The hit wartime drama filmed in the Midlands returns to our screens this month. Roz Laws caught up with the cast and crew.

The two things really shouldn’t go together.

The top half of the room is all grand chandeliers, vaulted ceilings with beautifully intricate plasterwork and stained glass windows.

So far, so Grade One listed ancestral home. But cast your eyes downward, past the large portraits in oils, and you find rows of hard beds and nurses in 1940s uniforms.

This is how Arbury Hall has been turned back in time for the third series of Land Girls.

The focus of the acclaimed BBC1 series – screened every day next week in the run-up to Armistice Day – has shifted away from farming and towards the fictional Hoxley Manor, home to Lady Ellen, played by Sophie Ward. The house becomes a makeshift military hospital when the real one is bombed.

It’s a little like Downton Abbey, but this is the Second World War, not the first.

As I walk on to the set at Arbury Hall in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, I notice all the authentic period touches. There’s a copy of The Times from May 1943 on the table and original medical equipment like bed pans and coal tar inhalant.

And occupying the beds are soldiers in pyjamas, some of whom have nasty fake injuries, thanks to realistic make-up.

But four of them are really missing arms and legs.

They are here through Amputees in Action, which supplies people for dramas and casualty simulations to train emergency workers.

One is Stephen Bunce, who has previously appeared in the background of Torchwood and Holby City but is now to appear in all five episodes of Land Girls.

Both his legs were cut off below the knee when he was 12 and contracted meningitis.

“It was a life or death situation,” says Stephen, now 24.

“I was in a coma for nearly four months and in hospital for a year. I had the deadly meningococcal bacteria poisoning my blood. They had to amputate my legs to save the rest of my body.

“Originally I was going to lose my arms too, but they worked miracles to save them.

“I was very reluctant at first to try to walk again with false legs, because it was so painful. But then I thought ‘Sod it, I’m not going to sit in this wheelchair forever’, and within a year of the operation I was walking again.”

Looking at Stephen now, it’s almost impossible to spot that he’s wearing false legs.

“Technology is brilliant,” smiles Stephen, who lives in Reading with his girlfriend Leena and their five-year-old son Zak.

“I can walk very well, I can drive a car and do as much as anyone else. People often don’t believe me when I say I’ve got prosthetic limbs.

“They are only NHS legs but they do the job. I have Lycra camouflage covers and a special pair for swimming which my son calls my crocodile legs.”

Producer Ella Kelly says: “We’ve tried to be as realistic as possible, hence the use of amputees.

“We thought we’d give Land Girls a different slant this year to bring in a bit more danger. It’s gone a bit darker as the war is brought home to their doorstep with the bombing.

“For Lady Ellen, the war has been thrust right into her home, as there are injured soldiers everywhere. She has to get her hands dirty, working in the hospital, and not be so zipped up.

“We wanted to use a Lancaster bomber and there are only four left in the world. We had to go to the plane, in Lincolnshire, for a night shoot to film the opening sequence of the first episode.

“It’s very exciting – it starts with a real bang. We blow the budget in the first four minutes!

“There’s a German attack on the airfield and a massive explosion involving a Jeep and a car.”

Filming also takes place at a farm near Henley-in-Arden, in Bretforton village in Worcestershire and at the Black Country Living Museum.

But Arbury Hall has taken centre stage for this series. Famous as the birthplace of Middlemarch author George Eliot, it’s been the home for 450 years of the Newdegate family.

The 5,000-acre estate was actually used as a prisoner of war camp during the war, housing 40,000 prisoners.

It’s currently occupied by James Edward Fitzroy Newdegate, the 4th Viscount Daventry, along with his wife Georgia and their three children.