DURING the week, Louisa Gidney pores over old animal bones, shedding light on what our ancestors ate and how they lived. At weekends she takes a more direct route to bringing history to life.

Along with partner, Paul Stokes, the Durham University researcher dons period garb to become a peasant, recreating the life of ordinary people with as much authentic detail as possible.

Covering any period from early Roman to Tudor times, as well as Victorian, the pair set up as Rent-a-Peasant five years ago, taking their living history camp to festivals across the North-East.

"A lot of groups have got lords and ladies, but nobody was looking at the ordinary people, and there were an awful lot more ordinary people than lords and ladies," says Ms Gidney.

"In a normal year, it is every weekend, although we haven't been out as much this year because of foot-and-mouth."

Their outfits are modelled on clothes found in burial sites and are made using traditional methods, with Louisa's tunic dyed blue using woad.

"When you wear them you suddenly realise why certain design features were there," she says.

"We are very strict on authenticity, although nobody can know everything."

Mr Stokes and Ms Gidney, who have a smallholding at Tow Law in County Durham, will be setting up camp at the Chopwell Forest Festival, demonstrating medieval cookery, toys and spinning.

Alongside them will be Chris Helliwell, a former vicar who has now turned his hand to making furniture.

Chris spent 18 months as vicar of Barton, near Darlington, before the pressures of the job persuaded him to quit eight years ago and take up a new profession.

"As a kid, I chopped lots of wood so I kind of got a feel for wood, and I had a misspent youth making Airfix models, so if you combine the two you get furniture making," he says.

Chris, who runs his own business from his home in Forcett, between Darlington and Barnard Castle, will use a hand-made pole lathe to demonstrate wood turning, or bodging, as well as testing his speed against other bodgers at turning a log into a table leg.

But his woodturning skills mean he has kept a link with his life as a vicar, making things for his former parish