Here is the clock, the Trumpton clock. Telling the time steadily, sensibly. Never too quickly, never too slowly. Telling the time for Trumpton. Gordon Murray's 1966 series for the BBC, Camberwick Green, was an immediate success and an instant classic, and naturally he was asked to produce a second run of episodes. But, feeling that he had exhausted the possibilities for the village setting of that series, he instead came up with a sequel. Trumpton carried on the style of Camberwick Green, but this time the setting was a busy market town, complete with town hall and resident mayor. There was a whole new cast of characters, including Mrs Lovelace (and her yappy dogs), Chippy Minton the carpenter and, most famously of all, the town fire brigade, whose roll-call ("Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb!") became the series' catchphrase. But the main theme remained: whether in a small village or a bustling market
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 or hamlet of Chigley, near Camberwick Green in Trumptonshire. Chigley is more of an industrial area, and according to Gordon Murray, the three communities are at the corners of an equilateral triangle. A digitally restored version of the series from the rediscovered original film masters emerged in 2012.[1]
For Brits of a certain age, Camberwick Green is a programme guaranteed to spark nostalgia. At the start of each episode, we saw a tall, hexagonal box sitting on a table. This was to be our way in to the charmingly old-fashioned world of Windy Miller, Mrs Honeyman the gossip, PC McGarry ("number four! five! two!") and the rest. Here is a box, a musical box, Wound up and ready to play. But this box can hide A secret inside. Can you guess what is in it today? And from the box would emerge one of the residents of Camberwick Green. Following a brief chat between the narrator (Brian Cant) and the character (who would respond to Cant's questions silently with nods, shrugs and shakes of the head), the scene mixed through into Camberwick Green itself - a quiet country village with all the basic amenities (bakery, butcher, garage) and, in the land surrounding it, Windy Miller's windmill, Jonathan Bell's farm and the army fort commanded by Captain Snort.