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Bekonscot Model
Village:
It's a Time Warp Wonderful Look At 1930s England By John Clayton
The destination is the charming, genuinely unique village of Bekonscot in the town of Beaconsfield in the equally British sounding county of Buckinghamshire. As a kid growing up in London my parents took me there 4 or 5 times, and it was as magical the first time as it was the last. Because I'd enjoyed it so much as a child, my wife and I took our kids, Michelle and Heidi, there on one of our visits to England. In 1934 Britain's Queen Mary took Princess Elizabeth (now the Queen) there on Elizabeth's 8th birthday. Search the archives and you'll find a wonderful B&W photo showing them standing "statue still" in one of the villages. It's a classic photo as they appear to be part of say Gulliver's Travels – enormous giants towering over the model houses below them. Bekonscot (what a masterpiece of a British word!) is the oldest original, model village in the world. To my mind it's also the most memorable and exceptional tourist scene you'll ever see. The Splashynge Station and marketplace give you a bird's eye view of why Bekonscot is so captivating. Standing just above it and a few feet back from the train at the station and the nearby homes and green fields, it assigns you a thought process that you're looking at a real life landscape, but one that's shrunk to one third of its real size. On one of my trips there as a travel journalist I asked a staff member what he thought made it irreplaceable. "Well, it's illustrating and confirming an England that most have forgotten." He paused to look at a Great Western Railway steam engine as it made its way along one of the nearby railroad tracks. "It's how Great Britain used to be in say the 1930s," he continued, "and because it's portrayed, built and presented to the public the way it is, it gives you that feeling of, well security, as it takes you away from the hustle and bustle of life today."
It opened in 1929, and covers about 2 Acres. The six model villages, all so realistic of their time, tugged at my heart with their old world charm and memories of a life that's gone forever. It's also the largest outdoor model display in the United Kingdom. Throughout the day it's yet another trip back in time to watch the many different classic trains go about their sort of Thomas the Tank engine jobs. I was fascinated when another staff member said that some of the trains have been running for over 50 years, with each covering about 2,000 miles! Mere words do not do justice to this remarkable destination, and I urge you to go to www.bekonscot.co.uk so you can see the aura of magic found in every inch of these 2 acres of Great Britain. Whatever age you are, I hope you'll make plans to include Beckonscot if your travels take you to England. Related Articles: |
ou
can take the A40 road from London to get there, and drive along what's
often called one of England's "really scenic roads" and, in
a leisurely drive, it'll take you just over an hour to traverse the
27 miles to the destination. Or, if you prefer a faster route, take
one of the sleek, fast trains of Chiltern Railways from Marylebone station
in 
