Starring role for Country Park in New 'Wartime Farm' TV show

Friday, 31 August 2012

Manor Farm and Country Park will feature on our TV screens from next week as the BBC's Wartime Farm series airs.

The Wartime Farm follow-up to the popular Victorian and Edwardian Farm series, was filmed at the Hampshire County Council country park between September 2011 and August 2012, and will air weekly from 8.00pm on Thursday 6 September 2012 on BBC2.

Located near Hedge End, the country park was chosen as the filming location because of its authentic historic setting and its array of vintage farming equipment, spanning hundreds of years. Manor Farm has been a working farm for over 600 years and offers visitors the chance to explore its historic buildings and barns, meet the animals, and experience the traditional farm machinery at work.

The new eight-part Wartime Farm TV series, will focus on the Second World War and all aspects of domestic and farming life of the period, using the farmhouse, farmyard and fields at Manor Farm as their setting.

During filming, the living room in the Farm's Victorian school teacher's cottage was transformed into a 1940s-style kitchen area, providing the main indoor shooting location. A paraffin cooking stove was installed and period furniture temporarily replaced the Victorian dresser. Filming also took place in the woodlands and fields around the country park, with the Wartime Farm team planting and harvesting crops as part of the year-long project.

Presenters Peter Ginn, Ruth Goodman and Alex Langlands explore how people lived, farmed and cooked during the Second World War. The programme highlights some of the hardships that farmers faced during the war, with wartime farming activities such as weaning rabbits, harvesting crops, creating meals from rationed supplies and ingredients, building bird-scarers, and even brewing homemade beer.

Hampshire County Council's Executive Member for Culture and Recreation, Councillor Keith Chapman, said:

"It has been a huge honour for Manor Farm to be involved in this unique historical venture. Wartime Farm has played a wonderful part in highlighting what the farm has to offer as one of the oldest working farms in Hampshire.

"We hope that the legacy of the TV series will live on at the farm and that the public will make the most of this fantastic venue, including the Wartime aspects available for everyone to enjoy."

David Upshal, Executive Producer for Lion Television said:

"Manor Farm was the perfect location for filming Wartime Farm. It had everything we needed - from great looking period buildings, and the right types and breeds of livestock, to an amazing range of 1940s tractors and farming equipment. Having been in operation as a working farm during the Second World War, Manor Farm offered a rich heritage and authenticity which kept offering up storylines that were full of historical significance for the series. We are also immensely grateful to the staff at the farm for their knowledge and expertise as well as their immense help and co-operation throughout the year."

Presenter Alex Langlands, who is currently reading for a PhD at the University of Winchester, said:

"Wartime Farm represents one of our biggest challenges to date. British agriculture was put under enormous strain during the Second World War to produce as much food as possible to avoid starvation in the British Isles. We found ourselves having to rise to that challenge and placed ourselves at the mercy of the Ministry of Agriculture and a year of particularly inclement weather. Thankfully, Manor Farm and Country Park had an absolutely first-class team on hand to help us with our struggles - and we're hugely grateful! The series was great fun to make and allowed us to explore not just farming in the 1940s but also the wider social and cultural impact of war on the British countryside."

• Manor Farm and Country Park

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