Chigley
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Chigley (1969) is the third and final stop-motion children's television series in Gordon Murray's Trumptonshire sequence. Production details are identical to Camberwick Green.
As in Camberwick Green and Trumpton, the action centres around a small community, in this case the fictitious village of Chigley, near Camberwick Green in Trumptonshire. According to Gordon Murray, the three communities are at the corners of an equilateral triangle. Unlike Trumpton, however, Chigley includes many "guest" appearances by characters from the previous two series, including Windy Miller of Camberwick Green, and the Trumpton Fire Brigade, complete with their famous roll-call. This was done at least partly for economic reasons, as it allowed the established characters' theme songs to be re-used, thus saving money on recording.
Notable new characters include Mr. Swallow of Treddle's Wharf, Mr. Cresswell, owner of Cresswell's Chigley Biscuit factory (the initials CCB are almost certainly a pun on BBC), Harry Farthing the potter and his daughter Winnie, and last but not least Lord Belborough of Winkstead Hall and his butler Brackett, who also operate a private railway that seems to run through most of Trumptonshire. Each week Lord Belborough and Brackett can usually be seen rushing to someone's assistance in their vintage steam engine Bessie, singing: "Time flies by when I'm the driver of a train, and I ride on the footplate, there and back again". As usual everybody's problems are sorted out by the end of each episode and Lord Belborough invites everyone to the gardens of Winkstead Hall where his vintage Dutch organ plays the episode out.
Sadly, as with the other two series, the original masters seem to have been lost, and the surviving versions of most episodes are extremely grainy and scratched.
External links
- The Trumptonshire Web (http://www.t-web.co.uk/trumpgo.htm)
- The Trumptonshire Trilogy (http://trumpton3.homestead.com)
- Trumpton3D (http://trumpton3d.com)