Man lives as peasant for charity

Mr Baird will spend a week living in the cottage

A North Yorkshire first-aider is to live as a 14th Century peasant farmer for one week in a bid to raise £10,000.

Andrew Baird, 55, of Pickering, will live in a thatched crofter's cottage at Ryedale Folk Museum in Hutton-le-Hole.

Proceeds from the sponsored event will go towards buying a marked vehicle for the Pickering First Responders, a group of volunteer emergency medics.

Mr Baird said it could be difficult to get to an emergency because of traffic so a marked vehicle was necessary.

Rotten tomatoes

"We have been called out more than 25 times since the scheme was launched on 13 May, mostly to people with chest pains," he said.

"If we had a marked car we feel people would be more inclined to give way to us and therefore improve our response time to the patient."

Mr Baird takes up residence at the museum on Monday and will live as authentically as possible, wearing traditional clothing and eating meat stews and vegetables.

He will spend his time demonstrating a poll lathe and tend the museum's medieval garden, which has plants for household, culinary and medicinal use.

And on 19 and 22 August Mr Baird will sit in the stocks and let visitors pelt him with rotten tomatoes.