HOME improvement buffs will be able to find out more about traditional Wiltshire interiors at a one-day course.

The Wiltshire Buildings Record is running the course on local furniture and interior styles as its showpiece event for this year.

The course will take a look at how ordinary people lived in the past across the county and what their homes looked like.

The event will open with a talk by building archaeologist Linda Hall on fixtures and fittings in Wiltshire and the West Country.

Students on the course will learn about spice cupboards, panelling and even the correct hinges to use on period doors.

James Ayres, author of Domestic Interiors The British Tradition, 1500- 1850, will look at traditional house painting.

In pre-industrial Britain, printed wallpaper was unavailable to most households, so colour and pattern effects were created through painted floors, ceilings and furniture and stencilled walls.

After lunch Rhys Brookes, a conservation architect based in Frome, Somerset, will take a session.

He will look at why interiors took particular forms, what influenced builders and decorators and how they achieved the effects they wanted.

The event will conclude with a talk by Dr Bernard Cotton, an expert on traditional furniture.

He will be looking at West Country cottage and farmhouse furniture.

Dr Cotton has recently been researching traditional Wiltshire furniture, an area about which little is known.