Trumptonshire is a fictional county created by
Gordon Murray
Ian Gordon Murray (born 18 June 1946 in Durban, Union of South Africa), is a South African-born British designer of Formula One racing cars and the McLaren F1 road car. He is the founder and CEO of Gordon Murray Automotive.
Early life
Born t ...
, in which the ''Trumptonshire Trilogy'' of ''
Camberwick Green
''Camberwick Green'' is a British children's television series that ran from January to March 1966 on BBC1, featuring stop motion puppets. ''Camberwick Green'' is the first in the ''Trumptonshire'' trilogy, which also includes ''Trumpton'' and ...
(1966),
Trumpton
''Trumpton'' is a British stop-motion children's television series from the producers of '' Camberwick Green''. First shown on the BBC from January to March 1967, it was the second series in the ''Trumptonshire'' trilogy, which comprised ''Cam ...
'' (1967), and ''
Chigley
''Chigley'' (1969) is the third and final stop-motion children's television series in Gordon Murray's ''Trumptonshire'' trilogy. Production details are identical to '' Camberwick Green''.
As in '' Camberwick Green'' and '' Trumpton'', the acti ...
'' (1969) are located. Trumptonshire is populated by characters portrayed by 8-inch (20 cm) tall
stop-motion puppets. Trumpton is a market town with an impressive town hall and clock tower; Camberwick Green and Chigley are two nearby villages.
Trumptonshire communities
From the dialogue of Camberwick Green it is discovered that Wellchester is the main city of Trumptonshire county. In the Chigley episode "The Balloon", viewers are given sweeping aerial views across the Trumptonshire countryside and skyline; from this it is seen that Trumptonshire possesses a large medieval castle, although it is never named in the programmes.
Murray is not known to have provided any definitive map of Trumptonshire. The only map regularly seen in the programmes is located in the control room of Trumpton fire station, and analysis has suggested that it actually depicts the area around
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...
in Italy. Nonetheless, the following Trumptonshire
settlements are identified in the storylines of the programmes.
*Camberwick Common, bordering Camberwick Green, is not visited in the programmes, but is referenced as a usual place of training for the Pippin Fort soldier boys. There are
clay pit
A clay pit is a quarry or mine for the extraction of clay, which is generally used for manufacturing pottery, bricks or Portland cement. Quarries where clay is mined to make bricks are sometimes called brick pits.
A brickyard or brickworks is ...
s nearby.
*Camberwick Green is a quiet village community with a Post Office and several village shops, as was still common in late 1960s England. The wider parish includes outlying properties such as Colley's Mill, Bell's farm, Tripp's Dairy, and Pippin Fort. The village is central to the first Trumptonshire series, and features in all three series.
*Chigley is another quiet village community, but with a less defined village centre. It is located a short distance from Camberwick Green. It features some heavy industry, including Cresswell's Chigley Biscuit factory, and Treddle's Wharf, as well as cottage industry, represented by the Chigley Pottery. A canal (named as the Trumpton Canal) and a river (unnamed in the programmes) run through the village. It is central to the third and final Trumptonshire series.
*Trimbridge is the next village after Chigley along the river; the river bridge at Trimbridge is the first crossing point of the river after Chigley bridge; there is a direct road from Chigley to Trimbridge, running alongside the river.
*Trumpton is the local market town, with a local corporation and mayor, and numbers of infrastructure features for the wider region, most famously the Fire Brigade. There are various shops, and a large public park, and many streets of terraced housing. Some residents (such as the Mintons) are depicted as living in cottages on the outer edge of the town. It has (amongst other facilities) a hospital, swimming pool, public library, waterworks, and gasworks. It is central to the second Trumptonshire series.
*Wellchester is the county's large town or city community, some distance from Trumpton, and with large department stores. The character Mrs Honeyman ventures to Wellchester (in Camberwick Green episode 6) having heard that one of the department stores has a sale on hats.
*Winkstead Hall estate is the home of Lord Belborough and his domestic staff, located on the edge of Chigley. It is depicted in every Chigley episode.
*Wintlebury is another Trumptonshire town. The programmes were made in an era in which many British communities were adjusting to life without local railway services, following the
Beeching cuts
The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain. The plan was outlined in two reports: ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' (1963) and ''The Development of the M ...
. The only rail service depicted in the series is Lord Belborough's
heritage railway, but the nearest mainline railway station is said to be in Wintlebury, from which there are direct trains to London. Driving directions quoted in the series reveal that Wintlebury is reached from Chigley by driving through Trumpton.
Actual locations
The true locations on which the fictional communities were based remain uncertain. According to Murray, the three title communities are however based on real locations one and a half miles from each other at the corners of an
equilateral triangle
In geometry, an equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides have the same length. In the familiar Euclidean geometry, an equilateral triangle is also equiangular; that is, all three internal angles are also congruent to each oth ...
.
[ The real-life locations most frequently cited are Wivelsfield Green (Camberwick Green), Plumpton (Trumpton), and ]Chailey
Chailey is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located 7 miles north of Lewes, on the A272 road from Winchester to Canterbury. The Prime Meridian passes just to the east of Chailey.
The parish consist ...
(Chigley), historically known as Chagley, which are neighbouring communities in a roughly triangular configuration in East Sussex. In such an explanation the city of Wellchester could be Chichester
Chichester () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parish in West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publi ...
. These locations have been proposed as the Trumptonshire inspiration in the mainstream British media.
DVD
BBC Studios and Post Production's Digital Media Services team remastered all 39 episodes of the ''Trumptonshire Trilogy'' in 2011 for DVD release, cleaning, scanning and digitally restoring the film footage frame by frame.[
]
References in other media
Trumptonshire was used as a hypothetical constituency by the BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
programme '' More or Less'' to explain how polling and voting could play out during the 2015 UK general election
The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 to elect 650 members to the House of Commons. It was the first and only general election held at the end of a Parliament under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Local ...
.
The music video for Radiohead's " Burn the Witch" single pays homage to the Trumptonshire Trilogy.
References
External links
The Trumptonshire Trilogy
BBC Radio 4 ''Sunday Best'' – Here is a Box, a Musical Box
{{Trumptonshire
Fictional elements introduced in 1966
Fictional counties
Fictional neighborhoods
BBC children's television shows
Counties of England
Fictional locations in the United Kingdom