The final installment of the Trumptonshire trilogy (Camberwick
Green, Trumpton, Chigley) is on the surface the usual
mix of colourful characters and jolly ditties, but it's
hard to ignore other ideas at work. Camberwick Green
had placed old rural ways and modern values side by side,
but Chigley went a step further, reacting to Prime Minster
Harold Wilson's 1963 call for a new Britain "forged
in the white heat of scientific revolution".
The countryside now became a Greenfield site housing
the clean, post-war light industries, specifically Cresswell's
Chigley Biscuits factory. Cresswell's gleaming white
production line churned out box upon box of biscuits
until the closing whistle blew and the workers trooped
out for the six o'clock dance.
Farthing's pottery represented a rural craft adapting
to modern markets and making good use of the Trumptonshire
infrastructure of the canal and crane at Treddle's Wharf.
'Old Chigley' was represented by Lord Belborough, an
upper-class old retainer adjusting to the class upheavals
of the decade. Breeding was not enough these days and
Belborough had been forced to open Winkstead Hall to
the fee-paying public, also restoring his private railway
line and steam engine Bessie.
Of the new characters introduced, Winnie Farthing, daughter
of the pottery owner, was an overdue child character
taking a central part in the storylines. Elsewhere, characters
from both of the preceding series, from Windy Miller
to the boys from Pippin Fort, helped to cement the notion
of an interconnected Trumptonshire. |
