The Garden Cottage Diaries

For a full year, Fiona Houston recreated the lifestyle of her Peebleshire ancestor, living in a basic one-roomed cottage on her own resources, as a challenge to compare it with today's diet and lifestyle. Find out in this fascinating, funny and honest account how she donned historic dress and lived on a shoestring.

"At times in the dead of night on my lumpy straw mattress and unable to sleep for the saughing of the wind, I asked myself 'Am I completely bonkers?' But I had committed to a year, and dressing up in the clothes - as crazy as that might seem - was a constant reminder of what I was trying to achieve. My friends reserved comment as they ate the home-made soups from my kitchen garden, until one said, 'You've lost about a stone and your hands are red raw. Aren't you tempted to quit?"