'We've been following the story of one village
'through the whole of our history
'with the help of the villagers, tracing the tale
'from the Romans to the present day...'
..where the Roman road disappeared...
'..through the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons...'
It's got this thick black and white residue stuck to the inside.
That's Anglo-Saxon food, or the carbonised remains of it.
So, basically, we're going to have to dig up your entire garden!
'Set in the village of Kibworth in Leicestershire,
'it's not the tale of the rulers, but of the ordinary people.
Henry Button, freeman.
Alice Starr. Matilda Starr.
BOTH: Sisters.
It's like a cannonball. Civil War, you reckon?
Yeah.
Matthias Wood. He's a musketeer. William Smith...
'We've seen how the national story is always mirrored in the local,
'and the local in the national.'
'"There is no race of people under the sun so depressed as we are,'
"who work the hours we do for the money we get."
'We've seen how our history is not just theirs, but ours.'
It's amazing to think that 90% of us didn't have the vote up to 1832
and that women didn't get the vote until 1928.
In the story of Kibworth and the story of England,
we've reached the modern age, a time when what happened
to the ordinary people of England was as rich
and dramatic and exciting as at any other time in our past.
Ladies and gentlemen, can you hear me at the back?
'It's hustings night in Kibworth in the general election of 2010.'
..in which those rights will conflict and where one can say...
'The right to vote is just one of the things we've gained
'in our recent history.
'We've seen the shaping of our popular culture and education...'
..one of the most objectionable things...
'..the tremendous impact of the world wars
'and the growth of our multicultural society.
'We have choices now never dreamed of by our ancestors.
'And, as we'll see, all these great changes
'are mirrored in the tale of the village.
'To see how the men and women of the village became citizens
'of a modern, democratic Britain, we have to go back to the 1830s,
'to England in the age of reform, when Queen Victoria was new to the throne.
'And that's exactly what the villagers are going to do.'
They've laid on
this fantastic conference chamber with piles of documents...
Can we get excited now? Yes!
'At the National Archive in Kew, the villagers have come down to examine
'their Poor Law records from early Victorian England,
'when poverty and social justice became a huge issue.'
These records relate to the Market Harborough Poor Law Union.
I know a number of you are involved in the dig.
Today we'll do a similar thing,
but in this material. We'll dig into the archive.
It's a seriously big place.
We hold 11 million records here,
and they cover a thousand years of history.
So, what are you going to find in here today?
And the answer is, I don't know.
And neither does Sarah.
And neither does Michael.
Because what you're undertaking today is real historical research.
And the nature of historical research is looking in material
that isn't listed, that is rarely used,
in order to find out the way people lived in the past.
Now, I couldn't tell you the last time anybody looked at these records,
and it may well be that nobody has.
It's going to be incredibly valuable
for understanding how that particular area in Leicestershire
operated in the 19th century.
'Like Britain as a whole, the village was changing fast
'at the start of Victoria's reign,
'with industrialisation and the rapid growth of transport and communications.
'This is also the age of photography, and we can now see
'exactly what Victorian Kibworth looked like,
'with shops, post office, a newsagent's.
'But the old rural world was still there in the background.
'The Victorian age was one of the greatest periods in our history,
'when the influence of our language and culture,
'our institutions and politics, went out across the whole world.'
But here, back at home, it's also the time
that shaped us as modern Britons
more than any other, not just in buildings like this,
in schools and railways and local government, but also in mentalities.
But their achievements were so great that it's easy to forget
that in the early years of Victoria,
the late 1830s and early 1840s,
the social situation, the class tensions, were so inflammable
that many observers were expecting revolution.
But that's not what happened.
'The early 19th century saw the emergence of the British working class,
'landless wage earners prey to the ups and down of the economy.
'But the poor and jobless had to survive on charity from the pre-industrial age.
'In 1834, a centralised Poor Law came in,
'administered through local Poor Law unions.'
It says, "Notice is hereby given
"that a meeting of the rate payers
"in this parish at Mr Mitchell's shop on Friday 4th April,"
and it's, um, "the liquidation of a debt
"from the parish to Mr John Salson of Leicester amounting to £90."
'It's the real beginning of the welfare state.'
..with the names of the people who have got to move out.
It includes an Iliff in there, I think.
"I write to inform you that I am a poor man belonging to
"the parish of Kibworth Harcourt and I am in the 85th year of my age."
'The old system of charity simply couldn't cope with
'the sheer numbers in poverty.'
"Now, gentlemen, how is it possible
"for any person to subsist on such a scanty allowance?"
We have the case of Harriet Cox,
who was a widow of four years, and she says
that she did have three shillings and one loaf,
but that was taken off her.
Then you read this further on, and the reason that it was taken off her
was because she had the misfortune
to have another child by a young man.
So these are men in their sixties and seventies
who are still looking for work.
They want to work. God! But they keep getting threatened with...
Now, after four years, they're being threatened with the workhouse.
'Religious dissenters were especially hard hit.'
"We are poor men belonging to the parishes of Kibworth Beauchamp
"and Kibworth Harcourt in the county of Leicester, and being out of employ,
"we have repeatedly applied to the guardian for work,
"but he invariably refuses to employ us."
"The fact is, we are dissenters, the unpardonable crime,
"therefore we are neither to have law nor justice,
"but be sent to such dens of iniquity as a workhouse."
"Men will not submit to being incarcerated in a workhouse
"merely for want of work.
"No dissenter can submit to be transported
"into such dens of iniquity, which are worse than West Indian slavery."
At least one of them is obviously very educated,
and they've actually managed to get an investigation
against Kibworth Beauchamp.
Against the parish?
Against the parish of Kibworth Beauchamp.
However, the commissioner challenges their knowledge of the Poor Law
and claims that they've had to have had some assistance
"of some persons who are able to clearly explain to you what the laws are".
They're just making this assumption
that they can't possibly put forward this argument themselves.
'But of course, they could.
'The village had a long tradition of literacy,
'and now the religious independents and dissenters became a voice for change -
'Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists -
'Protestant groups outside the Church of England.
'And, after all, the village had run its own grammar school since Tudor times.
'There'd been a village school since 1812.
'But the dissenters challenged the status quo.'
People who are more concerned about religion and religious faith will obviously have the ability to read,
because they've studied the Bible for themselves. They tend to be a little bit above, obviously, farm labourers.
'In the background, was Kibworth's 18th-century dissenting academy,
'with its amazing range of learning,
'which had underlined the role of literacy in the village.'
They were trying to offer the same level of education as a university,
so it's beyond grammar school.
Logic, ethics, they continued to study Greek and grammar,
learn Hebrew and divinity.
It eventually comes to London,
and we now have the books here in the library. We're the inheritors...
You're the inheritors of the Kibworth academy.
Yeah, the books and manuscripts and so on.
'And this union of religious dissent and working aspirations helped win
'many of the rights we now take for granted.'
The Bible can be very contradictory. You have to balance passages against other passages.
And people put different weights on different things.
The toleration, the real legacy of dissent, our civil liberties,
the fact that we have freedom of speech and it's written into...
We don't have a constitution, but this is an expectation.
That's one of the things that dissenters really fought for,
the right to be able to worship as they wished in their own places of religion
and not be forced to go to a state religion.
The civil liberties that we enjoy today is, I think, the great legacy.
'Rights and duties begin in childhood,
'and the Victorians redefined what the British childhood was all about.
'At a nearby stately home, the children from Kibworth Primary School
'are going to get a taste of what life was like for young people
'back in Victoria's day.
'And as you'd expect, the Victorian ruling class
'wanted to raise a workforce who knew their place.
Now, then, how many people do you think
actually lived in this great big house that is owned by William Herrick?
11 or 12?
Do you know, there were three.
All that house for three people.
In a house like this,
you need to have lots and lots of people looking after it.
There's no way that William Herrick is going to be looking after his house.
That's what you people are for.
And this afternoon, you're going to be in the cellars
applying for a job as a servant at Beaumanor Hall.
That's it.
'With the old rural world in decline,
'new forms of employment for the young took over.'
Good. Well done. Good girl.
The servants which we've sacked before...
Sacked?! Sacked, without any pay.
..ironed these items, but not very well...
'13% of all women in England, well over a million,
'were in domestic service, and they started as young as 12.'
Follow me!
'The Victorians believed that every child should go to school.'
You will be watching all the children here
to make sure they are well behaved.
If anybody starts messing about, you put your hand up,
and when I say, "Yes?", you will tell me. Good.
Right, we're going to do some writing.
'Education from five to 12 came in in 1870 and became mandatory,
'as it is today, in 1880.
'At the core of Victorian education, the three Rs -
'reading, writing and 'rithmetic.'
When your pen runs out, you prime it again
by putting it back into the inkwell to get it full up again.
'Since Tudor times, England had been the most literate society in history.
'Victoria's can-do culture made the next big push,
'by 1900 achieving 90% adult literacy, not far off what we've got today.
'And they did it with strict discipline.'
Yes?
He was slouching and talking.
Slouching and talking when I had my back turned?!
'It's easy to think they were just like us.
'But they weren't.'
The cane.
Hold your hand out.
I don't want you to get any blood on your right hand
which you're going to write with. Are you ready?
Missed.
Aren't you lucky?
BELL RINGS
Go and stand where you were before you came in.
Second row...
'In fixing the school age and making schooling universal,
'the Victorians, in a sense, invented modern childhood.'
The dog wants a bone...
CHILDREN CHANT
'For the first time in our history,
'the world of childhood was separated from the world of work.
'Now, Kibworth in Victoria's day was still a rural place.
'But that changed in the 1850s.'
That is amazing.
So this is in Kibworth, is it?
Gosh, I thought it was going to hit the camera for a minute then.
You can see the driver shaking his fist at one point. Classic!
'Armies of navvies, shifting millions of tonnes by hand, cut great swathes
'through midland England, and they brought us the railways.'
"The first engine came through Kibworth on Wednesday evening,
"when at least 200 villagers came to see it.
"It stopped for a short time, and two of the trucks filled with people
"anxious to say they rode in the first train through Kibworth."
It was formally opened in May 1857,
the very moment when, far away in India, the British were fighting
their terrible war against what they called "the Indian mutiny".
'"Kibworth will be changed for ever."
'No community was isolated now, and the speed-up of communications
'would help build a national culture for the first time.'
My lords, ladies and gentlemen, good evening.
Good evening!
'And even Kibworth became part of it,
'with regular concerts by the villagers themselves.'
25th April 1882, an amateur dramatic entertainment
was given in the village hall on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
What a lot of these programmes consisted of,
we could consider today really rather sedate and very genteel.
It was the kind of entertainment that the vicar would very likely introduce,
and may even do a genteel turn or two himself.
What used to come round as professional entertainment
were very family orientated. You'd get a man and his wife
and their children, and they would go round the country,
and with the spread of the railways, it was much easier for people to travel.
So you could have Harry Clifton, who was a very celebrated songwriter,
and his wife was Fanny Adwards,
who appeared in the village hall here
on 16th February 1874 to give an entertainment.
"She will be assisted by six other artistes
"of superior ability, and the different characters
"will be represented in appropriate costumes."
Gosh, what a fun evening that sounds like!
Does anybody have any ideas...
'So, as another piece of historical research,
'we asked the villagers to re-enact a Kibworth Victorian concert.'
I'll do A Song At Twilight. # Just a song at twilight... #
That's the one. Do you have the music for it?
At home, yes. You've got it? You've got the music?
Yes. What a pro!
# Once in the dear... #
# Once in the dear, dead days beyond recall
# When on the world a mist began to fall... #
Lovely. Everybody?
# Just a song at twilight When the lights are low... #
'These village shows were infused by the Victorian middle-class ethos.
'It was a received culture, sentimental and moralising.'
# ..at twilight
# Comes love's old song
# Comes love's old, sweet song. #
You've got the part!
'But the villagers appear very differently
'in a contemporary portrait of the community
'by a Kibworth writer, Francis Woodford.'
"The first house in Kibworth Harcourt
"nearest to the north gate of the church..."
Which house do you think that is?
This one here. Yeah?
"Twenty...seven was lived in
"by Mr William Thompson, who was a builder and a stonemason..."
Yeah!
"..who had a workshop and a stables
"between the house and the church wall, which is there."
Do you think this would have been a house of a rich person or a poor person?
Rich. Quite rich. Well done.
'Woodford describes a rural village on the cusp of the modern world.
'Like Dickens, his characters are often eccentric, larger-than-life
'but Woodford's people
'are all real.'
"John Collins, the blacksmith, was a very clever and curious man.
"He made almost all his own furniture.
"His chairs and table legs were made of iron.
"He covered the soles of his boots with steel plates.
"Their clatter on the cobblestones always gave notice of his approach."
"Samuel Burditt, the shoemaker,
"played bassoon in the church choir.
"I was told he was an atheist,
"which it was explained to me was a very wicked person.
"Though I remember him as a kind and jolly man."
"Mrs Weston, the milliner, kept a large dressmaking establishment.
"A number of young lady apprentices lived with her
"and from her house two or three romantic elopements were made."
"Mr Loveday, the builder, was an ardent local politician.
"One of the earliest and most energetic supporters of the franchise -
"free education and a nine-hour working day."
"Tom Tolton, the mower,
"was one of the characters in the Plough Monday processions,
"dressed in his glory as a country woman and primed with drink, he'd dance
"wild country dances with his partner, Jonty Jesson, until fairly tired out."
"George Gray, the farmer,
"was a big jolly, good-natured man.
"He was the last one to celebrate harvest home in the old English way
"and he still left the corners of his fields unreaped, as it says in the Bible,
"so they could be claimed by the poor."
"Mrs Coleman was the landlady at the Coach and Horses,
"one of the best landladies a hostelry ever had.
"She dispensed charity liberally,
"studied the comfort of her customers seriously
"and would refuse men drink when she knew the families needed more money."
Look this way!
We went on the Kibworth Victorian Trail. Three, two, one...
ALL: Yeah!
'The village in Woodford's portrait was class-driven but tolerant,
'a mix of bloody-mindedness and community spirit.
'Boozy, sometimes violent,
'but with a marked streak of good-humoured individualism.
'But in the Kibworth penny concerts you can see the other side
'of the Victorian mind.
'Supervised by the vicar, they were educative,
'morally uplifting, self-improving.
'At this point, ordinary people's culture was still mediated
'by the ethos of church, chapel and propriety.'
Ladies and gentlemen, as your vicar, it falls upon me to bid you all
a very warm welcome to what I'm sure is going to be
yet another delightful evening of wholesome, rational entertainment.
Miss Ellie McCann.
'One of the great evils of the day,
'as the middle classes saw it, was the working-class addiction to drink.'
# Please, sir, will you listen a moment?
# I've something important to say
# My mother has sent you a message
# Receive it in kindness, I pray
# Please sell no more drink to my father
# It makes him so strange and so wild
# Hear the prayer of my heartbroken mother
# And pity the poor drunkard's child
# Hear the prayer of my heartbroken mother
# And pity the poor drunkard's child. #
CHEERING
'But the villagers wanted more than a good night out.
'They wanted representation at the ballot box.
'In 1867, the vote was extended to urban male householders,
'but still only 40% of men had the vote, and no women.
'Here in Kibworth, one reformer who set about to change that
'was a builder, John Loveday.'
Tell us about Loveday and the new town.
Most of the people up there
were working men and they supported Loveday,
so it became the radical part of Kibworth.
The radical part!
Radical. Radical Kibworth.
So, this was emphatically the working men's part of town?
Oh, yeah. Well, certainly from the coming of Loveday, you could say.
If there was one person, if you could go back in time to meet,
I'd like to meet John Loveday.
He upset a lot of the gentry in the village, so I'd like to meet him and...
You'd like to meet him. Yeah, I would.
I tell you what I'm going to ask you to do,
I'm going to ask you to read me this little passage about him,
because I think it conveys him so wonderfully, doesn't it?
"Mr Loveday..." Would you read that for us?
"Mr Loveday, in addition to being a large contractor,
"was also a very ardent politician
"and one of the earliest and most energetic supporters of the franchise,
"Freedom Education Act, nine-hours movement and kindred measures.
"A man of ready wit, unfailing good temper and full of energy,
"he seemed to be in seventh heaven when expounding his views
"to the large audiences which used to gather to hear him,
"either in the village hall
"or from a platform erected at his own expense on the cross bank."
'In Kibworth Beauchamp, where a large hosiery factory
'would soon be built, it was Loveday who helped more working people
'get the vote by building them housing in what became known as the new town.'
So, this is some of the early housing, is it, Philip?
"Beaconsfield Cottages, 1877."
Good morning!
Don't mind us admiring your house...!
'Lord Beaconsfield was Benjamin Disraeli,
'the Conservative Prime Minister.'
Beaconsfield was built by the Conservative Association.
By that time the Conservatives realised that they were losing votes
by getting all these working class in the villages.
So there's votes in it? If you're a householder, you can vote.
Yes. If you're a householder, you can vote.
Gladstone Street. That's Gladstone Street, yes.
Behind quiet Kibworth suburbia,
you suddenly see raging, 19th-century, political battles here.
Yeah.
'So, even in the streets of Kibworth,
'you can see the story of industrial England.'
There was a factory at the back of this house.
You can see it from Dover Street.
And then the Malbys lived in this house here,
next but one.
Yeah. Is that...? Handel Cottage.
And Stonehenge opposite!
The terraced houses up there are some of the early ones.
Oh, yes.
That was the working-men's club, as it is today.
Entirely different in...
you know, when it was built.
These were all reasonably well-to-do working people, were they?
Yes, I would say so.
Haberdashers, drapers, grocers... Middle-class shopping habits
coming to late Victorian Kibworth.
'So, Loveday began the modern expansion of the village.
..What, doubles in the Victorian era?
More or less, yes. From about 2,500
for the three villages up to about, what, 5,500 - 6,000, it must be today.
Yeah, almost a small town. Well, yes, it is.
And it begins here in the new town in Victoria's day.
Yes, and all brought about by Mr Loveday.
By Mr Loveday!
Progress!
'The new workers' town brought with it a more earthy, working-class culture...'
Good evening!
And welcome to this cavern of...
'..and a very different idea of a good night out.'
I don't know if you read in the paper recently, there was a survey done
which showed that 50% of the married women
in Leicestershire are unfaithful to their husbands.
AUDIENCE: Ooh!
And the Archbishop of Canterbury, he wrote a letter to the other 50%.
LAUGHTER
Do you know what he said, madam?
Oh, didn't you get one?!
'This was the entertainment that working people wanted.'
I just shot my dog. Was he mad?
He wasn't very pleased.
'Rumbustious and irreverent...'
# The tuner tuned whenever he got an opportunity... #
'..and full of the great English double entendre.'
# My fears and my doubts are for evermore left on the shelf
# Cos if ever her instrument gets out of tune
# I can sit down and tune it myself. #
Hankies at the ready, gentlemen...
'And songs that were the soundtracks for our great-grandparents' lives.
Surely Kibworth's answer to Marie Lloyd, none other than Miss Claire Gibbins!
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
# Now if I were a duchess and had a lot of money
# I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me
# But I haven't got a penny
# So we'll live on love and kisses
# And be just as happy... #
'When they celebrated Queen Victoria's 60th jubilee in 1897,
'the people of Kibworth, like those of Britain as a whole -
'at least most of them -
'had shared in the material benefits of industry and Empire.
'And by good luck and good judgment, England had avoided revolution
'but other trials lay ahead.'
# ..Merry as a robin that sings on a tree. #
The village celebrated the 1897 jubilee that June in the streets,
in the church and here in the village hall.
Tremendous things had been achieved over the 60 years
of Victoria's reign, and a justifiable pride in that
comes leaping out of the pages of the local newspapers,
but with it a shadow on the horizon,
an unlocalised anxiety.
The century was coming to an end, the reign clearly coming to an end soon,
and a sense that progress perhaps was no longer assured.
In 1905 a march for the unemployed from Leicester to London
'came through Kibworth.
'Working people had found their own voice now.
'And they had their own heroes.
'And none more so than the proletariat of the proletariat - women,
'half the workforce in the industrial age, as they'd been in the 14th century.
'In 1905, still less than half of men had the vote, and still no women.
'The response was the women's suffrage movement - the Suffragettes.
'The Women's Library in London, the greatest collection
'of women's history in the world, holds many of their records.
'The suffragettes united middle-class and working women
'all over the country.
'They even drew women from our village, like Nellie Taylor,
'who lived in Smeeton Westerby.'
Nellie was from a very respectable background.
Her father had been mayor of Leicester twice
but somehow she was drawn into the women's movement in Leicester.
Probably swept in because there were so many meetings in Leicester.
It's estimated that about 70% women in Leicester were working. So...
In what jobs? Boot and shoe, mostly.
Boot and shoe. Yes.
So I think they came to Leicester a lot because they saw it as fertile ground.
On March 4th, she went out with two others from Nottingham
and took a circuitous route to Sloane Square,
trying to throw off the police following her,
and eventually she took out a hammer, with the other women,
and smashed a post office window,
which was about 9ft by 6ft - it must have been quite impressive -
and was arrested for that.
This letter is written on March 7th just after she'd been put on remand.
And she's talking to, "My dearest Tom and my precious children.
"I felt rather bad the first day, I think it was caused by the effort
"to bring oneself up to the point of breaking a window at all."
She goes on to say, "...The clanging of the iron doors and the sound of keys
"that lock you up in cells which are dark, and this one
"has no window that opens at all." Women of a certain upbringing,
as these women were mainly, I think it was a great shock to the system.
The only comfort came from the fact they were with each other.
A lot of the letters from the Suffragettes in jail refer to the camaraderie
and the fact that having Mrs Pankhurst there a lot of the time
really cheered their spirits.
The charge sheet actually said she assaulted a policeman,
she slapped him in the face. Nellie categorically denied this.
She said it was beneath her dignity to slap anyone in the face.
Looking at the effect of the First World War,
did the Suffragettes make a difference?
I think it suited Lloyd George to pretend that,
"Oh, women have been working hard in the First World War."
And it sort of soothed his ego to take that,
but of course I think it wouldn't have happened
without women making sacrifices like that, I don't think.
'The struggle of British men and women for the vote was put on hold
'by the First World War.
'In the East Midlands the recruiting drive drew patriotic and optimistic crowds.
'The first Kibworth volunteers
'had grown up together, played cricket together.
'The Iliffes, Bromleys, Holyoaks and Colemans
'had all been in the village since Tudor times.
'The war fought by communities on whose solidarity the Government could depend.'
He was called Harold Bromley.
And he was wounded at Ypres.
"We went out about the end of March 1918
"and our position was on the banks of the La Bassee canal.
"I was one of four who had to fetch rations up from the limbers
"that first night, and what a night.
"At about midnight the Germans put up a heavy barrage.
"It pounded our trenches. And behind a smokescreen,
"and with gas, over came the Huns in their thousands. And what sights I saw,
"I shall never forget. Dead and wounded everywhere."
'The story of the boys from Kibworth, of course,
'can be repeated in any place in Britain.
'The first to die was Bertie Pell.
"For the first time in the history of Kibworth, a military funeral
"has taken place in the village.
"On Thursday afternoon upwards of 2,000 people assembled
"for the interment of Private Bertie Pell, aged 20."
'Bertie was a typical Kibworth boy. At grammar school, a footballer,
'chorister at St Wilfred's.
'Wounded once, he'd gone back to the front
'and was killed three months later.'
People that lived in the same village or the same street
quite often joined up together.
It's bad enough seeing anybody killed or injured.
If it's the people that come from your town, your area, your friends,
that would have really taken a terrible toll.
..My great-great-great-granddad Walter Harvey,
who fought on the Somme,
and all I know is he was sent over the top and was killed instantly.
My great-great-great-uncle, Ralph Butteriss,
he fought in France and he died of common war death,
which I suppose was shot or blown up.
And he's in Philosophe British cemetery in France.
CHILD: They gave their lives for our freedom, so, like, we could live free.
'Every year, Kibworth High School does a coach trip
'to the Somme battlefields from the First World War.'
This is a photograph taken by Godfrey Malins
and it's where you're sitting now.
This is this very place where we are now.
OK. You can see that?
I'm sure there was a smattering of 15-year-olds amongst them.
Only a year older than some of you people.
And they thought exactly the same as you do.
How do you think you would be feeling at this time of the morning,
maybe four or five in the morning, waiting to go over the top at 7.30?
How d'you think you would be feeling as individuals?
Scared.
Anyone who says he's not scared is a liar.
'For a young machine-knitter,
'it was a long way from Johnson and Barnes's hosiery factory.
In you come. Over you come.
Well done, James. That's good.
Here's a man from Kibworth, ready to fight in the Leicestershire Regiment.
First World War bayonet, the real thing.
This bit here is known as the blood gutter.
That's its official name.
And the whole idea is that when you stick it in him, it allows the blood
to pump out either side and the flesh doesn't seal it off.
When you're doing bayonet fighting, everything is aggression.
It is no good going into the fight thinking, "God, I'm a married man
"with two children, I wish I was somewhere else."
You've hit him with the power of your body behind you. In...
CHILD: Ooh!
Exactly. You bring him down. And he will go down.
Out by stamping on his chest.
Out like that. You knock his bayonet to one side
and then smash his teeth out with the butt. You get the idea of that.
The only thing that they don't teach you, because the British Army is fairly formal,
is your own battle cry. For example, "Argh!"
Could you have put up with what your grandparents had to put up with?
Probably not. You just had to do it in them times.
You just had to do it, yes.
Could you have managed it?
No. I'd have probably run away! LAUGHTER
'40 village boys were killed between 1914 and 1918.
'The tale of just one village during the war to end all wars.'
Seen any names you recognise?
I've found my name...
Yeah? ..Waldron.
Where? Just up there.
It's Waldron EJ.
Waldron EJ?
Yeah. Just above Walker, Wallington...
Oh, yes. Did you know you'd got a family member here?
Yeah. I was looking for him now.
So that's him. Yeah, it must be.
BOY: The amount you just see here, on one panel, on one wall.
Sad.
It is sad, isn't it?
Very sad.
I think without war, we wouldn't be where we are today.
I don't think it's right but...then, without it, we might not be here.
'In Kibworth they still commemorate the dead
'every November on Armistice Day,
'led by the brass band, some of whose members died back then.
'The First World War was a great and terrible communal experience,
'shared by everyone.
'And perhaps that's why, even though all the veterans are now dead,
'we still can't let it go.
'Lest we forget...'
George Garrett...
Ernest Dunkley...
Bertie Pell...
J Harry Holyoak...
Robert Day...
Charles Coleman...
Ralph Butteriss...
Percy Bromley...
'In the brief period between the two world wars,
'the hosiery factory in Kibworth prospered.
'In 1928 the vote finally came for all - for women, too.
'The village saw the coming of radio,
'telephones, a piped water supply and even the first package holidays abroad,
'courtesy of a local man, Thomas Cook.
'Life seemed to have returned to normal.
'But Hitler's war was on the horizon, and in the village history day
'we came up with two of the most gripping documents
'in the whole of the village story.'
This is wonderful! Look at this!
"Air-raid precautions."
WOMAN: Is that the one with the telephone numbers on?
It's March 1939. Yeah.
So this is before...
This is just before the war.
"Air-raid precautions.
"Kibworth Beauchamp, Kibworth Harcourt, Smeeton Westerby.
"Telephone number 38"!
Who's got number 1? Would that be the doctor? Isn't that fantastic?
Oh, yes, more telephone numbers, all of them.
Mrs Norman is 31.
Evans's house in Smeeton is number 2.
So these are the wardens' posts, aren't they?
And there's a first-aid point in the village hall in Kibworth.
Dressings at the pharmacy, first aid parties. Ambulance drivers...
Auxiliary fire...
RADIO: This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin...
'And now the story of the village finally enters the realm of living memory.'
I think everybody listened that morning.
RADIO: ..unless they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland,
a state of war would exist between us.
We knew that there had been negotiations with Germany
and Herr Hitler, and that things had gone a bit wrong
and the Government gave them an ultimatum.
RADIO: ..I have to tell you now
that no such undertaking has been received
and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.
We were playing upstairs
and I remember Mother coming upstairs
and saying, "There's a war on.
"So things are going to be difficult from now on."
That was it, she was very straightforward.
It was quite a shock, even though we expected it.
I don't think we really thought it would happen.
My mother said to Dad, "Thank God we had the girl first."
She thought, if it didn't go on for long,
the boys wouldn't be old enough to go fighting.
One went in the RAF, air crew, and the other one went in the Navy.
They did several years.
Children had been evacuated to the villages.
It was over a year, nearly two years,
before they started bombing seriously.
So, half these children had gone back again.
Like the little boy said, "There's far too much sky in the country!"
They didn't like the sky.
PLANES DRONE LOUDLY
Where I lived on the Leicester boundary, the noise was horrendous.
So you couldn't get any sleep, the bombs were falling, then you'd hear
another wave of bombers coming. And we knew they were German bombers
by the sounds of the engines.
'Kibworth was on the line of the massed German air attacks on the Midlands,
'the Black Country,
'and, on the 14th November 1940, on Coventry.'
A friend of my father's came to see that we were all right
and I remember being carried up into the garden in my nightie by him to have a look
at the sky towards Coventry,
which was absolutely red.
We had a few bombs in Kibworth.
This German bomber,
he flew across there and dropped some bombs, where your school is now.
And we also had a German plane
came over one Sunday afternoon, machine-gunning us.
He was flying so low,
you could see the swastika on his plane.
He flew around the village with a machine gun.
That was a terrible thing to do.
Quite nasty, some of those Germans were!
'Here in Kibworth, as across Britain,
'the countryside was mobilised, and especially the Land Girls.'
These groups grew up, I think they did in every village and town.
Little groups of people who were ready to work if need be.
I think that's one way how we got through it all.
'Rose Holyoak drove tractors.
'Betty Ward milked the cows.
They held out and they did it
until the first of the prisoners started to arrive on the scene.
Two of them stayed at the farmhouse along the road. Mrs Bromley
wanted them to have a bath and she didn't know how to tell them
they'd got to get the tin bath off the wall
and get the water out of the copper to put in.
They couldn't understand why there was no bath in the house.
Both of them stayed here and they married local girls.
Hello, Marjorie and Sheila,
also Mother and Dad.
This is the moment I've been waiting for
to let you know I'm in the best of health, as you can see.
'Meanwhile, local men send their greetings back home from the Far East.'
Give my love to all at home, and cheerio.
OK, Frank.
Hello, Mother, Dad and Betty...
'Back home, the village made its own Forces newspaper,
'sent to 400 serving villagers.'
"The Kibworth News and Forces Journal."
Yes. 1944.
"We send affectionate New Year greetings to our lads and lasses
"on sea, land and the air." It's terribly touching.
Yes, it is. It gives all the news of what's happened in the villages.
It really gives you a sense of what one small village could...
you know, how it could be involved.
Hello, Dad and family, I'm glad to say
I'm feeling fit and well and hope you're all the same.
Tell Tony I've got a few more souvenirs for him
and I hope to be seeing you soon.
This is some Kibworthian sitting in the middle of Baghdad.
Yes.
"I want to feel the rain again and mow a tennis lawn.
"I want to see a pantomime, a parish magazine.
"I want to scurry home again as quickly as I can,
"To settle back in Kibworth and be an ordinary man."
Yes!
It's just mesmerisingly fantastic, isn't it?
You've got the Forces' pin-up girls.
Yes, yes. So fantastic.
"Chosen by the Young Farmers of the district at a dance
"in aid of the Red Cross Agricultural Fund."
# We are the Leicester boys
# We know our manners
# We spend our tanners
# We are respected... #
'And when victory came, the village held a party.
'Like everybody else, they wanted things to change
'in post-war Britain.
'In 1948 Kibworth got its own homes for heroes -
'the latest council houses.'
But I can't begin this conversation without showing you this picture
of a man of action here.
And this wonderful picture which looks as if it's a still
from one of those romantic wartime movies.
We'd been married the day before. You'd been married the day before?
Yes.
I was in a forward unit, doing reconnaissance
and we outstripped the fighting men.
There was a few Army there, but not many.
We decided not to go any further, it was getting a bit dicey.
So I went to this cafe which her parents kept, and that's how we met.
We got married in Belgium.
We were there for another few days
and then you brought me to England...
That's it, yes. In an Air Force plane,
with a bucket for a seat!
So how did you feel, Maria, when you walked in for the first time
to your new house?
Oh, it was a bit rough.
They'd gone up fairly quickly and they hadn't been all that careful
with the painting. We had to do a lot of work.
But we were getting houses, you see, and a lot of other people weren't.
So we were quite satisfied. Oh, yeah, we were happy.
Living room, pantry,
hall, bathroom, three bedrooms.
So that was quite nice, yes.
'In the post-war baby boom, Eric and Maria had two daughters.'
She was a baby and we used to put little mittens on.
It used to be cold and nearly frozen in the morning.
The ice, actually forming on the inside of the bedroom windows. Yes.
'Those far-off days of the 1950s are the bridge to our world.
'After the war, Britain offered homes not only to our own heroes
'but to the heroes of all the other places in the Empire who had worked
'and fought for our freedoms.
'Today, nearby Leicester is the most multicultural city in Britain
'and perhaps in the world.
'And as for Kibworth itself, it's still caught up in change.
'It has more than 5,000 people now and it's still growing.
'With more than 600 new houses on the way, it will soon be a small town.
'There will be new problems, no doubt, but new people to help solve them
'as there have been through the whole of its story.'
We're originally from the Punjab area of India.
I was born in Leicestershire. I've lived here all my life.
My father came to Leicestershire in 1938
and my grandfather first came to Leicester in 1919.
He was a door-to-door salesman, but he wanted to travel the world so he did.
And he ended up in Leicestershire! And he ended up in Leicestershire. Absolutely terrific.
'So there's our story,
'the tale of one place in 21st-century England
'and the previous generations who played their part in making us who we are.
'Having spent the last year here, it seems to me that Kibworth
'is an ordinary place, realistic and down to earth, but like thousands
'of others in Britain, it's a living testimony to the way our communities
'have crystallised over time...
'..a pointer to the way deep-rooted ideas and habits
'are transmitted over long periods...
'..persisting, like a current just below the surface of history,
'unseen,
'but still moving things along.
'And looking at history through the eyes of one community over time,
'it becomes obvious that identity doesn't come from the top down, at all.
'It's not fixed, safe or secure.
'For it is reshaped by history and culture,
'always in the making and never made.
'But it is the creation of the people themselves.'
Thank you so much for coming.
I'm just so amazed how many people you know now, here.
'In autumn 2010, we invited the villagers to the Coach and Horses
'to bury a time capsule.
..Noise-sensitive or something like that!
Very futuristic. Very futuristic.
I've got a mug from Kibworth Church.
I'm going to bury it in the time capsule.
Now, that parish church has been there for hundreds of years
and I suppose when they open this time capsule in hundreds of years...
It will probably still be there!
You've said it!
This is the Smeeton Westerby village photograph.
2010.
And it's signed by us all.
Gosh, only archivists could have dreamt up something so wonderful!
If people learn anything from it, from our point of view,
it's that they can do it in their local record office, exactly the same thing.
Why did you choose The Simpsons?
I don't think it'll be on when they open it.
What, in 500 or 1,000 years? Yeah.
BRASS BAND PLAYS
'And so, with The Simpsons and the mugs and photos and school timetables,
'they buried the time capsule in the pit, where on the first weekend
'we'd found part of an Anglo-Saxon bone comb...
'..for the people of the future to find,
'just as we had found the people of the past.'
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
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