A WORKER’S home in the Railway Village open over the weekend allowed visitors to step back in time to experience a Victorian Christmas.

Swindon’s Railway Village Museum, a three-bedroom house on Faringdon Road, was built in 1846 along with the rest of the village to house railway workers and their families.

In 1895 it housed a family, including engine driver James Hall, his wife Catherine, their daughter, and a new born baby James that arrived just before Christmas.

Volunteers and curators decorated the house with artefacts to re-create what it would have been like for the family, complete with baby clothes drying over the stove, and basic Christmas decorations hanging on the walls.

Katie Knowles, a trustee for the Mechanics Trust, told the Adver: “Lots of people remember using some of the items in the house, it really brings back memories.

“As far as possible we have got the story recorded, so we can bring it to life, it’s as though you’re able to step back into the past.”

The road was known as Foreman’s Road because the better paid workers were placed in the row of houses, and were reasonably well off.

It cost £100 to build and the rent was around a third of an engine driver’s weekly wages.

“It would have been a very bleak Christmas for this kind of family,” said the museum’s chief volunteer Mike Stubbs.

“It was a meagre existence, and a difficult lifestyle, nothing went to waste, everything was used up for something.”

The volunteer-run museum opens once a month between April and October and special events.

“We would love to be open on weekends,” added Katie,”and offer things for schools, that would be the ambition if we could get more volunteers.”

Anyone interested in volunteering can email the Mechanics Trust at katie@mechanics-trust.org.uk.