Movie Monday – Wartime Farm Part 3 of 8

Wartime Farm is an eight part documentary program originally aired on BBC2 in 2012.  Historian Ruth Goodman along with archeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn take over a farm in Hampshire, England.  The goal is to run the farm as it would have been during the second world war.

With German air raids causing unprecedented damage to Britain’s major cities in the Winter of 1940, the residents of Manor Farm are instructed to make preparations for an influx of evacuees from London, Portsmouth and Southampton. Alex and Peter spend the first half of the episode casting and firing their own roof tiles, to make some of the farm’s outbuildings suitable for human habitation. Despite the freezing November temperatures, their makeshift kiln must burn at over 900°C for two days and two nights, requiring constant supervision. Fortunately, the residual heat provides an ideal input for some ‘medicinal’ home distillation of apples into hooch. Ruth, meanwhile, sets about furnishing the barns—first with wooden beds, and then with padded patchwork quilts made from feathers and ticking.
The team must also do their bit to defend Hampshire against German aerial bombardment. Ruth spends an evening with a veteran of the Royal Observer Corps, learning how to track enemy aircraft and relay their locations back to the control centre in Winchester. In the woodland further away from the farm, Alex and Peter construct decoy fire beacons to lure enemy bombers away from Southampton, as part of Operation Starfish.

 

Directed by Stuart Elliott and Naomi Benson

Produced byDavid Upshal