THE Hymers family have been time travelling, taking part in an incredible living experiment that took them from the year 2000 to 1940. This family of five moved from Otley in Yorkshire to 17 Braemar Gardens, West Wickham in Kent and lived there as if it was the 1940s and World Wa Two.

The experiment was carried out for the Channel 4 series, The 1940s House, and followed the successful The 1900 House series. A book of the Hymers' experiences has also been produced, detailing the privations, joys and difficulties of living in the middle of last century.

Throughout a period of nine weeks, the family experienced life on the Home Front. They also had to live with the dictatorial demands of a 'War Cabinet' - a group of historians and experts gathered together by Channel 4 to control how the family lived. This was in much the same way as the real War Cabinet ran every aspect of the population's lives during those bleak days of conflict. As a result, the series gives an extraordinary insight into life as it was lived by the majority of the population during World War Two.

The Hymers consist of Michael, 52, his wife Lyn, 50, their daughter Kirstie, who is 29 and her two sons Ben, ten and Thomas, seven. The family were chosen to take part in the project out of a total of 300 and the family admit their success may lie in Michael's enthusiasm for the 1940s.

He says: ''I've had a keen interest in the period for a long time - I've collected memorabilia and decorated the dining room in the style of the period.''

In fact, Lyn believed that Michael had a rose-tinted view of life in the 1940s and put her family's name forward to give him an idea of what life under the shadow of Hitler was really like. Certainly, life in the 1940s house was no bed of roses.

First, there were the clothes. Lyn found her corset a trial, but Michael suffered too. ''By the time I had woollen underwear on, long johns, a vest, a fairly thick shirt, a three-piece suit and a heavy overcoat and a trilby, I was not comfortable,'' he says.

Then there was the food - which seemed to become the focus of much of the family's worries - as it would have been for a 1940s family. Certainly, coping with rationing and the complicated points system proved tough.

Michael says: ''It was the lack of variety of food that was the problem. The only thing you could eat in quantity was vegetables. Even then, potatoes got a bit monotonous.

''Lyn and Kirstie were very inventive, there were some fairly nice foods prepared from basic ingredients - things like baked potatoes and I had stuffed cabbage once. But the food was bland - the quantity and the variety was missing. Lyn has said that she has nothing but admiration for the women of the era.'' Lyn admits that she is no longer ''Queen of the Takeaways'' and she even managed to lose some weight.

There were more privations - for instance, the bath could be no deeper than the prescribed five inches. ''And we did smell awful,'' laughs Lyn. ''We had none of those things which make you smell good today - we rarely had a bath because they were such miserable efforts - and there was no soap or bubble bath.''

Then there was the home-assembled Anderson shelter and simulated air raids. The family's first air raid warning was a shock. Kirstie says: ''The first time I heard the siren go off, I felt a real sense of panic to get the kids out of bed. Once we were in the shelter it was safe - it was our family there. But the first time was total panic - it was very real.''

Lyn adds: ''The shelter was cramped and uncomfortable, but we felt part of a wartime experience. It must have been so terrible for families - we were cold and uncomfortable.''

Both boys seem to have enjoyed the experience enormously. Ben was appointed Fuel Warden and monitored the family's consumption of coal and electricity. And neither boys missed their televisions or computer games, although it took some time to get used to the food.

It added up to an incredible experience of wartime Britain. Michael says: ''It was the closest we could get to the real thing - obviously we were never in any danger, there were no bombs. We were conscious all the time that certain people - people who had gone through hardship, deprivation and losing loved ones - may have been upset.

''In no way did we want to trivialise anybody's experience. We were just trying to find out for ourselves what it felt like to live through that period. And we came as close as we could without being in fear of our lives, as close as we could to reliving it.''

And it's a way of life that taught the family a great deal. Kirstie admits she would find it difficult to leave modern comforts behind again, but Lyn says that the way of life was enviable, despite the hardships.

''I preferred everything about it to what's on offer today,'' she says. ''We have too much materially - our homes are jam-packed, people have one or two cars, TVs, and I think there's a wealth of something or other that's missing. It's different priorities.

''My priority as a 1940s housewife was to get a meal on a table instead of thinking about holidays in Tenerife. In some ways, that was more simplistic and therefore relaxing. Admittedly, it's not if you're waiting for bombs to fall, but it's a different kind of stress.''

And they were helped by the great support they gave each other, the same way that whole communities helped each other throughout the war.

Lyn says: ''Every time we felt like throwing in the towel, in turn one or other of us would say, 'They would have gone on in the War'.

''When one of us was flagging, we picked each other up. That was the strange thing - the harder it got, the more we pulled together.''

l The 1940s House starts on Channel 4 on January 2. The book, The 1940s House by Juliet Gardiner, is published by Channel 4 Books, priced £20.