Ever wondered what it was like celebrating the festive season during wartime? Then step back into the 1940s at Kent Life Heritage Farm Park on November 26 and 27 and experience the sights, sounds and smells of Christmas on the Home Front.
Find out how to ‘make do and mend’, learning how civilians coped with rationing by preserving and re-styling clothes from the era; and discover how to rustle up some genuine 1940s recipes issued by the Ministry of Food – including a sponge cake made with liquid paraffin instead of fat – at a wartime cookery demonstration.
Other activities include drill displays by the Home Guard, a 1940s school lesson, shops from the era and a rehabilitation centre for injured RAF pilots. You might even spot a German POW or two being put to work mending bicycles…
Take a peek inside the Lenham Cottages, one of which has been converted to recreate life in World War II, complete with sticky tape on the windows to reduce bomb blast damage, a bathtub with a water ration line, and a mangle to do the washing. You can even check out an Anderson Shelter in the garden to see how families protected themselves during bombing raids.
Tickets for Christmas on the Home Front, which runs from 10am to 4pm, cost £6.95 for adults, £5.95 for concessions, £5.50 for children aged three to 15, and £19.95 for a family (two adults and two children). Under-threes and members go free.
Book online at www.kentlife.org.uk to ensure your place. For further information, call 01622 763936 or visit the website. You can also follow Kent Life on Facebook /KentLifeFamilyFun, and on Twitter @Kent_Life.
Kent Life is in Lock Lane, Sandling, near Maidstone, just off junction 6 of the M20 or only an hour by train from London.