammer is powered by its own waterwheel.
- Wow! That's quite some engineering, isn't it? - It is.
Made in Tavistock.
The largest of our waterwheels.
It's uses something like about twelve and a half horsepower.
Oh, right, OK.
So that's when you think of the size of a shire horse - twelve and a half shire horses.
- Twelve and a half horses.
- That's really something.
And of course you don't have to feed this.
This is all free.
- It feeds itself.
- It feeds itself.
All we need is the water.
- We've got plenty of that today.
- Plenty of that in this part of the world.
Well, I suppose you'd better see it in motion.
I'll give you a shout.
I'll stand back.
Yes, please do, you'll get wet otherwise! So here we go, time to see the biggest wheel working.
OK, Roger, we're ready! So this is the moment then when Finch's Foundry comes to life.
And there we go.
Wow, look at that! Look at that filling up with And there, look.
Listen to that sound.
It's almost like a steam engine.
All the belts are turning.
Are you ready? The trip hammer helps to flatten out the billhook, saving the blacksmith valuable time and effort.
- Now it's done? - Yeah, I think it is.
What you saw was just a fraction of what it would have been.
Right.
So in our heyday, in mass production, this hammer would have been really hammering.
It would have actually been striking at 240 beats a minute.
240 beats a minute.
Pretty much a blur.
That one's three quarters of a ton.
Three quarters of a ton.
- This one - That bad boy.
is a ton and a quarter.
We daren't use this one, this would shake the whole building apart.
This was used to make plate, to make blades for shovels.
Right.
Oh, so you're really smacking down to get really thin That's right, you couldn't buy plate ready-made.
You've gotta make your own, from that same raw material.
- Do you remember? - Yeah.
- The pig? - So you've got the pig there.
- We're hammering that out to make a sheet.
- Yeah.
- And we end up with something a bit like this.
- Ah, fantastic.
That forms the basic shape of, in this case, the Devon shovel.
They are responsible for forming the Devon landscape, really.
They're that kind of odd shape because by and large, down here in the West Country, there's so much stone in the ground that the traditional garden spade is totally useless.
Right, just a general cleanup now.
In the foundry's heyday a blacksmith could make a billhook from scratch in half an hour.
Give it a good brush up.
And probably we'll run the rasp over, just to take in the rough edges.
You gonna pay the man? - Am I gonna pay? I ought to pay you.
- This is number seven, what's that? Number seven, twelve shillings.
- A dozen.
- A dozen.
- Shilling apiece.
- Yeah, so that's 5p each.
You've made yourself five pence today, Simon.
Well, you know what I'm gonna do with that? I'm gonna go to the pub.
- You're gonna go to the pub! - And I'll get a few pints for that.
Buy yourself a sip of cider.
- And if you flip it over again for me.
- There we are.
There it is.
My authentic Devonshire billhook.
That's fantastic, all hand forged.
- All with water power.
- All with water power as well.
You couldn't get more authentic than that, I don't think.
I hope that gives you many years of good service.
Gently does it.
This is your new home.
It's taken me ages to build this hatchery.
I hope you like it.
"Yes! It looks very nice!" Well, thank you for saying that.
Right.
If I pop you in here Peter must get his fertilised trout eggs into the fresh oxygenated water of his hatchery as quickly as possible before they begin to die.
All these eggs have a tiny little black dot in the centre of them.
And I'm hoping these little black dots are natural.
I'm hoping that's just the nucleus of the egg.
And I'm gonna lay these very carefully onto the glass rods.
Ooh! Easier said than done.
The idea of the glass rods, it will help us identify the bad eggs.
And then we can periodically get rid of them, because they turn white, they grow spores, and those spores will affect other eggs.
A bit like apples in a barrel.
That's a bad one there.
It's gone white.
Ooh! Just starting to go bad.
It's very, very fiddly.
But I can see the merits of the system.
It really is sort of man conquering his environment, isn't it? Playing God with fish.
Right, now that we've got a number of eggs on our glass rods, it's time to put them into the water.
I just hope at the end of all this we get at least one trout.
It's late November and the long winter evenings have set in.
Now that you're Devon's very own fish baron, I'd like to introduce you to my new toy.
Ruth has borrowed an Edwardian gramophone, an innovation in home entertainment that was rapidly gaining in popularity.
Wait till I'm old as Father, I'll show my dad something, my word, I will! Look, popular culture at our fingertips! Let's call it culture.
- I'll reserve to see whether it's popular! - How popular it is! For those who could afford it, the gramophone brought the sounds of London's music hall stars to a wider audience for the first time.
- So who is this? - Oh, this is the famous Billy Williams! - Who? - Surely you've heard of Billy Williams? He was this really great music hall star of the time.
And he's thought to be one of the most prolific makers of records, most prolifically recorded artist, maybe even of all time, certainly of his own time.
- Wow! - Didn't know you were such an expert! Would you believe it? Ha-ha-ha-ha! It's funny as well, to think those tunes are gonna get whistled around lanes all over the place.
You might hear the same tune being whistled here as you would in the Highlands of Scotland.
Yeah.
I can't work out whether this is smutty or not.
Just on the edge! - There's a touch - Slightly risqué.
It is, isn't it? There's a touch of innuendo in there! Armed with his brand-new Devon billhook, Alex is ready to take on the farm's unmanaged hedgerows.
This is exactly the problem that we're having here on the farm.
This hedge and this hedge bank simply hasn't been maintained properly.
And as a consequence we're getting vast gaps here which our sheep, tired of this field, they're running off into pastures that we actually want to use later in the winter.
And the reason this isn't working as a stop-proof barrier is simply because it isn't being laid properly, or pleated, as they say in this part of the world.
And it's a skill that we are rapidly losing, so I'm desperate to try my hand at it, to see if I can hedge as good as the next man.
And with my new billhook I'm hoping I shouldn't have any problems.
To teach him this ancient rural craft, hedge layers from the Blackdown Hills Hedge Association have arrived on the farm.
Hello, chaps.
Thanks ever so much for coming down.
And they've brought their own selection of billhooks for the job.
That's a typical Devon, some of them had more of a hook on.
- Right, OK.
- Tenterden patent.
Tenterden? That's Kent, isn't it? Kent way.
- Right.
Actually quite similar to that one, isn't it? - Quite similar.
- This is from Yorkshire.
- Yorkshire? - So it's a big - That's a big old beast, isn't it? So for a lot more - you can use it two-handed as well as single-handed.
- Right, OK.
- Erm, and it has a thin blade.
Yeah.
So you can get in where you can't get an axe in.
Between stems.
Right.
Oh, I see, I see.
That gives you an idea of the kind of variation you're getting throughout the country, in the different styles of billhook.
You cut it down in the direction you want it to go.
So if you want it to go straight up through, you put it 90 degrees that way.
George has been laying Devon hedges since he was a boy.
Yeah, I've been doing it 45 years and I'm still learning.
You never learn on this, every hedge is different.
Once any excess or dead foliage has been removed from the hedge, the bare stems, or pleachers as they're known, are laid flat.
It's still actually attached to the base, you can see this bit of bark wood in here.
That's allowing the goodness that the roots are collecting from the soil to travel up this part of the plant and along the horizontal.
Once the pleacher's down, all the dormant buds that are along there, they'll get the sunlight, so that's where they will grow up from.
- One, two, three.
All very evenly spaced.
- Yeah.
And what you're saying is, they're gonna chase the light.
They're gonna look for the light.
And that's gonna create our stockproof boundary.
- Is that the idea? - Yeah.
One thing I'm picking up on is the fact this isn't as simple as it looks, actually, just a case of laying All the decisions you're having to make as you're working with the hedge.
Trying to decide what you're gonna lay, how you're gonna use it, what you're gonna take out, how you're gonna use different species.
It's erm it's actually quite a lot to learn, so I'll just have to keep my wits about me today, and listen out, and hopefully I'll be able to pick up some of the tricks of the trade.
A well-maintained hedge acts not only as a stockproof boundary, but as a habitat for wildlife where fruit can thrive.
Ruth is taking advantage of a rare spell of November sunshine to forage for sloes.
Sloes are pretty much the last of the autumn hedgerow fruit.
So when everything else is finished and bare, you come out for your sloes.
Cos we're all starting to realise again now, just how important a resource these sorts of scrappy bits of hedge line are.
They are one of the joys of British countryside.
You get this lovely golden light through everything.
Just makes you feel good.
Oh, look at those cows.
And I've always loved doing this sort of picking of free food.
It's a really good excuse to be out.
Of course the health advice for Edwardian women was to be out and about walking as much as possible.
They were forever saying that the woman who walks out in the fresh air every day in a vigorous fashion is the one who has no problem with her monthly cycle, is the one who has babies nice and easily, is the one who remains in cheerful spirits.
It was supposed to be really good for you.
And for some reason women seem to need walking more than blokes.
Don't know why.
Ruth is going to use the fruit to make sloe gin.
And when the boys say, "So what have you been doing all day?" Nobody's going to argue with me when I say I've been making gin.
For Peter, the trout hatchery is becoming a full-time job.
He's checking on it twice a day.
All these leaves are getting swept down and they're clogging up these pipes.
I'm trying my hardest with chicken wire just to keep the pipe open, and the flow of water into the hatchery, continuous.
It's an everlasting battle.
There we go.
Got it.
Leaves are clogging up the baffle box, which is supposed to filter out sediment from the stream, keeping the hatchery and its fragile eggs clean.
Ah.
Everything's covered in sediment.
Do they all look pretty white to you? That is properly white.
That is a dead egg.
Every single day.
They're quite warm though.
The boots are quite waterproof.
They trap the water and it gets heated up.
It's nice.
Either that or I'm delusional.
It smells good.
Ruth is making sloe gin for Christmas, a practice that many Edwardians would have frowned upon.
I'm being really wicked here.
I'm being bad.
The Edwardian period is the absolute height of the temperance movement in Britain.
The Band of Hope.
People signing the pledge, refusing to take any more alcohol.
And great huge campaigns, lead by the Church, all of which were very, very, very anti-alcohol.
So how many have I got in there? Oh.
Cos I want it sort of up to about there.
Ba-bom, bom, bom You just prick all your sloes.
I'm using a knitting needle, cos not so pointy on the fingers as using a pin.
And you just fill the bottle up.
And then you add some gin and sugar, just as much or as little as you like really.
I'm so bad.
Right.
Cork.
Shove it in.
And slowly, slowly, over the next couple of weeks, all the juices from the berries will colour the gin and it'll go dark purple.
Then come Christmas it'll be absolutely delicious.
Don't tell the neighbours.
That'll stop the sheep from getting their noses up there.
- Put them in at a little bit of an angle.
- There's so much to remember here.
- Do you want me to write it out on some paper? - Yeah, if you could.
Alex and his team have laid a length of new hedge, known in the industry as a chain.
This is 22 yards, what a single hedge layer would deem to be a satisfactory day's work.
Yeah, we've done some very good cuts.
- You pleased? - Yeah, very good.
Cor! - And here we are, gents.
- Hiya, chaps.
- Hello.
Wow, this looks good, don't it? So you're gonna be renovating the entire ruddy farm now, are you? Takes a while.
I think it's cider time.
- Cheers! - Cheers.
- Cheers to a fantastic day's hedging.
- Long may the hedge live.
Long may the hedge live, yeah.
- It is a bit moreish, isn't it? - That's very nice I'd say.
It's been 41 days since Peter introduced the fertilised eggs to his hatchery.
The trout should now be hatching.
Let's see how they're doing.
There's quite a few dead eggs there.
I have to say, I mean, it's a real insight into the effort that went into a new enterprise.
Cos this has been a real struggle.
You're playing God without really knowing what God should be doing, if that makes sense.
There's so much silt coming through here.
Well, this one's silting up a lot.
An awful lot.
Ooh! Look! Just down here, I mean, you know, waxing lyrical about, "Oh, it might fail.
" That, if I'm not very much mistaken, are trout.
And they're moving and they've got the little sac.
They have hatched! We've got at least three.
At least three.
That is absolutely incredible.
They've got the egg sac, which is currently feeding them, but once they've finished eating that, a bit like a tadpole, they then have to find their own food.
And that's when I'm gonna have to build them a new tank.
And that's when I'm gonna have to start grinding up rabbit, and then we feed them to trout.
I think we have fought and we have won.
We have trout.
We have succeeded in our new enterprise.