Perfect little world where time stands still
(Photos by the author, December 2018)
It's one of the most famous miniature attractions in the country, a compressed, idealised corner of an English county, closed off from the real-world, and untroubled by the internal combustion engine, which even in the 1930s, when this tableau is set, was beginning to mar the rural idyll.
Bekonscot Model Village is engagingly old-fashioned – the website refers to a timewarp. And that is its overwhelming charm. There are milk churns and horse-drawn ploughs, shopkeepers in white coats, even some escaped convicts
There is a village cricket game, albeit on grass that's far too long, even on December the 1st. There's a garden party, a circus, a port (so not precisely landlocked Bucks then). Bekonscot Model Village and Railway, its official long name, is the world’s original, and oldest, model village. It opened in 1929.
The model railway, with its many finely detailed stations, is huge. Serious express trains shuttle urgently around, overtaking diligent little stopping services, their carriages and locos in a variety of hues, which a 1930s trainspotter would instantly identify. Scale this railway up from its 1:32 gauge – the miniature villages are on a 1:12 scale – and it would be 10 miles long.
It's a wonderful little world, England as it used to be, away from the stress of everyday life, which resumes the minute you walk out of the gate back onto busy Beaconsfield streets.
Bekonscot is the creation of Roland Callingham, a London accountant who lived here with his wife in the 1920s and whose garden this was. The Callinghams used to throw garden parties, attended by society guests out from nearby London for a breath of country air.
In 1928, Mrs Callingham issued an ultimatum: either her husband's indoor model railway went, or she did. The model railway moved outdoors.
Callingham created a village around the tracks (or, more accurately, villages), with buildings based loosely on local properties. They were constructed from memory, photos or imagination.
Bekonscot Town is the biggest. The other communities are Southpool, Hanton, Splashyng, Evenlode and Epwood. Each has its own character and features; there is a coal mine, a castle, an aerodrome, a dock, a pre-NHS hospital and a racecourse. There are more than 200 buildings, 3,000 inhabitants, 1,000 animals, and hundreds of, fortunately nonpolluting, vehicles.
Precision was never the aim: Bekonscot wasn't meant to be taken seriously. The website again: "it was, and always will be, eccentric, fun and full of character."
Bekonscot through the decades, updating itself progressively. That changed in 1992, when it went from being kept up to date, with all of the latest cars, trains and planes, to reverting to how it'd been in the 1930s. The villages have remained like this ever since, with new and refurbished buildings replacing derelict pieces.
The original models are old and venerable, crafted from limewood by children in the New Forest. Where appropriate, new replacements made from casts to preserve the originals.
Only the model railway has responded to technological advance. Pieces of signalling equipment inherited from our life-sized railway system are backed up by an automated computer control system. It was programmed by a railway software engineer, who went on to develop signalling for London’s Jubilee Line Extension.
Each train set carries a radio device, so the computer knows where it is. Trains are set to run all day, without fear of collision, on quite complicated routes. Goods trains and expresses use passing loops to bypass platforms, while local passenger services are sent off to stop everywhere across the extensive garden railway.
Places and features have charmingly composite names, such as the Maryloo Signal Box and Chessnade Zoo, which even has a non-pc chimps’ tea party and elephant ride.
Today, Bekonscot is operated by The Roland Callingham Foundation Charity. It shares its income with charitable organisations – over £5.5 million has been donated to date, mainly to local charities.
01494 672919
Warwick Road, Beaconsfield,
Buckinghamshire, HP9 2PL