Welcome to the tiny world of model villages

Hullo there! You’ll find a few blogposts here about the history of model villages in Britain. But you’ll find even more about model villages on my Twitter feed: @MrTimDunn, and even more in my very affordably-priced book, “Model Villages” – published by Amberley – for sale online here.

In the meantime, here is a photograph of me looking earnest at Bekonscot Model Village, where I worked for quite a number of years until I grew too tall.

Best wishes and happy modelvillaging, Tim Dunn.

It me, at Bekonscot Model Village in Bucks. Photo credit: Chris Marchant

The Mini Britain map: all miniature Britain in one place. But I need YOUR help

Hullo there! You’ve probably arrived here by hearing about it on BBC Local Radio, searching for model villages, or reading my witterings on Twitter.

If you have memories of a model village (especially if it’s one that’s now closed, or you’d seen in a private garden) I’d love to hear from you. I’m building a map in readiness for a book and new website documenting each of these miniature villages, but more are turning up, week after week.

Each model village reveals a fascinating story about their existence, ultimate demise and of course the wonderful imaginations of the people who created them.

Please, do get in contact:
modelvillages [at] timdunn [dot] com
www.twitter.com/mrtimdunn

Here’s a map that I’ve been working on; Can you can help me add more locations?
(I’m still trying to work out how to bugger about with this blog. Sorry it’s so clunky.)

Model Villages Map of Britain by Tim Dunn – last update 2017

A few model villages from BBC Radio Solent and BBC Dorset region

Today I’m talking on BBC Radio Solent and BBC Dorset breakfast programmes about model villages in Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. I’d love to know YOUR memories of any of these, or perhaps ones I’ve missed!

• Wimborne Model Town
• Tucktonia
• Godshill (there are two!)
• Blackgang Chine
• Buddle Inn, Niton
• Southsea
• Tinkleford, Swanage
• Corfe Castle
• Weymouth
• Ferndown Zoo
• Shawford in Hampshire
• Downton, near Salisbury

Here are a few images that you might enjoy.

Tucktonia in Dorset

The world’s ONLY Model Model Model Model Model Village

This summer, I have been very lucky. Among other things, I have co-presented a BBC TV programme (BBC Trainspotting Live), I have been on countless radio stations (thanks for putting up with my  wittering), I have learned from clever people, I have been invited to heritage railways and museums to see behind the scenes and I have broadcast live from the footplate of one of my favourite locomotives, Flying Scotsman. Best of all I have joined terrific friends on those trips, and I have made new friends, too. It has been a very odd year, with a few downs as wells as ups, but the chance to share my enthusiasm and delight in some of my hobbies and interests has been (and it sounds such a sodding cliche, I know) a privilege. But it really has. I never expected to be given the chances that I have had this last year, and I’m hopeful that I’m enabling and maybe inspiring others to do interesting things as a result.

Visiting the Post Office Railway at the West Central District Sorting Office – this isn’t going to be part of the Postal Museum Mail Rail experience but I was able to show TV viewers what was hidden here

One of my standout weekends was one of several visits to the Talyllyn Railway, in west Wales. This pootling, tootling, little narrow gauge railway was the first preserved railway in the world, and 2016 marked the end of their year-long 150th birthday celebrations. It is volunteer-run, headed up by a great team including the irrepressible general manager Tracey Parkinson. I like Tracey. She is smart, funny and determined and she is building a sensible business plan for this joyful little steam railway to flourish through the coming years. At the main terminus of the railway, Wharf, is a good sized model railway: the Llechfan Garden Railway, down in a sleepy, damp hollow missed by most casual visitors. Llechfan had been given a new lease of life and an awful lot of love by my friend Kes and a brilliantly good fun band of garden railway enthusiasts.

Kes is a kind and lovely lady. She also happens to be the daughter of the late Peter Jones, who not only had a fabulously eclectic and delightfully invasive garden railway of his own, Compton Down, but wrote about it and its buildings in the hallowed pages of Railway Modeller magazine over many years. His models of Welsh slate mines and mountain ranges towered way above his neighbours’ fences; the whiffling of live steam in miniature would waft across those tiny ranges, through fog, mist and dappled sunlight with the trundling beat of four-wheeled coaches and mis-matched wagons bouncing along weed-strewn track. Kes also managed to finish of Peter’s unfinished book on model buildings, which is now very popular and very much available to buy. As a child and as a teenager, Peter and I corresponded several times by letter on outdoor model railway ideas, particularly over an A-Level school project that I built elements for (and gained an “A” for, wahey! Thanks Peter) that was planned to be installed at Bekonscot Model Village. Of course, I worked at Bekonscot at that time as I talked about in my last blog post. Later, when Peter died, Kes and I considered briefly whether Bekonscot could host some of buildings but we concluded that they’d be a little incongruous in both scale and material.

Instead, Kes contacted the Talyllyn Railway and they said yes, they’d like Peter’s Compton Down buildings and trains very much indeed. And that they’d fit in beautifully in the sleepy damp hollow that was the Llechfan Garden Railway at the Wharf terminus. And Kes said yes, I like the Talyllyn Railway very much indeed and maybe I should move here and OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME that man over there is terribly handsome and BOOM fast forward a couple of years and now we find Kes living and working here.

So it was that Kes came here with her buildings, and stayed for the people. One person in particular, really: Steve. They are a joy to see together; a couple brought together by a chance encounter and a mutual love of pootling, tootling, little narrow gauge railways. I hope when she happens upon these words, that Kes doesn’t mind me calling her out for this. I only became properly involved with the Talyllyn Railway one year ago. I came for the trains but I stayed for the people. There is a family of volunteers at the Talyllyn, and they’ve welcomed me into their world: I’m hardly a regular active volunteer but to be welcomed with a cheer when I walk in to the evening staff bar makes me feel like I’m at home. Or perhaps an extra in an episode of Cheers.

“Playing trains” on an evening special in with Simon, Andrew and Ant. Dolgoch, this lovely little engine built for this very railway, is 150 years old.

So it was a joy that after 23 years of working and writing about model villages, I returned to see Kes and her Compton Down buildings installed at Llechfan several times over 2016. Itself almost a model village now with its fabulous landscaping and growing collection of buildings, had its own model model village built many years previously by Peter Jones – the model village of Phurcombe, built alongside the tiny village’s well – thus known to all as Phurcombe Well. Well.

Me and Kes after Kes agreed to let me clean and start restoration of Phurcombe Well Model Village, the model model village of Llechfan.

After Kes and I had fiddled about with some buildings and I spent a couple of weekends happily re-laying out and re-planning out this Welsh Lilliput, we had effectively restored her father’s model model village. So I was asked to celebrate the re-opening and re-dedication of Phurcombe Well. There is still more work to do to restore it, but after our restoration work Llechfan now had its own proper, expanded model model village. It also now has some super-trimmed bonsai-style miniature planting – all of which I brought up one day on the train from London.

Another thing that was there for the opening was something unique. Whilst I had been back in London I had decided it was time to build and donate a model, model, model village.

Kes and me with another selfie (obviously) showing some of the model people and the new layout of the model model village. 

 

I couldn’t stop, though. If you look closely, there is indeed a model, model, model model village. And inside a tiny dot: the world’s only model model model model model village! A model X5 village. That’s one iteration more than any other model village has – anywhere in the world. Yes, it’s just a dot. A tiny, approximated model.

The model model model village is the collection of tiny white blobs (each with a roof) as an exact replica of the model model village – just between my right hand and the big house. And in that, a model model model model village. And in that… well. Yes. It has all been made from Milliput modelling clay. Just look at the face on that.

 

Llechfan’s model model village now has probably the world’s smallest model model garden railway, too: I built it using T Gauge (1:144 scale) components and I’m assured that 6 months on it is working well on special gala days. Hurrah!

Testing out the model model railway, whilst on the workbench.

Playing with the model model railway en route to the opening party, whilst travelling at 125mph on a Virgin Trains Pendolino. And why not?

One of my dearest friends, Bekonscot’s chief mechanical engineer and a childhood volunteer of the Talyllyn, Mervyn Hill, was there that June day to represent Bekonscot, along with a crowd of 1:15 scale Bekonscot carved people, and a final 1:15 scale Bekonscot person possessing a strong likeness to the Talyllyn Railway Society’s founder (and one of my lifelong heroes) Tom Rolt. And of course, a substantial amount of miniature bunting. Every party needs bunting.

A scene in the model model village. There’s a model of Peter Jones there, with red hair and a hat over to the left, and just coming round the corner is a Bekonscot-made model who looks suspiciously like Tom Rolt, the man who led the restoration of the Talyllyn Railway.

So, it was a true delight, an unexpected honour and a privilege never to be repeated, that with a pair of giant scissors I was allowed to cut the tiny ribbon and give three cheers for everybody who continues to make Llechfan Garden Railway and the Talyllyn Railway the “Railway with a Heart of Gold”.

Putting out tiny signs around the full-sized railway asking people to come to our Grand (Miniature) Opening Ceremony. And they did! Kids hopped down to read these little signs to explain it all to their parents, and booking office staff handed out tiny invites with every train ticket that day. Very very silly and ridiculously good fun.

My surprise of the Summer: Anthony Coulls of the National Railway Museum and Ian Drummond of the Talyllyn Railway Society asked this idiot to unveil the “Dolgoch 150” headboard with no warning. It’s been an odd year: it’s been fun to raise a smile or two.  Photo credit is the excellent Darren Turner of Darren Turner Photography (Tywyn/Manchester)

 

And with that, a circle of miniature history was completed. The oldest model village gave birth to the smallest, the newest; now alive and growing at the world’s first preserved railway. More than one or two tears were shed in that crowd. Little steam and battery locomotives chuffed and footled around Llechfan all weekend; children flocked down to see this new wonder, happily re-adjusting the little model people adding their own stories and narratives. It was a lovely day.

Thank you for reading: I hope you visit the Talyllyn Railway for the trains, but stay and get to know the people. You’ll be glad that you did. I’ll see you there.

In the meantime, please do join me on my miniature adventures on Twitter!

On Dolgoch, No.2 of the Talyllyn Railway. We’re heading for the hills again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why I love model villages, by Tim Dunn, aged 34 and a half

Ever since I was a small Timmy, I’ve loved trains. When you grow up near Britain’s biggest model train set, at Bekonscot Model Village in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, it’s going to affect you in some way. As the son of a railway-loving chartered surveyor, and the grandson of  two grandfathers who built model trains, miniature railways, enjoyed gardening, and exploring weird and wonderful places, let’s be honest, it’s going to give you either a God complex or a size complex.

Or both.

Me on my first visit to Bekonscot. I’m impatiently waiting for a train.

I pestered Bekonscot until they let me work there at the age of 12, having the best (or most Enid-Blyton-esque) job anybody could ever want. I controlled the model trains, I occasionally repainted or fixed the tiny figures and I built some model buildings. I made some life-long friends through my work there, through our shared love of skilled craftsmanship or just simply playing trains. I had an idyllic childhood: I was very lucky. Not only did I grow up in the leafy suburban Chiltern Hills around Betjeman’s Metro-land, but I also had this miniature kingdom on my doorstep.

I knew I was lucky, and I wanted to share the charm, the wit and the supreme quirkiness of this Lilliput with the rest of the world, so my brother and I built the early Bekonscot websites. Some versions of the site included very suburban English version of SimCity called the Virtual Village; these were tiny bits of pixel art I designed in Microsoft Paint, each building either something from my own life or a representation of something at Bekonscot. Bekonscot found itself at the cutting edge of internet gaming (no, really!) so after a few years of appearing on schools’ ICT syllabuses we had more than 500,000 little virtual villages saved. And only a few of them were built by me.

Talking of the cutting edge of the internet, you can now follow my miniature exploits on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/MrTimDunn

We launch the Bekonscot website in 2002

Over the years, we decided that a ride-on-railway would be an excellent additional visitor attraction at the village. The chief mechanical engineer, Mervyn Hill, and I, contrived a convoluted little circuit and I helped build it with the rest of the staff. I bought a few of my own locomotives (seven and a quarter inch gauge, for those of you who are interested in such things) and I’ve run them there occasionally ever since. It turns out that the visitors enjoyed it too: over 1 million passengers have had a ride on the Bekonscot Light Railway since we opened it – it’s a profitable little enterprise and all of that cash, as all of Bekonscot’s profits do, have gone to worthy charities. Most of those charities don’t know they’re going to get a donation from Bekonscot until the cheque appears in the post.

To me, that’s what makes Bekonscot so special. Each and every one of those 15 million people has visited because they wished to experience a bit of joy. By visiting, their money then gets transferred to people who can’t visit, or who might need a bit of joy too. It’s quite, quite brilliant in its simplicity: it’s the perfect tourist attraction. Your visit will make somebody else’s day.

They actually let me play trains with my new toy. I’m looking really quite a bit younger here. My Inter-City 125 is in storage these days but one day we’ll get it out and play again.

In the years that followed, I became known amongst the model village operators of Britain as something of a historian of miniature history – and thanks to them, my poor parents are now the custodians of various model buildings including a model of Dudley High Street we rescued from a long-abandoned Himley Hall Model Village, a Statue of the Motherland (Russia) and a 9 metre tall Eiffel Tower from Thorpe Park. All of these, the Eiffel Tower included, are stored at various family-owned locations. My uncle threatens to grow his runner beans up it, and at Christmases out at one family home, the nude Colossus of Rhodes model occasionally gets a willy-warmer and a tinsel halo. We know how to live.

Himley Hall Model Village – abandoned in 1993 and parts rescued by us before the site was flattened

Taking the Statue of the Motherland (from Thorpe Park’s old Model World) on a roadtrip

I say “became known” amongst model village people – well – I made myself known. In 2004, Bekonscot celebrated its 75^th birthday. I decided that this was a suitable point to break my nascent post-university career in PR (I didn’t enjoy trying to convince journalists that server-side technology was interesting) and spent a very happy summer at Bekonscot getting us on telly, in papers and on radio around the world. Then I went off to do marketing things elsewhere in agencies and as a client (now I run a team of email and content marketers much cleverer than myself) but have because of the research I started 11 years ago, I’m still tracking down and hunting out the miniature towns and villages of the world. But why?

Roland Callingham, creator of Bekonscot Model Village, in 1929

Bekonscot is an incredible place. Opened in 1929 by Roland Callingham, this wealthy philanthropist and his staff used this Lilliputian creation to show his aristocratic friends – and the Royal Family who visited several times privately – not just what Britain was like, but what it could be.

Callingham was a progressive. He showed how good housing and good town and country planning could benefit the landscape, not detract from it. Now, 86 years later as we find Britain under the greatest pressure to deliver homes and housing for all, his ideals of marrying the built environment with the natural one are a debate worth having all over again. Suddenly, Bekonscot is relevant again, if we look past the quaint thatch and the steam locomotives.

What is our utopia? What kind of place do we really want to live in? This question is raised the the existence of a “model town” and in more recent years we’ve seen the creation of new full-size model villages, designed as real live-in model villages by developers. My most recent involvement has been to see the construction of a new model town at Bekonscot: designed by me on paper about eight years ago but expertly realised and constructed by brilliant modelmakers, engineers and craftsman. My urban plan for a model town of all types of architecture; a mish-mash palimpsest where kids and adults can get hands-on with a townscape of the past (and hopefully think a bit about why towns look like they do) is now being constructed in 3D.

Bekonscot’s New Town development as designed by me circa. 2007…

A very happy me seeing the modelmakers’ interpretation of the plans #idiotselfie

Bekonscot today is the result of dozens of talented craftsmen, adding and subtracting to the landscape. There are actually seven distinct villages there – plus more than 10 scale miles of model railway. It’s a place where we, as adults, can indulge our politics, our theories, our ideals – democratically and in context of 86 years of development. Bekonscot is an 86 year old team hobby and indeed an employer for many that has grown to become a reflection of British society, albeit a depiction of 1930s life.

The reason I find model villages fascinating is because there’s more to some of these suburban Lilliputs like dear old Bekonscot than meets the eye: exactly whose reality is being miniaturised? Who decides what is to appear, and what is not? Does the a model capture a moment to be preserve a moment in aspic for all time, or should it be constantly adapted and updated to reflect changes to the full-sized original world outside?

I’ve asked many private and commercial model village owners these questions and their answers have been varied and fascinating. Edward Robinson single-handedly created the Lakeland Miniature Village in Cumbria: “I wanted to show the kids what went before,” he told me, gesturing across the beautifully crafted slate-hewn Lakeland vernacular buildings scattered over rolling hills in his front garden. “Real rural life. Before the barns all became barn conversions.” So this isn’t Lakeland today; it’s a museum of Lakeland history. And not any old history – this is Edward’s history.

Little Italy, founded by the late Mark Bourne, occupies a Welsh mountainside garden above Corris. Bourne loved Italy so much that he made towering, folk-art models to show local people the beauty of classical Italian architecture. So here we have the Duomo from Florence, the Bridge of Sighs from Venice and a Tower of Pisa that is now leaning a little more dangerously than its full-sized prototype. It’s a wonderful place, but like Lakeland it’s a very personal historical record, where architectural and planning policy is governed by one person’s taste and memory alone.

An idiot abroad: me in Little Italy, 2007

Miniature Britain has been ruled by characters who will stop at neither historical accuracy nor architectural espionage to further their tiny empires. In Skegness, their model village has a series of vernacular buildings identical to those found in two model villages on the south coast; Skegness depicts Sussex and Wealden vernacular because its builder is said to have ‘acquired’ the moulds to cast the concrete models by nefarious means after he worked briefly at those southern villages. They do indeed look precisely the same, giving visitors a slightly skewed idea of what East Yorkshire’s rural settlements must look like.

Me at Godshill Model Village this year

But perhaps we’re looking too hard. Model villages are about joy – they’re about the suspension of reality. People go to them to escape for a bit, to reminisce, or forget. They’re full of silly things, they’re full of joyful things, they’re full of things that we wish for. They bring out the child in us – because suddenly the world isn’t such a scary place full of responsibilities after all.

In this journey of discovering our parallel miniature world, I’m fast learning that I can’t entirely suspend my sensibilities and desire to dig out the darker side. (Let’s not even mention the hidden Soho scene at Legoland). Each one seems to have a less visitor-friendly backstory to tell. But do visitors care and should we worry that a one-sided fake history that never was is being peddled? Perhaps I’m taking this all too seriously. To make up your own mind, you need to visit a model village for yourself, and I really hope you do.

In the meantime, Happy Birthday, Bekonscot. May you make millions more people as happy as you’ve made me.

(If you’ve enjoyed this, please do follow my miniature travels on http://www.twitter.com/MrTimDunn – I’d love to have you for company.)

Bob Symes

It’s a bit of a pity that I need to do this, but I’ve had a look at this blogpost from 9 years ago with fresh eyes, and there’s something slightly odd about the content in the links – so I’ve taken the post offline until I get more time to look into them.

A brief history of model villages: BBC’s One Foot in the Past

One Foot in the Grave was a pretty ace comedy that ran on the BBC from 1990 to 2000. One Foot in the Past was a pretty ace architecture programme that ran on the BBC from 1993 to 2000; produced rather splendidly I think, by another Tim Dunn. Anyway, One Foot in the Past had as part of its title sequence a JCB digger apparently digging up and destroying little model buildings depicting British rural life. According to presenter Kirsty Wark, they received more mail about those title sequences than any other feature.

To satisfy the viewing public’s thirst for knowledge (it’s not THAT niche; look, you’re reading this blog…) they produced a feature on the history of Britain’s model villages, taking in Southport, Babbacombe, Bekonscot and others. It’s a well-researched piece with some pretty good archive footage (mostly from the Bekonscot reels that we’ve got stashed away) and it did much to popularise miniature and model villages amongst an audience usually seeking out “real” buildings.

The BBC apparently gave Bekonscot approval at the time of filming for us to use it in educational and archive purposes – so here it is for your education. I think it’s about 1996. Um, and it’s off a knackered VHS. Sorry about that.

A trip round the Bekonscot Model Railway

A few years ago, I was ‘playing trains’ in the signalbox at Bekonscot Model Village. In a quiet moment, I sellotaped a small camera on to a wagon, stuck a spare loco behind it and sent it off around the circuit. That evening, I added a few captions and uploaded it to Youtube. I think it was after I’d been to the pub, too.

Four years on, it’s had 360,000 views on Youtube. Looking back, we had no idea it would be so popular. We’d perhaps have stood some of the fallen model people up, trimmed some of the bushes and put out all of the 30+ model signals that should line the route. Perhaps it’s time to do a new one. Anyway, enjoy the drivers-eye view of Britain’s biggest model train set.

Bourton-on-the-Water Model Village now Grade II Listed

The beautiful 1:9 scale 1937 model of Bourton-on-the-Water in the grounds of the Old New Inn (good sandwiches, by the way) has been listed by English Heritage this week as worthy of Grade II protected status. This is excellent news: the model, an accurate replica of the Cotswolds town in which it’s based, is built in the local stone and with exquisite craftsmanship.

It even includes that staple of model villages: a model village within a model village. Within a model village, obviously.

Bourton-on-the-Water Model Village on my last visit, July 2009

An early example of a miniature park, it is predated by “public” ones of significance only by Bekonscot, in Beaconsfield, Bucks; a model village I’ve long had an association with.

Model villages, by and large, have been ignored by architectural specialists as “toy towns”. But the awarding of protection of Bourton ratifies their significance: this stunning example of craftsmanship is not just a miniaturised approximation of reality but in itself a thing of wonder, the work of artistry and skill. The last few years have seen significant investment back into the village, and stonework repairs have started to bring the model back to its former glory.

The Guardian wrote about the listing of Bourton-on-the-Water’s model village, and you can read the full English Heritage Listing notes here.

Splendid stuff, and congratulations to all at the Old New Inn.