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Tucktonia
Tucktonia was a late 1970s theme park located on Stour Road, Christchurch, Dorset, England. It was officially opened on 23 May 1976 by Arthur Askey. It originally occupied of the Tuckton Park Leisure Complex. The park was closed down in 1986. The site has since been redeveloped for residential use. General information The park was best known for its large model village layout, which included a representation of London. The narrow gauge ride-on steam train and some additional fixtures and fittings, were moved to the Moors Valley Railway in the Moors Valley Country Park near Ringwood, Hampshire. It is rumoured that just prior to the closure of the park, the owners wanted to build a roller coaster at the rear of the site, but were refused permission by the local council. Following the refusal, the park closed shortly afterwards. Bekonscot Model Village in Buckinghamshire provided much inspiration for the designers, one of whom had his office near Bekonscot and was a frequent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moors Valley Railway
The Moors Valley Railway is a narrow gauge passenger railway, in the Moors Valley Country Park at Ashley Heath, Dorset, England near Ringwood in Hampshire. There are 20 steam engines and 2 diesel engines. The railway is fully signalled, with two signal boxes, one in a Great Western Railway style and one in a British Rail Southern Region style. The latter box also contains a mini lever frame and push button panel, for the control of the Lakeside area. The railway was constructed at its present location in 1985/86 and opened to the public in July 1986, after the closure in 1985 of its predecessor at Tucktonia in nearby Christchurch, which had run since 1979. Moors Valley uses a narrow gauge prototype to produce tank engines in which one may sit, allowing running during the harshest of conditions, so much so that it runs throughout the year. A further benefit of the style of locomotives built to this prototype is that, unlike models, and standard gauge 7 inch locomotives, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Stiller
Harry Stiller (28 May 1938 – 13 May 2018) was a British racing driver and British Formula Three Champion. His racing career covered the years between 1958 and 1969 and he drove a variety of different classes of cars. After stopping driving himself he became an entrant in 1970 and he had cars in Formula Three, Formula Atlantic, F5000 and in 1975, Formula One. After racing he became creator, developer and operator of Tucktonia, a south-coast leisure park in the 1970s and 1980s. He was also a director of the Rob Walker Motor Group in the UK during the 1970s and the owner of Harry Stiller Motor Cars on Wilshire Boulevard, in Beverly Hills, California, also in the 1970s, with agencies for Fiat, Lancia and Lotus and for leasing Rolls-Royce and Bentley motor cars in Los Angeles. During the early 1980s, he was a pioneer of the pound shop concept in the North East of England and opened units in Scarborough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Stockton and moved into the South as well with another f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queen Kong
''Queen Kong'' is a 1976 British-German adventure comedy film parodying ''King Kong''. The film was never released theatrically in the United Kingdom, due to legal action by Dino De Laurentiis, producer of the 1976 ''King Kong'' remake and RKO, the copyright holder of King Kong at the time. It got a limited release in Italy and Germany. The film has since resurfaced on DVD. The film has a cult following in Japan. In 1998, a troupe of Japanese comedians produced their own Japanese dialogue for the film, in a similar spirit to Woody Allen's ''What's Up, Tiger Lily?''; this version with the new Japanese dialogue was released on DVD in 2001. The film was novelized by James Moffat and published by Everest Books in 1977. It was shot at Shepperton Studios and on location around London and Newhaven. In addition, miniature sets were created utilising the scale model of London at the now long-defunct Bournemouth theme park Tucktonia. Plot This film switches the traditional roles of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lifeforce (film)
''Lifeforce'' is a 1985 science fiction horror film directed by Tobe Hooper, adapted by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby, and starring Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, and Patrick Stewart. Based on Colin Wilson's 1976 novel ''The Space Vampires'', the film portrays the events that unfold after a trio of humanoids in a state of suspended animation are brought to Earth after being discovered in the hold of an alien space ship by the crew of a European Space Shuttle. The film received negative reviews on release and was a box office failure, but has since become a cult film. Plot The crew of the joint British and American Space Shuttle ''Churchill'', under the command of Colonel Tom Carlsen, finds a spaceship hidden in the coma of Halley's Comet. Inside, the crew discovers hundreds of desiccated bat-like creatures and three naked humanoid bodies (two male and one female) in suspended animation within glass containers. The crew recovers a bat-alien and the three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miniature Park
A miniature park is a display of miniature buildings and models, usually as a recreational and tourist attraction open to the public. A miniature park may contain a model of a single city or town, often called a miniature city or model village, or it can contain a number of different sets of models. History There is evidence to suggest the existence of private model villages and miniature parks since the 19th century, but it was only in the 1930s to 1950s that the genre became tourist attractions. Early examples include Bekonscot in the UK and Madurodam in The Hague. Variations on a theme Most model villages and parks are built to a consistent scale; varying from 1:76 as used by the intricately detailed Pendon in England up to the 1:9 scale of Wimborne Model Town. There has been a move away from the model village concept since the mid- to late 20th century towards a miniature park concept. Model villages are typically larger-scale, sit in a cohesive miniature landscape an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bekonscot
Bekonscot in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, is the oldest original model village in the world. It portrays aspects of England mostly dating from the 1930s. Bekonscot was first created in the 1920s by a Beaconsfield resident, Roland Callingham (1881–1961). Callingham, an accountant, developed the master plan for his miniature empire as an addition to his large back garden, drawing in help from his staff: the gardener, cook, maid and chauffeur. Together they developed the model landscape portraying rural England at the time. The swimming pool became the first "sea" and the undulating rockeries were built up as hills. Bassett-Lowke, the large-scale model railway manufacturers, were commissioned to build an extensive Gauge 1 railway network for the project. Callingham named the village ''Bekonscot'' after Beaconsfield and Ascot, where he had lived previously. Bekonscot was not conceived as a commercial visitor attraction but as a plaything to entertain Callingham and his guest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
''Multi-Coloured Swap Shop'', more commonly known simply as ''Swap Shop'', is a British children's television series that aired on BBC1 from 2 October 1976 to 27 March 1982. It was ground-breaking in many ways: by broadcasting on Saturday mornings, being live, being three hours in length, and using the phone-in format extensively for the first time on TV. The show rivalled the growing success of rival broadcaster ITV's ''Tiswas'', though the latter was initially only broadcast in the ATV region in the Midlands and, at the time of ''Multi-Coloured Swap Shop''s inception, had yet to be taken up by other ITV franchises around the country. Content The show was hosted by Noel Edmonds with Keith Chegwin, John Craven and, from 1978, Maggie Philbin. Also featured was Posh Paws, a stuffed toy dinosaur. Edmonds once explained that his name was actually spelt "Pohs Paws", because that is ''Swap Shop'' backwards. Another person named was "Eric" (Ilett), the often-referred-to but never-se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barn
A barn is an agricultural building usually on farms and used for various purposes. In North America, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain.Allen G. Noble, ''Traditional Buildings: A Global Survey of Structural Forms and Cultural Functions'' (New York: Tauris, 2007), 30. As a result, the term barn is often qualified e.g. tobacco barn, dairy barn, cow house, sheep barn, potato barn. In the British Isles, the term barn is restricted mainly to storage structures for unthreshed cereals and fodder, the terms byre or shippon being applied to cow shelters, whereas horses are kept in buildings known as stables. In mainland Europe, however, barns were often part of integrated structures known as byre-dwellings (or housebarns in US literature). In addition, barns may be used for equipment storage, as a covered workplace, and for activities such as threshing. Etymology The word ''barn'' comes f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 1932, although the start of its regular service of television broadcasts is dated to 2 November 1936. The BBC's domestic television channels have no commercial advertising and collectively they accounted for more than 30% of all UK viewing in 2013. The services are funded by a television licence. As a result of the 2016 Licence Fee settlement, the BBC Television division was split, with in-house television production being separated into a new division called BBC Studios and the remaining parts of television (channels and genre commissioning, BBC Sport and BBC iPlayer) being renamed as BBC Content. History of BBC Television The BBC operates several television networks, television stations (although there is generally very little distincti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christchurch, Dorset
Christchurch () is a town and civil parish in Dorset on the south coast of England. The town had a population of 31,372 in 2021. For the borough the population was 48,368. It adjoins Bournemouth to the west, with the New Forest to the east. Part of the Historic counties of England, historic county of Hampshire, Christchurch was a Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough within the administrative county of Dorset from 1974 until 2019, when it became part of the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authority. Founded in the seventh century at the confluence of the rivers River Avon (Hampshire), Avon and River Stour, Dorset, Stour which flow into Christchurch Harbour, the town was originally named Twynham but became known as Christchurch following the construction of the Christchurch Priory, priory in 1094. The town developed into an important trading port, and was Burh, fortified in the 9th century. Further defences were added in the 12th century with the constructio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Kong
King Kong is a fictional giant monster resembling a gorilla, who has appeared in various media since 1933. He has been dubbed The Eighth Wonder of the World, a phrase commonly used within the franchise. His first appearance was in the novelization of the 1933 film ''King Kong (1933 film), King Kong'' from RKO Pictures, with the film premiering a little over two months later. Upon its initial release and subsequent re-releases, the film received universal acclaim. A sequel quickly followed that same year with ''Son of Kong, The Son of Kong'', featuring Little Kong. Toho produced ''King Kong vs. Godzilla'' (1962) featuring a giant Kong battling Toho's Godzilla and ''King Kong Escapes'' (1967), a film loosely based on Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment, Rankin/Bass' ''The King Kong Show'' (1966-1969). In 1976, Dino De Laurentiis produced a King Kong (1976 film), modern remake of the original film directed by John Guillermin. A sequel, ''King Kong Lives'', followed a decade later fea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merrivale Model Village
Merrivale is a placename: ;South Africa * Merrivale, KwaZulu-Natal is a small town in the midlands of KwaZulu-Natal Province * Merrivale, Gauteng was a small gold mining town in Gauteng but now a military facility. * Merrivale, Durban is a suburb of Durban ;United Kingdom * Merrivale, Devon, hamlet with nearby neolithic stone rows (formerly also spelled Merivale) * Merrivale, Herefordshire, a suburb of Ross-on-Wye See also *Merivale (other) Merivale may refer to: * Merivale, Christchurch, suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand * Merivale, Tauranga, suburb of Tauranga, New Zealand * Merivale (company), Australian privately held company * Merivale Road Merivale Road is an arterial road i ... * Merivale (surname) {{place name disambiguation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
