There will be a real treat [in January 2009] for every family historian with ancestors who worked on the land. Over six episodes, a new BBC2 series, Victorian Farm, will explore exactly what rural life was like during that era, as it follows the adventures of a team of archaeologists and historians who pent a year living and working as 19th-century farmers would have done.

One of the big surprises for the programme makers was the wealth of documentary material available about the lives of rural people who, although they made up the majority of the population, have always been largely overlooked. 'It was an amazing experience,' says Ruth Goodman, historian, and one of the three presenters of the show. 'I'm used to studying the Early Modern Period where there are very few records for this kind of thing. However, for the Victorian era we were overwhelmed.'

Ruth and her two co-presenters, archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, were able to consult a huge range of sources while making the television programme, which follows on from a similar experiment they conducted as early- 16th-century farmers in South Wales for the 2005 series Tales from the Green Valley.

'We got a lot of information from just doing it. When you're working with period machines and breeds they will push you in particular directions,' says Peter, 'but we also read a huge volume of material.'

The 19th century saw a boom in publishing, and the team gained a large amount of information from reading contemporary catalogues and adverts ' as well as specialist farming books, particularly Henry Stephens' The Book of the Farm, which served as their main reference through the seasons. (Read it on GoogleBooks at http://tinyurl.com/645hlp).

'One of my favourite sources were the magazines you start to see appearing at this time,' says Ruth. 'They're particularly interesting because they reflect ordinary people's concerns, and give a window into the mental world of the time. The manuals we had showed how things should be done, the magazines showed how they were done ' it was interesting to see how the two mixed.

'If you only read the manuals, you would get a very false idea about households of the period, and think everyone was much richer than they really were, with many more servants,' she adds. 'In Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management all the sections about washing are addressed to the laundry maid, whereas magazines acknowledge the reality: very few households could actually afford one.'

The period also saw the growth of mass production, and this new way of manufacturing and selling goods nationally, instead of locally, as had previously been the case, brought with it a wealth of marketing material. 'The catalogues and adverts told us what was up to date, what was new, and they were exactly the sort of thing a well-to-do farmer would have been bombarded with,' says Alex. Because the 19th century was at the crossroads between the old and new in terms of farming, with so much change occurring, the series focused on broadly exploring the lives of farmers, rather than trying to recreate known individuals. 'We decided quite early on not to research specific people, we just felt that we would lose so much in doing so,' says director Stuart Elliott. 'We wanted to keep things deliberately vague, to allow us to explore as many different themes as possible and not get caught up in what one individual would or wouldn't have done.'

This autumn there will be a real treat for every family historian with ancestors who worked on the land. Over six episodes, a new BBC2 series, Victorian Farm, will explore exactly what rural life was like during that era, as it follows the adventures of a team of archaeologists and historians who pent a year living and working as 19th-century farmers would have done.

One of the big surprises for the programme makers was the wealth of documentary material available about the lives of rural people who, although they made up the majority of the population, have always been largely overlooked. 'It was an amazing experience,' says Ruth Goodman, historian, and one of the three presenters of the show. 'I'm used to studying the Early Modern Period where there are very few records for this kind of thing. However, for the Victorian era we were overwhelmed.'

Ruth and her two co-presenters, archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn, were able to consult a huge range of sources while making the television programme, which follows on from a similar experiment they conducted as early- 16th-century farmers in South Wales for the 2005 series Tales from the Green Valley.

'We got a lot of information from just doing it. When you're working with period machines and breeds they will push you in particular directions,' says Peter, 'but we also read a huge volume of material.'

The 19th century saw a boom in publishing, and the team gained a large amount of information from reading contemporary catalogues and adverts ' as well as specialist farming books, particularly Henry Stephens' The Book of the Farm, which served as their main reference through the seasons. (Read it on GoogleBooks at http://tinyurl.com/645hlp).

'One of my favourite sources were the magazines you start to see appearing at this time,' says Ruth. 'They're particularly interesting because they reflect ordinary people's concerns, and give a window into the mental world of the time. The manuals we had showed how things should be done, the magazines showed how they were done ' it was interesting to see how the two mixed.

'If you only read the manuals, you would get a very false idea about households of the period, and think everyone was much richer than they really were, with many more servants,' she adds. 'In Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management all the sections about washing are addressed to the laundry maid, whereas magazines acknowledge the reality: very few households could actually afford one.'

The period also saw the growth of mass production, and this new way of manufacturing and selling goods nationally, instead of locally, as had previously been the case, brought with it a wealth of marketing material. 'The catalogues and adverts told us what was up to date, what was new, and they were exactly the sort of thing a well-to-do farmer would have been bombarded with,' says Alex. Because the 19th century was at the crossroads between the old and new in terms of farming, with so much change occurring, the series focused on broadly exploring the lives of farmers, rather than trying to recreate known individuals. 'We decided quite early on not to research specific people, we just felt that we would lose so much in doing so,' says director Stuart Elliott. 'We wanted to keep things deliberately vague, to allow us to explore as many different themes as possible and not get caught up in what one individual would or wouldn't have done.'

A mine of information about rural life

But the experience of individuals was to prove invaluable for research, and one of the most useful sources was Mr Acton, the owner of the Acton Scott Historic Working Farm (now run by the council). It was on his land that Victorian Farm was shot and throughout he was a mine of information about rural life. 'He had first-hand experience of a lot of the things we were doing, because he could remember it from the 1930s, when many 'Victorian' farming practices still survived,' says Stuart. 'He was always looking out of the window at what we were doing and giving us tips,' adds Alex.

The team also brought in actual practitioners of the various crafts they wanted to research ' often among the last people alive to have those specific skills.

The Victorian village was a highly specialised place, with well over 100 different crafts practiced, including every trade from coopers and tanners, to bakers, dairymaids and experts in coppicing and woodland management.

Although now very few people live and work near where the series was shot, the team was still able to get some help from locals. 'One day, we were having a real nightmare with a piece of machinery and this old boy came down the lane and looked over the fence,' says Alex. 'He could remember using it as a child and was able to tell us exactly what levers to pull to get it going.'

As the two main labourers ' Alex and Peter ' were trained archaeologists, another useful source of information was the farm buildings. By looking at how these structures were laid out, the two were able to glean important insight about how the farm had been used efficiently in the past.

'One particularly interesting thing for me was seeing how, although this was a time of mechanisation and the amount of people being employed was dropping,' explains Peter, 'the actual amount of work done by the individuals still employed was rising, and many of the machines were a lot of work to use.'

So, technological advances leading to longer working hours? Perhaps the countryside of the 19th century isn't so different to the 21st-century office after all.