The 1900 House

Last updated

The 1900 House
1900 house vhs.jpg
PAL VHS cover (UK)
Genre Historical reenactment reality television
Country of origin
  • United States
  • United Kingdom
No. of seasons1
No. of episodes
  • 10 (UK)
  • 5 (U.S.)
Production
Running time
  • 50 min. (ep. 1, UK)
  • 24 min. (eps. 2–9, UK)
  • 77 min. (ep. 10, UK)
  • 60 min. (U.S.)
Original release
Network
Release28 December 1999 (1999-12-28) 
3 July 2000 (2000-07-03)

The 1900 House is a historical reenactment reality television series made by Wall to Wall/Channel 4 in 1999. The programme features a modern family attempting to live in the way of the late Victorians for three months in a modified house. It was first broadcast on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and PBS in America (with American commentary).

Contents

The series was accompanied by the book 1900 House: Featuring Extracts from the Personal Diaries of Joyce and Paul Bowler and Their Family by Mark McCrum and Matthew Sturgis. [1] It won a Peabody Award in 2000 for being "an often humorous, always perceptive, series about the realities of life in 1900 that reveals themes of perseverance, human adaptation and family dynamics." [2]

The house

The 1900 House in question is 50 Elliscombe Road, Charlton, South-East London ( 51°28′57″N0°01′57″E / 51.482475°N 0.032394°E / 51.482475; 0.032394 ). An 1890s-built two-storey terraced house with a drawing room, a dining room, a kitchen, a scullery, a bathroom, three bedrooms (there were actually four, but one was used as a safety room with a telephone) and an outside loo. To make it the 1900 house, all modern elements were removed, including electricity, insulation, indoor toilet, and central heating. Period fixtures such as a 'copper' (a large pot used for heating washing clothes over a fire), cast-iron oven and fireplaces were installed. Gas lighting was reinstalled using original remaining pipes.

The Bowler family

Other people

Daru Rooke was the consultant historian to the series who helped the family adjust to the 1900 lifestyle. He later visited the house for a dinner party with the family. He also equipped the family with a useful reference manual to aid their stay at the house, based on sources of the period such as Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management and Cassell's Household Guide.

Because looking after the house became difficult, the Bowlers decided to hire a maid-of-all-work. Elizabeth Lillington was chosen, however after a few weeks the family sacked her as Joyce decided that she could not reconcile her views on women's emancipation with employing a woman as a domestic. However, being 'liberated' was not the view Elizabeth herself took of her dismissal. It was pointed out that a woman in Elizabeth's position in 1900 would have faced desperate poverty had she been denied housekeeping work.

Sequels

The success of 1900 House has since led to other related productions and co-productions: [3]

United Kingdom

Australia

New Zealand

Germany

United States

Switzerland

Home video releases

The 1900 House was released, alongside The 1940s House by Acorn Media UK. It was released on VHS on 27 June 2000 and on DVD on 5 August 2003.

U.S. television broadcast
#Episode ListRelease Date
1A Year to Remember28 December 1999
2The Time Machine12 June 2000
3A Rude Awakening19 June 2000
4A Woman's Place26 June 2000
5The End of an Era3 July 2000

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References

  1. Macmillan, London, 1999. ISBN   978-0-7522-1711-6
  2. "1900 House (PBS)". Peabody Awards . Archived from the original on 11 January 2020. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  3. Taddeo, Julie Anne; Dvorak, Ken (4 June 2007). "The PBS Historical House Series: Where Historical Reality Succumbs to Reel Reality". Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. 37 (1): 18–28. doi:10.1353/flm.2007.0035. ISSN   1548-9922. S2CID   194087176.
  4. "The 1900 Island filming location: the history of Llanddwyn, and the cast of families on the BBC documentary series". i . 13 June 2019. Retrieved 12 January 2019.