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The 1900 House

Wed 22/9/99, Channel 4
Audience: 3.40m (9th) © BARB

The 1900 House

To launch a series based on a interesting idea, Channel 4 showed a special report on how the house featured in the 1900 House was created and how the family was chosen. The idea was to take a Victorian house built around 1900, remove all elements of the 20th century, and film a family coping for three months without access to modern conveniences. A house in a quiet London suburb was a real find for the producers, because under plasterboard and wallpaper lay all the features they needed to make the series a reality. The piping for the original gas lighting was still in place and amazingly it worked. A range was put in for cooking and heating water, the central heating was removed, all the walls and furnishings were replaced in Victorian style (although lead based paint and arsenic-lined wallpaper were not used for obvious reasons). Even the garden wasn't overlooked, with a formal diamond bed created. The family was chosen from hundreds of applicants, mostly because they were already close-knit and all were keen to see what it was going to be like. Will they survive? It'll be interesting to find out...***

TV Book

Buy the book from the series - The 1900 House
by Mark McCrum, Matthew Sturgis

[Airline - Armstrong and Miller Show - Ballykissangel - The Bill]

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