They've survived mutton made more palatable with spoonfuls of plum jam and redcurrant jelly, and they've tucked into rich venison, full fat butter out of the churns, milk straight from the cow and exceptionally salty bread – "to conceal the rat droppings".

They have religiously turned up all hours in all weathers, wrestled with the different coinage for different eras and patiently waited to play they part.

They have quickly placated younger family members wailing "Mum – why we can't we go to the chippy anymore !"

And the team of stalwarts who volunteered to be "core customers" in the BBC's major new series on changes in British High Street shopping habits over the years being filmed for the last two months in Shepton Mallet's Market place said they would not have missed the experience for the world.

They are the people who put their names forward to take part as "core customers." for the series that will be screened in November.

Over recent weeks they have been buying and sampling the fare that graced shops and tables from the 1870s to the 1970s for the new prime time series by the filming company Wall to Wall Productions.

The crew's cameras have been mainly focussed on the volunteer shopkeepers who forsook their 21st century jobs running businesses to travel back in time.

But they and their families have had a much tougher challenge than their customers. They have had to give up all home comforts and 21st century luxuries of their normal day lives, to live how their ancestors would have done in their same roles in various eras.

From going to be by candlelight, with chamberpots under the beds they have been dressing and living in exactly the same way they would have done in various gone by.

They have celebrated Empire Day and VE Day, rushed out in their nightshirts as the air raid sirens sounded in the1940s and joined in the swinging sixties antics with Mods on scooters.

But their customers have stuck to their parts too, buying all their food stuffs and surviving daily on them through the different eras – though a few admit it has been quite a challenge not to rush up the chippy or the Indian to fill hungry tums of younger family members.

And they are all thrilled to have been part of a riveting journey showing how shopping habits have changed over the years.

The production company scoured the country for a suitable location and finally settled on Shepton Mallet Town centre – once a thriving market town but now feeling the effects of the mighty Tesco and Townsend Retail Park at the top of the town.

And it was thanks to the character of Shepton's historic Market Place and the available empty shops that the production team settled on the historic market town as the ideal location. "We saw it and immediately knew it was perfect for us," said series line producer Jane Atkinson.