A CHESTER family is starring in a prime time BBC TV show which sees them living through three different eras of history.
Turn Back Time, which began on BBC One on Tuesday night, follows three different families on a journey back through the 20th century, in an experience based on their own family history.
Ian and Naomi Golding, of Liverpool Road, are seen in three episodes of the six-part documentary with their three young children, Ciara, nine, Caitie, seven and Jack, four, as they join two other families to go back in time, living life exactly as it was in the 1900s, 1930s and 1940s.
For four weeks, the families live in different houses each decked out to reflect working-class, middle-class and upper-class life in each era.
They have to eat, drink, work and play just as they would have done last century, enduring the strict social divisions of the Edwardian era, to the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression of the inter-war years.
And in an unusual twist to the show, which is produced by the makers of genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are?, each family’s class experience is based on that of their ancestors at the time.
For the Golding family, who represent the middle-classes due to Ian’s great-great-grandfather who left Russia for Britain to work as a tailor, the experience was ‘a real eye-opener’.
“The show looked for people who didn’t know much about their family history, and I was given such an insight about how they lived in these eras,” said Ian, 39, who runs his own customer relations consultancy in Chester.
“We all decamped to Morecambe and it was honestly like an express train running through our lives; the experience we got you just couldn’t pay for.
“We learned so much and I now have a huge appreciation of everything my ancestors did for me, and the sacrifices they made.
“And the children have been affected by it too – they had to put up with me being a strict Edwardian father which was a shock to the system, as children were seen and not heard back then, but they have learned a lot about how lucky we are today.”
Ian added: “Our favourite era was without doubt the 1930s, but only because I was working as an estate agent, and working families had it much better than those who didn’t.
“It was an eye-opener to live through air raids, war and evacuation in the 1940s – the whole thing was just the most amazing experience of our lives.”
Turn Back Time continues on BBC One each Tuesday at 9pm until the end of July.
