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Food was a serious preoccupation in those days. Ben, now working as a gardener, provided the family with most of the vegetables that they needed. They didn’t have very much meat. Rhoda reckoned to start the winter with 100 pounds weight of jam that she had made.

Here we meet families who found work in chair making, lace making and later as bead workers. We find out about the ups and downs of their home and working lives, where they shopped, gathered fruit, their family meals and much more.

What's it like to volunteer with one of our projects? Jane Barker shares her experience of volunteering with Woodlanders' Lives.

The old varieties of straw grown in the Chilterns were ideal for plaiting with their hollow stem and thin wall. When damped the straws bent easily without breaking.

Our village lies on a small plateau in the beautiful beech wooded Chilterns; whichever way one approaches the village a hill has to be climbed, and until the times of motorised transport very few houses were built, thus making a very small close knit community...The whole of this area was once covered by thick forests, which were run over with thieves and vagabonds...

Andy Dean, one of our Woodlanders volunteers, has found all kinds of treasures in his private archives, including this account of bodgers’ lives and work written by his grandmother, Alice Dean who became the family historian. Alice starts by describing watching her father-in-law, Richard Dean, working his pole lathe.

In the corner of an outhouse would be a copper. The washing was passed through a mangle, and on wet days, wet washing would hang everywhere around the cottage. The copper was also used to boil puddings, such as the local favourite, bacon badger.