Cocktails and Records

We found ourselves in the Berkshire town of Beaconsfield this weekend. We were there to visit Bekonscot, a model village built by a bored London accountant in 1929 to entertain his friends. The folly started off as a few houses in his garden but wound up as a series of 6 inter-connected model villages over 1½ acres.

By some strange co-incidence we discovered whilst there that Beaconsfield was noneother than the home of Enid Blyton. And what a perfect coupling. Like Enid Blyton, Bekonscot Model Village seeks to ‘depict an idealised view of life in the 1930s’ – in other words the kind of England where the people who voted for Enid Blyton as their favourite author might aspire to live.

The England where:

1. Everyone lives in thatched roof cottages (even if they are fire prone)



2. Happy families pose by their Aston Martins



3. Fox hunting is fine way to spend a weekend



4. Evangelical missionaries can be found converting the villagers



5. Morris dancers are given free reign in the traffic-less town square

To be fair though, Bekonscot Model Village does have a colliery – its tucked away in the corner on the way out, just past the cable car…

Tags: dirty nostalgia, go see this, holiday snaps

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.