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, under bridges, over bridges to our destination...". 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 after the 6 o'clock whistle, then the episode fades 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.

[edit] Trivia

Most episodes include a scene in which Brackett the butler takes a telephone call and then walks along a long corridor to Lord Belborough's study to deliver the message - despite the fact that there is also a telephone on Lord Belborough's desk.

The pop group Half Man Half Biscuit simultaneously parodied the Chigley Train Song and Pink Floyd in the song "Time Flies By (When You're The Driver Of A Train)" with the words "Time flies by when you're the driver of a train, steaming out of trumpton with a cargo of cocaine. Under bridges over ditches to our destination, careful with that spliff Eugene, it causes condensation." ^[1]