If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home (2011)

April. 13,2011

8.5

| Documentary

Lucy Worsley, chief curator of the historic royal palaces, takes us through 800 years of domestic history by exploring the British home through four rooms, meeting experts and historians on the way.

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Seasons & Episode

Seasons 1 : 2011

4 Episode

Episode 1 - The Living Room

April. 13,2011

Lucy Worsley, chief curator of the historic royal palaces, looks at the room that has had more names and been through more changes than any other in the house. She tries out the communal medieval great hall, holds a candlelit tea party in a Georgian drawing room, explores the development of taste in a grand country house, discovers the wonders that gas and electric lighting brought to the Victorian parlour, and experiences leisure 1950s style. Includes interviews with historian Amanda Vickery and writer Adrian Tinniswood.

Episode 2 - The Bathroom

April. 20,2011

Lucy Worsley, chief curator of the historic royal palaces, focuses on the bathroom - a room that didn't even exist in many British homes until 50 years ago. From the medieval bath houses to London Bridge's communal loos to finding out how piped water got to our homes and finally getting to the bottom of the Crapper myth at Stoke's Toilet Museum, Lucy tracks how our attitude to washing has changed over the centuries and the development of what we think of now as the most essential room in the house.

Episode 3 - The Bedroom

April. 27,2011

Lucy Worsley, chief curator of the historic royal palaces, focuses on the bedroom - a room which people now think of as one of the most private in the house and yet started for most as a noisy, busy communal space. From spending the night in a Tudor farmhouse to recreating a bedtime 'bundling' courtship ritual, and from being publicly dressed as Queen Caroline in Hampton Court to experiencing the glamour of the 1930s boudoir, Lucy discovers that birth, marriage and death have all played a big part in the story of the bedroom.

Episode 4 - The Kitchen

May. 04,2011

Lucy Worsley, chief curator of the historic royal palaces, ends the series by looking at the room we now spend the most money on, but was once thought of as the most dirty, dangerous and undesirable room in the house: the kitchen. From baking bread in a Tudor kitchen to spit-roasting mutton with a dog to doing a week's Victorian re-cycling to trying out 1950s labour-saving gadgets, Lucy tracks the changes that have turned the kitchen from a room of hard work into the appliance-packed room we know today.