Dark Doings at the Victorian Farm

Bliss. The Victorian Farm is back on television – this time as a three part Christmas Special.

I just adored The Victorian Farm. I love the production values. The clothes for a start – how wonderful to see someone farming in a bowler hat, or homely, spikily intelligent Ruth bustling about dressed in a hideous, lumpen jacket and skirt of her own manufacture. Then there’s the farming – not just the ploughshares and shire horses, but the outlandish bygone agricultural machinery that so often works.

Most of all, there’s the personal chemistry. Identifying as I do with Ruth, I was deeply put out when Part One of the Christmas Edition introduced her real-life daughter as Assistant Butter-Churner. I don’t want Ruth to have a real, twenty-first century private life. I want to believe that she and the two handsome younger men live together in a scandalous Dickensian rural ménage-a-trois, complete with candlesticks, billowing white nightshirts and plump, all-embracing goose-down quilts, whilst their landlords the Actons turn a blind eye.

Christmas starts early in Shropshire – with hay-making, apparently. This task was designated by Mr Acton himself – an adorable old gent who has clearly not had to adapt his normal get-up much to appear Victorian. He plays along gamely as the cast tug their forelocks to him, though you can see he’s just itching to get back to Countdown on the telly.

There were early Christmas presents for everyone on their return the series - Ruth had a new copper which excited her a good deal, and Peter and Alex had a Heath-Robinson-ish automatic bailer which sprayed everything impressively with hay.

The cottage had fallen victim to various improvements since last season, including the destruction of Ruth’s kitchen garden and the establishment of an entirely new one on the other side of the building.

Ruth looked genuinely put out, and I don’t blame her. ‘All that work!’ she wailed.

But why?

Alas, all is not as it seems down at the Victorian Farm. The Actons have a dark family secret, much worse than a bit of discreet bed-swapping. The Victorian Farm is actually (I quote):

‘…one of Britain's leading working farm museums.’

Old Mr Acton is not a throw-back. He’s an entrepreneur.

‘We specialise in practical demonstrations of historic farming using traditional skills and period horse-drawn machines.’ Says the blurb.

‘You can see farm life unfold on the land, around the farm yard and in the cottage [Ruth’s cottage! How could they?] with each day being rounded off with milking by hand.’

What a blow. Next thing, you’ll be telling me that Ruth’s a professional Historical Consultant, and Alex and Peter aren’t really Victorians at all.

Image borrowed without permission from BBC and Ruth Goodman websites