The
Priory and Godfreys – Vale Scene - © Tony Wright
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The landscapes and buildings of the Vale have been captured
in many different ways. Not surprisingly, there is a long tradition of painting
and photographing its views. But in this post I want to look at a more unusual
way in which people have tried to represent the area – model railways.
The best known example of this is the Vale Scene at Pendon Museum in Long Wittenham . This is centred on a fictional Vale
village ‘Pendon Parva’ and attempts to represent an idealised version of the
landscape as it was in the 1930s. As an archaeologist, I have a great fondness
for the loving rendered hillfort. Although, it is at heart a railway layout, as
much thought has been put into representing the landscape and, in particular,
the historic buildings of the Vale, as the railway itself. Nearly all the buildings
shown are based on actual building that stood or stand in the area.
Letcombe Cottage –
Vale Scene © Stephen Williams
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The model itself has a fascinating history – it has its
origins with the modelling work of Roye England, who arrived in England from
Australia in the 1920s. Already deeply involved in railway modelling, he spent
time living in Swindon, close to the western end of the Vale, and he soon fell
in love with the landscape and buildings. His first attempts at modelling the
buildings began in the 1930s, and after a pause due to the war, he set up in
Long Wittenham and established what
became the Pendon Modern Railway Museum in the 1950s. He expanded into new
premises in the 1970s and work began on what eventually became the Vale Scene –
although he died in 1995, work on the scene continues.
It’s a beautiful and committed piece of work- it’s steeped
in a love for a pre-lapsarian landscape and for the railways. I love the way in
which it’s still, and likely always will be, a work in progress. There is
something profoundly meditative about model buildings. This kind of small-scale
act of creation is something I have only tinkered round the edges with, but I
can see how it draws people in. There is an intriguing mix of an insistence on accuracy
when it comes to the rolling stock and architectural detailing, but it is all
set in a fictional condensed countryside setting, which aims to represent all
facets of the Vale, from the Downs with their hillforts and strip lynchets to
the pasture and arable of the vale itself. Of course, it is set in late summer,
with the crops ripe unto harvest and the chalk tracks at their dustiest. In its
own way, the model is part of that distinctly English topographic recording
tradition, which has its roots in the chorographic writing of the 17th
and 18th century, and in the 1930s and 1940s, when the idea of the
Vale Scene was germinating, materialised in the form of the Recording Britain
Project and the National Buildings Record. Indeed, the Vale Scene was initially
intended to capture a landscape and way of life that was seen by Roye England
to be under threat ; his first model was the pub, the Calley Arms in
Wanborough, which was being renovated and updated.
Kingston Lisle - Corfe Castle Line- Ormesby Hall |
In its own right, the Vale Scene, indeed the entire Pendon
Museum, is wonderful and worthy of a blog entry. You can imagine my surprise though
when I stumbled across a second public model railway layout which contained
model buildings based on real structures in the Vale. I chanced upon it when I
was visiting Ormesby Hall, a National Trust property in Middlesborough. I’d
taken the family to visit because it was home of the Pennyman family, who I had
an interest in due to their work on social relief schemes in the 1930s, so I wasn’t
remotely thinking about the Vale or model railways. However, at the end of the
usual tramp round drawing rooms and halls, it was a pleasant surprise to come
upon a series of model railway layouts run by Ormesby Hall Model Railway Group. One (Pilmoor Junction) was based on the
East Coast mainline (bah, I’ve never liked the LNER…), the other was clearly a
southern landscape and was in fact based broadly on the branch line from Wareham to Swanage. However,
when looking at it more closely, I realised that some of the buildings were
from elsewhere. Indeed, it turns out that although the man who created the
model, Mr Ron Rising, has set it in Dorset, it also contained model buildings
based on real examples across the south of England, including the Vale. For
example, there is lovely set of cottages based on a group in Kingston Lisle
(see picture).
There cannot be many parts of the country which have been
captured in this form, not once, but twice. There may even be other examples of
Vale landscapes and building lurking in lofts and clubhouses elsewhere in the country.
Why the Vale should have caught the imagination in this way I am not certain.
The originators of the two models, Roye England and Ron Rising, had different
relationships between the Vale, one a local, one not so. In both cases though,
there is this fascinating juxtaposition of incredible levels of detail (in the
Corfe Castle layout all the roof tiles on all the buildings were individually
cut out) with a creative mixing and reorganising of these perfect miniatures
within semi-fictional landscapes. I find this approach to fascinating as, in some
way, it mirrors my own perception and attitude to writing about and exploring
the Vale of the White Horse. I want to focus in on little vignettes, case
studies and keyhole views of the region’s history, yet despite my fascination with the detail, I
can’t help but set them in a landscape that is probably more my own imagining
than reality. The buildings provide the ballast, but the tracks take us somewhere else.
All images of the railway layouts taken from the websites of the relevant organisations - Pendon Museum and Ormesby Hall Model Railway Group