|
The final part of the Trumptonshire trilogy 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 (BBC, 1966) had placed old rural ways and modern values side by side, but Chigley (BBC, 1969) went a step further, reacting, if somewhat belatedly, 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, postwar 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. Alastair McGown
|
