- BIRDSONG - The great British countryside -
setting for one of the most pivotal battles of the Second World War.
Churchill called it, "The frontline of freedom."
It was a battle fought by the farmers of Britain.
When war broke out, two-thirds of all Britain's food was imported -
now it fell under threat from a Nazi blockade.
EXPLOSION
The government turned to farmers to double home-grown food production.
The plough had become a weapon of war. It was the farmer's
principle weapon of war.
If they failed, Britain could be starved into submission.
Now, archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn
and historian Ruth Goodman
are turning the clock back to the 1940s.
Over the next year they are running Manor Farm in Hampshire,
as it would have been during Second World War.
Yes!
This time...the team approach 1940
when Britain's cities were bombed by the Nazis in the Blitz.
AIR RAID SIRENS
They'll experience how the countryside defended
and protected the cities...
One at 8000...Spitfire.
..revived old crafts to prepare for the biggest evacuation in history...
Peter, what are you doing?
HE GRUNTS
Chop and cut. Come on, keep up with the clay.
..and celebrate the first Christmas on ration.
Put it all to the back of your mind and have what fun while you can.
- The King. - ALL: The King.
This is the untold story of the countryside at war.
By November 1940, Britain had been at war for 14 months.
Under the watchful eye of War Agricultural Executive Committees,
farmers had grown over two million extra acres of crops
in a drive to double home grown food production.
But Britain faced an unprecedented onslaught.
AIRCRAFT DRONES
In the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain saw the German air force
attempt to destroy the RAF in preparation for a full invasion.
They failed and Prime Minister Winston Churchill
saluted the courage of its pilots as a turning point in the war.
CHURCHILL SPEAKS: "The gratitude of every home in our island,
"goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds,
"unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger,
"are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess
"and by their devotion.
"Never in the field of human conflict
"was so much owed by so many to so few."
AIR RAID SIRENS
But the bombing of Britain's cities and ports would continue.
The Blitz killed some 40,000 civilians.
That first wave of bombing was aimed not just at London,
but also at the port towns along the south coast.
Portsmouth and Southampton came in for a hammering.
Night after night after night. And there was no Underground
to shelter in if you were in Southampton. Huge numbers of
the population actually slept in the fields.
Arial bombardment was a terrifying concept endangering civilians
in Britain's cities as never before.
So over 3 million women and children
were moved to the safety of the countryside,
the largest evacuation of people in Britain's history.
Farms, with their many outbuildings,
were expected to accommodate as many people as possible.
It's not the best candidate, is it? And that thing there is just too big
to even consider heating.
Alex and Peter are checking Manor Farm's barns
for potential places to accommodate evacuees.
- This is another candidate. - Yeah.
There are a few holes in that roof though.
It's actually quite significant. There's one, two, three, four holes
on this side.
To make room for evacuees here,
they must make urgent repairs to the barn roofs.
HAMMERING
We just haven't got anywhere near enough beds
if we've got all these people coming.
So I'm going to have to knock something up quick.
It's going to have to be pretty crude.
With imports restricted
and factories switching production to weapons,
in 1940 everything was in short supply, including furniture.
The word was all these townspeople were on their way.
They had nowhere else to go.
They were being bombed out of their own homes.
And the country suddenly had to absorb huge numbers of extra people.
So how do you do it? Where do find the facilities?
Where do you find the beds? Where do you find the bedding?
Where do you find the food? The pots and pans?
And it all had to be done so fast.
Up and down the countryside,
villages of all sorts were busily gathering together
everything they could to accommodate this influx of really
rather desperate people.
Well, do as an emergency bed, wouldn't it?
Building materials too were in short supply.
Bombing destroyed thousands of factories and houses,
all of which needed to be repaired.
Brick and tile factories couldn't keep up with demand,
so people in the countryside revived old crafts to produce them.
Good afternoon, gentlemen.
< Afternoon, lads.
- You've come ready for work! - And a picnic!
A picnic? Just the weather!
Alex and Peter need roof tiles to repair the barns for evacuees.
So they're calling on experts in traditional crafts
Colin Richards and Mick Krupa.
- What is it? - It's a tile-making machine.
That is quite something!
It hasn't seen action for a long time so we're re-commissioning it.
You can't buy these any more. This is a bit of a beast.
You put clay in one end,
and in theory you get tiles out of the other. How many do you need?
- Probably a few hundred. - Into the hundreds.
We need to get busy then.
The first job is to soften the clay from which the tiles will be made.
Dance man!
This needs to be pliable
otherwise there's no hope of it going through the machine.
- Let's get it all in. - Get it all in? - Yeah.
Squeezing the clay through this slot requires a great deal of power.
Colin is hoping the petrol engine is up to the task.
- Are you ready? - I'm ready when you are boys.
- OK. - OK. - Yeah.
Currently it's bringing the ram up to the clay in the box.
A bit of pressure, boys!
Peter's been handed the vital job of cutting the moulded clay
into individual tiles.
Peter! What are you doing!
PETER GRUNTS
You're on piecework, Peter, chop and cut! Keep up with the clay!
Peter needs to raise his game at the moment.
- Cut and cut. - And cut.
Clutch, Mick.
So how many did we get out of that run, Peter?
One, two...I reckon three, actually.
297 tiles to make. Lid down and let's get on with it. Enough natter.
Here we go.
Look at that!
Keep cutting, Peter!
After a bomb attack, bricks often remained intact so could be reused.
Tiles, on the other hand, easily shattered,
so new ones were in great demand.
The war distorted everything. With the damage in the big cities,
the brickworks and the tile works were working overtime
and there wasn't any spare capacity.
And it was the case of make do
and mend, going back to basics and if you had the knowledge and the skills
to make tiles, this is what you do.
Few had produced tiles this way since before the First World War.
During the war, imports of cotton and linen were severely restricted,
so bedding was in short supply. Ruth's following government advice
and re-cycling old fabric to make patchwork quilts for the evacuees.
I've been making these little pockets every now and again
when I've got a bit of time. I just run them up on the machine,
and then stuff them full of feathers.
The bags are made from scraps of material known as ticking.
Ticking is just a really tightly woven cotton.
It has to be tightly woven
otherwise the feathers work their way out. The end of a feather
is really quite pointy
and on ordinary fabric, if it was like, say, apron fabric
you can push it straight through and that would be really uncomfortable
and the feathers would work their way through out.
So old mattress covers, old pillows,
they are all covered in ticking.
Great for making quilts. So I've got my thimble and my needle
and just sew each bag up. And this is part
of the British patchwork tradition. The idea of making stuffed pockets,
great, huge, fat, crude pockets, which I'm going to sew together
into something that would look to a modern eye like a duvet
than anything else. But this is about warmth.
It's amazing how quick it grows.
Five and a half bricks, then everything square to start off with.
To harden the tiles, they must be fired in a kiln.
But with no access to industrial kilns, during the war
temporary ones were built, often using what materials were to hand.
We got many more to go?
No this is the last layer.
What sort of temperature are we looking for here?
- We'll need to get up to about - 900...900 degrees.
That's going to be difficult though, isn't it?
It is in these conditions. There's quite a challenge ahead of us really.
In these freezing November conditions,
maintaining a constant temperature of 900 degrees
requires some clever engineering.
We've got to create four little chimneys.
Because we need to get the heat all the way round
the perimeter of the kiln and as we move from one corner to another,
we can suck the heat across the stack.
So the heat is drawn to these four corners.
Tea's up, guys!
Very kind. Thank you.
You've got to the stage now, your kiln's basically complete.
But everything is very damp and we need to dry that out slowly
over a couple of hours. If we heat it up too quickly
it's going to burst the tiles.
The kiln must burn for two days and two nights.
This will require over a ton of fire wood, gathered from the forest.
To help them cut it up, Alex and Peter have dusted off
the farm's 1940s power saw.
It looks extremely dangerous, Peter!
Yes, the Avon power saw.
Have you ever heard of Avon power tools?
It's not that company that went into prosthetic limbs, is it?
I hate starting these things.
Nearly, nearly, nearly.
POWER SAW SPLUTTERS
It wants to go. It wants to kick into life.
Yes! Yes!
One, two, three...
- Ready? - Into gear.
Don't think it's moving too much, is it?
Ruth's make do and mend quilts for the evacuees are taking shape.
So this four, I've done them together there,
will fit into that gap.
To be honest I'm having to resist making it overly pretty.
There is a sort of temptation to slow down
and start doing beautiful things and make it look gorgeous.
I mean, even a couple of stitches made in a little pattern here
and you'd start to not only hold the feathers in place but it would
improve the look enormously. Is it nice and warm under there, Henry?
OK, chaps, looks like grub's up!
It wasn't just women and children
who were relocated to the countryside during the war.
So was 20-year-old Don Sutherland.
But Don wasn't an evacuee. He was conscripted into farm labour
by the government, because, like 61,000 men and women,
he refused to fight.
I decided to register as a conscientious objector
when the call up came.
I objected on religious grounds.
It was a very difficult decision to make. I've always believed
that you love your enemies.
And you don't kill them.
You don't try and hurt them.
That must have been a very difficult time of your life.
It was difficult but all you do is speak the truth
and say that you didn't... couldn't do it yourself.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't go out and kill people,
and that's what war's about.
Were there problems trying to convince the authorities
as to why you felt you needed to object?
Well, the usual question is, what would you do if a German
did such and such to your daughter or your sister or your mother?
- That sort of thing. - Right.
But I don't think those questions are sensible questions
to ask really. One does not know what one would do in an emergency.
I only know that there are better ways of doing it than that.
Some 5,000 conscientious objectors were imprisoned.
But Don was one of the lucky ones,
spending the rest of the war as a farm labourer.
You're threshing out. That's the middle of winter.
- Must have been cold there. - Yes, it was. That's one of myself.
- That's the sugar beat. - Cart load of sugar beet.
I was an office worker. I'd worked in an office for seven years
so it was completely new to me, to work with my hands.
But I think it's good for any young man to do that, really.
Absolutely. The work you did in the fields
of bringing in these harvests, did you feel, even inadvertently,
that this was part of the war effort and you were doing your bit towards
supporting Britain at that time?
Indirectly, I suppose you are, really.
I don't deny the men going out there were making a much bigger sacrifice
than I was. I must admit that,
but it's what they are having to do
that I disagreed with. It was always accepted that you fight.
And that's it. Without realising what war is like.
OWL HOOTS
DOGS BARK AND COCKEREL CROWS
Here you are. Let me take that.
This is Daisy, is it? Hello, Daisy.
By December 1940, the bombing of Southampton and Portsmouth
had reached a new intensity.
Thousands more evacuees flooded from the cities to the countryside.
I'm a bit nervous. Put my best coat on and make a good impression.
Don't know who we're getting.
Children under five were accompanied by their mothers.
Hello! Welcome to Manor Farm! Who've got here then?
We've got Ernest and Maureen.
- Welcome to my home. - Thank you very much.
Someone who remembers evacuees arriving here over 70 years ago
is Betty Rudd.
I found these mothers and these children and they were weeping
and in a terrible state. The children were crying and feeling miserable.
"Why can't we go home, Mummy? Why do we have to stay here, Mummy?"
And it was really very tough.
And that was my first experience of evacuees.
The government assigned billeting officers in every village
to find accommodation for the evacuees.
Betty's father was the officer for the area around Manor Farm.
My father's here in his long overcoat.
There were an extraordinary amount of people there with big houses,
old time gentry, they didn't want to know at all.
The people with the butlers. We had a fight.
They thought they were above it.
Yes, my father just marched in, that was it.
And the people who were being billeted in the countryside
were not countryside people, they were townies with different ways.
That was the problem. They wouldn't eat their greens,
they wanted fish and chips. And we encouraged them to grow vegetables,
a lot of these children and they did.
They were quite interested in that.
It is one of the things about the war, isn't it? All sorts of
different groups of people had to learn about each other.
- Yes, they did. - Town people had to learn about the countryside
and country people had to learn about town people.
Yes. Their life would never be the same again, certainly wouldn't.
< There we go. Mud on your beets!
Many evacuated children were put to work, helping farmers to meet
the government demands of doubling food production.
Don't get mud like this in Portsmouth, do you?
For children from the cities,
the countryside was full of new encounters.
Many had never seen a chicken, cow or pig before.
- She's a big pig, isn't she? - Yeah, she's fat.
- Not as cute as the others, though. - She's not, is she? Big and scary.
To make room for more evacuees,
the boys are making roof tiles to repair outbuildings.
They've been firing for 24 hours
but the windy conditions are causing unexpected problems.
We had gale-force winds, we tried to slow it down
but what's happened is we've almost got a blast furnace.
All that heat has expanded the kiln and so we've needed to restrain it.
Otherwise it would have collapsed and we'd have lost all that effort,
we'd have broken our tiles and it would have been disaster.
I suppose now the flames aren't coming up any more
so we need to get more wood on the fire.
It's died down a bit and we need to keep that heat going through.
We can't afford to let the temperature drop when we get
- to these critical stages. - Get this right to the back of the furnace.
It's almost like a sleeping dragon
and as soon as you stoke it up the fire leaps out of the kiln.
Tending kilns in all conditions, night and day, is tough work.
But Colin's heard stories of how tile makers made the job
a little bit more bearable.
I thought we might try and rig ourselves up a still.
We've got apples, and distil some local hooch. What do you think?
I think that sounds like a good idea.
- You're talking about using this to distil alcohol. - Yeah.
The reason I know about this is my uncle did this during the war.
He worked at a brick and tile works and the heat was used for cooking
any game they caught and for making liquor, really.
The question is, Colin, is it legal?
If we treat it as medicinal.
We might be able to get away with it as long as we don't sell it.
A little drop of medicine to soothe the aches and pains.
Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water.
So when this fermented apple juice is heated the alcohol in it
evaporates first, and can be collected.
Put it on the heat now.
Colin's improvised a distillation plant from a bike inner tube,
a water bottle and a saucepan.
So we've fixed that to that. That's worked well.
Because we're joining metal to metal the inner tube acts like a gasket.
What we're going to do now is use the heat from the kiln
to slowly boil the mash that's in there and with the water bottle,
that's going to act as our first condensing chamber.
And then the alcohol should come down the pipe and because it's so cold,
this should condense out so that's what we get in here, the drip,
is going to be our distilled alcohol.
I know Peter's got his tongue hanging out at the moment.
Well, there's already condensation in that bottle.
PIG GRUNTS
Oh, don't blame her. Look at her, sat indoors, nice and neat.
- She looks lovely. - Come on, my lovely. Come on, Snowflake.
The government's drive to double food production meant farmers
had to reduce their livestock in favour of growing crops.
Crops produce considerably more calories per acre than livestock.
With meat becoming scarce,
the government encouraged people to set up Pig Clubs.
Raised communally, on kitchen scraps
half the meat went to the government,
with the rest divided up between the members.
Good girl. Come on, Snowflake.
Their piglet, Shorty, is coming on well. But Ruth,
and fellow pig club member, Debbie Underwood, want to breed
a replacement for when the time comes to slaughter him.
Come on, I've another treat waiting for you.
So, she's taking his mother Snowflake,
to spend some time with local boar, Douglas.
- Come on, Snowflake. - There's a good girl.
Does she go straight in with Douglas or does she have a few days
separate from the piglet before she's introduced to the boar?
She comes into season three days after weaning from her piglets.
And so that's what we'll do. We'll put her in now and all his hormones
will encourage her, that in three days' time, she'll come into season.
- Come on, Snowflake. Come on. - Good girl.
But things are not going to plan.
Somehow, Shorty's escaped to follow his mother.
How on earth did you get out, Shorty?
We'll have to find where they're escaping from...
- That's not good, is it? - Otherwise they just follow her
- to the boar. - The gate's still closed.
- Look, there's a hole in the wire! - Oh, flipping heck!
Before we take her to the boar, we're going to have to fix that,
otherwise Shorty's going to be straight out of there.
Always the way.
SHE LAUGHS
Actually we might be lucky. Yes, well done.
- Look at that. - Well done, that woman.
Speedy, speedy, speedy.
Right, that's Douglas.
Him with the hairy chops.
Here he is. Hello, gorgeous boy.
Yeah, this is Douglas, he loves a back scratch.
He's only served about three sows so far,
so hopefully many happy years ahead of him.
There we go.
Look like they're having fun together, don't they?
It's the final night tending the tile kiln,
and the homemade still's produced a tonic to help the team
cope with the cold.
We're on our sixth bottle at the moment. It's really taken off.
And I think to toast the kiln we ought to have a little snifter.
Right, OK.
- Looks clear enough. - Certainly does.
- Thank you very much. - Very pleasant.
- I find this medicinal actually. - Absolutely.
It's not long before Colin's tonic is making the hard graft
altogether more appealing.
Thanks, you guys, for a fantastic experience, fantastic kiln!
They must endure just one more freezing night
tending the tiles at the kiln.
ALL: To the kiln. Whoo!
Although the government encouraged farmers to cull livestock in favour of growing crops,
they made one exception...
Come on, girls.
..dairy cattle.
Time we got you indoors, you know.
Milk was seen as essential to the health of the nation,
particularly for children. With cold weather on the way,
the farm's precious dairy cattle must be taken indoors.
The government set strict targets for milk production
that dairy farmers had to meet,
so keeping the cattle in top condition was paramount.
It's not just about keeping the cows fit and healthy,
although that's really important, it's also about the quality
of the milk and we've got to keep the quality and the quota
up right through the winter.
Yes, that's really important.
Come on, you know the way.
Over winter, the cattle will be fed silage, fermented vegetation
made by Alex and Peter.
Come on, on you go, good girls! Sarah, move!
I'm always amazed how much you can taste what a cow's been eating
- in the milk. - Yes. There's a definite difference, isn't there?
Of course another reason we need to look after them,
is they're all in calf. So they are all due next spring
so we want to take good care of them. She looks like she's got twins.
She's huge, isn't she?
After two days of firing, the kiln is left to cool
and the tiles to repair the barns for evacuees should be ready.
An awful lot of work has gone into making this kiln
and firing these tiles, and making the tiles,
and we've no idea what the results are.
Once false move with a brick,
Colin slips and it lands on the tiles - we could smash a load of them.
Colin's concerned that the harsh winter condition may have
affected the firing of the tiles.
So what we are looking for is a ring like a bell.
TILES CHIME
- Sounds like magic. - That sounds good. - That is superb.
Will this match on the farm?
It's going to now!
I'm not fussy. I don't know.
I don't think people would have been.
That's a good bunch of tiles is that, and all homemade!
Alex and Peter head back to the farm to repair the buildings
so they'll be ready for more evacuees.
You are a braver man than me, Alex.
These new tiles certainly look the part.
I think we'll probably use about 20 or 30 on this side of the building,
which leaves us a couple of hundred for some of the major farm buildings.
There we are.
With the roof repaired, Alex and Peter furnish the building
with Ruth's beds and quilts.
It's not the must salubrious of accommodation on the farm
but it's warm and dry.
Better than being in the city centre of Southampton.
That's it. Come this way. Mummy's coming in, as well.
Most had no idea when they would ever return home.
How's that then? Is that nice and comfy?
Although rural areas like this were seen as safe havens,
they weren't necessarily quite as safe as they first appeared.
AIRCRAFT PASSES OVERHEAD
There was a top-secret operation to lure enemy bombers away
from cities and into the countryside codenamed Operation Starfish.
I think this is the remnants of the command post of Starfish.
Or, at least, of Starfish in this area.
Only the first wave of German bombers were fitted with
navigation systems.
They dropped firebombs on the target,
lighting the way for the heavy bombers.
But by lighting decoy fires in the countryside
the bombers could be led off target.
Very, very thick concrete. Reinforced.
From this armoured bunker on Manor Farm,
the decoy operation was put into action.
So that's the Itchen there, with all the industrial zones of Southampton,
the place that the German bombers want to target.
Yeah, now if you go a little bit further east...
..you've got a similar bend in the river.
So in the landscape looks almost identical,
and the other bombers will be drawn to this site.
So instead of raining their bombs down on a city centre, on people,
and on industrial heartlands,
they are actually raining their bombs down on fields.
And what have you got there? Manor Farm.
Here, decoy fires would have been ignited
once the incendiary fires in Southampton were under control.
But this wasn't the only way the countryside helped protect cities from German bombers.
So this is the Royal Observer Corps?
That's right. We are part of the Royal Air Force.
And we provide the overland observation service for them
because their radar only looks out to sea.
Neville Cullingford served in the Royal Observers.
The table you see here - the map -
this is a small segment of the main map on the control table at Winchester.
- So that's out little piece. - What's within... - Visual range of us.
So when you see the young women with their long sticks and boards
and they're pushing things around on a board,
- we're providing the information for those girls. - That's right.
She'll be putting your plots on the table that we've observed from here.
A huge network of civilian volunteers
operated like a human radar, 24 hours a day,
tracking enemy aircraft.
In the countryside, this job often fell to farmers.
You actually had to have somebody out here on duty, out in the open.
Even if it was pouring with rain.
It's basically standing in a field all night.
Yes. And we had quite a sad number of the older men who died of pneumonia.
Because they got so cold.
- You'd feel you were doing your bit, stood out here. - That's right.
Seeing the planes go over, doing something about it.
And the ones the RAF weren't able to shoot down,
were hopefully decoyed by the local Starfish sites,
so that they actually dropped their bombs on a poor farmer's fields,
- his farm... - Rather than on a whole load of people. - A city.
Decoy fires were often just simple wooden baskets filled
with flammable material.
We're just knocking up some baskets a la Mode 1 - Operation Starfish.
Overseeing the operation is military expert Gerry Sutcliffe.
- Hello. Good to see you again. - Good to see you.
Have you worked out how to set them off?
Well, I was going to try and do it remotely,
by remotely sending Peter over here with a match.
LAUGHTER
But it might take the best part of the night trying to get them all lit.
We could arrange something with some batteries and pieces of wire.
The current should run down, heat up the fuse, go bang, and hopefully
the rest'll go with it.
- So we can be sat quite a way away then. - That's the idea.
Patterns of fire baskets were arranged to look like burning buildings
and flammable liquids like turpentine, creosote and paraffin
gave the impression from the air of factories and fuel dumps
going up in flames.
That should catch quick.
Stick some of the inflammable liquids on that
and I can get wired up.
All the fires were triggered remotely,
using electrically operated detonators from the safety of a bunker.
- Trail that wire out. - OK. - To somewhere safe.
So, Gerry, we've got our fires ready to light.
Now, we would in effect be waiting for a call
from somewhere like Southampton, an industrial area.
They will have dampened out all of the incendiary bombs there.
- They put in a call to us, and we act. - When we get the signal.
- So we're waiting for that call. - That's correct.
Neville's teaching Ruth
how the Royal Observers tracked and identified aircraft.
We have a height bar here
- on which the number one observer sets the height. - Yep.
And when you report it, if it's 6,000 or 5,000, you report it as 5 or 6.
I don't bother saying thousands because everyone knows it's thousands.
All Number One does is to sight the aircraft and follow it round.
And when he says "On" that means that wherever the square is,
- that's the report you give. - Which in this case is 8-1-6-8.
Direction? The direction in which he's going?
So he's heading... north.
- One... - One at whatever I tell you.
And she acknowledges by saying thank you.
It's time to put it all into practice.
AIRCRAFT PASSES OVERHEAD
- On. - Able 4. - Able 4
8-3-6-5.
Heading north.
One at 8,000.
- Spitfire. - Thank you.
At the bunker, Operation Starfish is about to spring into action.
- Are we going together here? - Yep.
Go.
If all went to plan, bombs would have soon been raining down here
on the fields of Manor Farm rather than on Southampton.
It's difficult to measure success of Operation Starfish.
In many ways, Southampton is a shadow of the city it was
before the Luftwaffe razed it to ground.
Really they flattened the entire city,
so it can't have been that effective.
But...if Operation Starfish saved just one life, then it was worthwhile.
By December, 1940,
despite the valiant efforts of the Royal Observer Corps and Operation Starfish,
across Britain, 24,000 civilians had been killed in the Blitz.
Hundreds of thousands had been made homeless
and millions were displaced,
yet the nation was determined to celebrate Christmas.
It really was the only unifying celebration you got during the war.
Bonfire night obviously had to be cancelled. Blackout. Makes sense.
Easter? Well, with no chocolate that was a bit of a damp squib.
Christmas was the one big community- wide celebration of the year.
And that means that shortages or no shortages
I've somehow got to pull it all together,
and create something that people recognise
as the sort of Christmases they were used to.
So Ruth's planning a Christmas meal and dance.
She's keeping the evacuees occupied by making decorations for the cottage.
Good, nice and careful. I thought you were the lad for the job.
Many town children who were trying to get used to country living
for the first time in their lives.
But also, many of the hosts in the countryside were trying to get used to children.
Not just town children, but ANY children.
There was no rhyme nor reason really, to the billeting,
and people who were lifelong bachelors
suddenly found themselves with a house full of kids.
Good job I know something about how to keep you lot occupied.
That's looking nice! I like this.
Alex is also preparing for Christmas.
With factories working overtime on the war effort,
toys were in very short supply.
The government came to the rescue with advice on how to make your own.
I've got a pamphlet here called
Improvised Toys For Nurseries And Refugee Camps.
These are the sorts of toys that would put a smile on my face today.
Here we've got a little horse you can ride on and a rocking horse.
And it gives you all the patterns.
And here, these are from cotton reels.
This little man here is made entirely out of cotton reels.
I like that one! It's a dragon.
Taking inspiration from the pamphlet,
Alex is making a Spitfire out of old tin cans.
I've already made the prop. This is the propeller.
Got an old roofing nail, which I'm going to somehow fix in there,
so that that spins.
But I'm just hoping that these toys bring a bit of light relief
during our wartime Christmas celebrations.
And there's actually a lovely line in here, which says,
"Some children may have passed through such horrors
"or be so weakened by illness or malnutrition
"that they have temporarily lost the creative art of play.
"A toy, which they may carry with them always
"may do far more than we might imagine
"to restore the health and confidence and peace of mind to a child."
So what we are trying to make is fake sparkly snow.
It's like a cheap form of glitter.
Like so many other things, actual glitter was in short supply.
You can hardly justify a glitter-making factory during wartime, can you?
To make it I've got a load of Epsom salts here
and I just need to add as little water as I possibly can,
to make them all dissolve.
There we go. Look at that! Scarcely liquid.
- Do you fancy a bit of sparkly on your lanterns? - Yeah. It'd be nice.
'It's gonna need guns if it's going to shoot a Luftwaffe down.'
So we'll put a little nail in there.
HE MAKES AIRPLANE NOISE
A shame to give this away.
By December 1940, nearly four million tons of merchant shipping,
including desperately needed food, had been lost to German U-boats.
The usual Christmas fare of turkey had become scarce
as farmers turned away from livestock in favour of crops.
So the government suggested an alternative.
I've plumped for something the Ministry Of Food suggested,
something called a murkey.
Dreadful-sounding name. Awful! It's a mock turkey.
And these parsnips will be his legs.
It's basically sausage meat.
Sort of glorified stuffing.
Look at that! Mind you, that is between 15.
Right just straight in. Clunk.
Now comes the crafty bit.
According to the recipe, the mixture must be moulded
into the shape of a real turkey.
If I just shape that into something...
What shape ARE turkeys on a plate?
OK, parsnip legs.
That might have to do.
One benefit, though, of having so many people in the house,
is access to their ration books!
As soon as they're billeted with me,
they have to hand their ration books over to me.
And then I'm in charge of shopping, all the food.
Which means you get economies of scale.
It's all a bit more efficient when you've got a larger number of you.
This says it all. That there is 1lb 40oz of bacon.
That is five people's ration for the week.
One person's ration - two little rashers - you couldn't do much with.
But when you get a block of five people's rations
you can do a bit more with it, you have more options,
it makes a bit more sense.
There he goes. One mock turkey.
Ready for the oven.
As well as caring for evacuees, the farm work must go on.
Now the cows are inside for winter, they need mucking out daily.
It's the sort of job that would've been undertaken by conscientious objectors.
This way.
And, as usual, the government had some advice.
Right, so as it says in the leaflet here, dung must not be wasted, chaps.
I'll be leaving this by your bedsides tonight for you to read through.
Obviously, as a farmer, we know of its ability to fertilise the fields,
but in failing to use it, we do our country and ourselves a poor turn.
- Got your shovels? - Yep. - Great stuff.
Tom and Lorrin are getting their first taste of life on a farm.
There we have it in operation - liquid manure.
Come on - in, in, in.
So, coming from the city, Lorrin, is this something you're used to?
Er, no!
- Once you forget what it is you're standing in... - Yeah? - It's not so bad.
The great thing about farmyard smells is the longer you spend with them,
the less you notice them.
Once, this was the mainstay of all fertilising on the farms.
But it had been superseded, really, by artificial fertilisers.
It was just cheaper to buy in.
Many of the fertilisers - potash, for example - had come from places like Germany.
So to make up for that shortfall,
the government was advising farmers to turn back to this, natural manure.
There's a nice lot of urine in there, as well.
A nice lot of ammonia,
which is another really good part of the whole fertilising process.
All for the war effort. Just remind yourself, with every shovelful.
- Hold that. - Hold the book while we...!
- To the ball of foot... - Ooh!
Hang about - where are you reading?
Tomorrow they will celebrate Christmas.
And many in the village will attend the local dance.
So Ruth and Peter are learning to foxtrot.
It should be easy. This is supposed to be the easy dance everybody knew.
Not quite the pogo though, is it?
Dancer Lisa McLean has come along to teach Ruth and Peter the steps.
- We really, really, really need your help. - What's the matter?
Well, we're trying to learn the foxtrot from a book.
And we haven't got very far, really!
I'm not surprised, you're really not going to learn from that.
- So you think I should ditch the book? - I should. Throw it.
The foxtrot was developed in 1920s New York,
and during the war, reached its peak of popularity.
Let's try it. So, two slow walks forward.
Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, slow, quick, quick.
Easy, eh?
Ish...!
LAUGHTER
- Why don't you try it together? - Is that it? - That's it. - All right.
Ready? Here we go.
Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow, slow,
quick, quick... Very good!
Up until the 1950s, the foxtrot was THE most popular dance,
and early rock 'n roll records were categorised as foxtrots.
..slow, quick-quick...
So would absolutely everybody be able to do this?
Everybody would have known it. It was a really, really social thing to do.
It's quite chatty. You can actually chat while your dancing, can't you?
You're not leading.
Slow, slow, quick-quick... Oh, you're turning the wrong way now.
- Oh, no! - Oh, no! - Disaster has struck!
COW MOOS
The team are celebrating Christmas day 1940-style
by inviting evacuees and neighbours to their austerity Christmas meal.
Someone's worked his way over here.
Hello, fella!
Henry!
It's a chance to sample the delights of wartime mock delicacies.
- Smells really good, doesn't it? - Very nice. So, what is it? Goose?
You should be so lucky! It's known as murkey.
Why is it called murkey?
- Mock turkey. - Right.
- I'm quite mungry. - LAUGHTER
This looks MORE appetising than a dry-as-old-boots turkey.
CHATTER
Anybody interested in a parsnip leg?
You'll have a half a leg?
What do you all think of the murkey? Is it edible?
Very good, Ruth. You've done a marvellous job.
Nice and juicy.
Stuffing is the favourite part of my Christmas dinner,
so THAT is my favourite Christmas dinner.
Here we go, Henry. Have some murkey.
- Henry loves the murkey. - He does? - He does. - Good.
I think that brings us round to present time.
That's for gobbling down your mince pie.
Ryan, as well.
- An aeroplane. - GASPS
- Is it a Spitfire? - It's meant to be.
It IS a Spitfire.
- LAUGHTER - It's a tractor!
- There's a special present for you, Ruth. - Oh, my goodness.
Magazines often included instructions for homemade gifts.
Oh! A hat!
Oh, fan... Oh, gosh, that's fantastic!
A little tilt hat for you, Ruth.
- On the front, like that? - On the side.
- Made from a man's trilby hat, make do and mend. - Really? Cut down? - Yep.
I'm really impressed. Thank you very much!
Consumer goods became scarce, as factories turned to war work,
so presents tended to be practical items.
Next up, Ruth. No prizes for guessing what this is.
Go on, unwrap it. See what it is!
I can't imagine what this is.
LAUGHTER
"To Alex." Thank you all.
Maybe I've got an aeroplane, as well!
HE SNIFFS
It's very fragrant.
It's soap. LAUGHTER
Are you trying to tell me something, guys?
In 1940, soap was, in fact, the most popular of all Christmas presents.
Mm, a familiar smell.
LAUGHTER
Happy Christmas to everybody.
- And let's hope we're all here for the next one. - Well, said.
After lunch, everyone heads to the village dancehall.
MUSIC: "Tea for Two"
It was a chance, just for a few hours, to forget the horrors of war.
MUSIC ENDS DANCERS CLAP
MUSIC RESTARTS
'It's wonderful, isn't it?'
All that pressure -
the bombers overhead, people being blitzed out of their homes
the war really coming home, and then suddenly you can just forget it all.
That's it. There's no way I can imagine the stress
everyone was under during the war,
- but I can see how this would've been such a release. - Yes, you can.
People are losing their loved ones by this point.
People are being bombed out of their homes.
The whole hardness of war is starting to bite home.
- And here we have the community just... - Letting their hair down.
Forget it all. Put it to the back of your mind.
And have fun while you can! Make the most of it, while you can.
- Ladies and Gentlemen, the King. ALL: - The King.
- And to absent friends. ALL: - To absent friends
♪ God save our gracious King
♪ Long live our noble King
♪ God save the King
♪ Send him victorious
♪ Happy and glorious
♪ Long to reign over us
♪ God save the King. ♪
- MAN: - Hear hear! - ALL: Hear hear!
Despite the brief respite for Christmas,
Britain would have to fight on for another five years.
The pressure on the wartime farmer would get even greater
as they battled to defend, shelter and feed the nation.
Next time, the team face the conditions of 1941
when the Nazis engulfed Europe
and demands on farmers increased.
The farm gets a government inspection.
Like the iron fist in the velvet glove.
Production steps up.
I am an absolute bag of bones!
And in the darkness of war,
there's new life on the wartime farm.
Find out how Britain fed itself during the Second World War
by ordering The Open University's free Wartime Farm booklet
call, or follow the links to The Open University.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd