Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

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Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by MJE »

Hullo.

     I have read people refer from time to time to the supposed real-life place that inspired a fictional setting Blyton used, or served as a model for it. For instance, Whispering Island in "Five Have a Mystery to Solve" is said to be based on Brownsea Island; Kirrin Island castle was said to be modelled on the castle at Corfe; Kirrin village was at least given a location (was it Cornwall, or Dorset? - I forget); and Peterswood in the Five Find-Outers (and Dog) series is said to be based on Bourne End.
     It is probably some years ago now that I first heard these claims, and I seem to recall that they were stated merely as opinions or speculations that the poster making the statement held. Yet I have read these statements again and again, and they seem to become more certain than I first heard them - almost like bald statements of fact.
     Yet I don't know that I've ever heard or read any evidence backing these claims - or, if I have, I don't seem to remember it.
     I'm just wondering how much evidence there is for such claims. Did Enid Blyton herself say those fictional settings were based on those places? Or has someone analyzed the details of the fictional settings, and found so many resemblances to the real-life places that it couldn't be coincidence? (I think I once saw pictures of Brownsea Island, and it was nothing like I visualized Whispering Island, and didn't seem especially like Eileen Soper's illustrations set on Whispering Island. The real-life pictures looked quite tame, whereas Whispering Island was quite wild.)

     I'm just wondering. If anyone can shed a bit of light on this, I would be interested to read of it.
     Thank you.

Regards, Michael.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by Tony Summerfield »

You are absolutely right Michael, in saying that most supposed locations are pure speculation. I only know of two instances where Enid has actually confirmed locations. The first was in a letter and concerns Kirrin:

Image

And the second was at the start of Five Have a Mystery to Solve, where she confirmed that Whispering Island was based on Brownsea:

Image

I think it is safe to assume that most locations came from Enid's imagination!
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by Moonraker »

Tony is the archetypal White Van Man - he always comes up with the goods! :D

Speculation + Rumour + Time = Fact, unfortunately.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by Viv of Ginger Pop »

With Brownsea for Whispering Island there is little doubt, because Enid describes it as such in her introduction in Five have a Mystery to Solve (which isn't always reproduced in p/b editions). There is a suprising amount of detail in the books for someone who never visited the island (Enid was here before the NT got it). I have had to move groups away from the cliffs to talk to them, because the noise in the trees is so loud!

Likewise Five on Finniston Farm. Enid describes the farm in her foreword, and there are lots of details about the farm in the book including the Norman chapel and this weird kitchen door full of iron studs!

I have speculated that Mystery Moor describes the old railway line that went from the old clay pit at the Blue Pool to the wharf at Ridge. The little engine Secundus was left abandoned by the tracks (now to be seen in the Goods Shed at Corfe station). There is a nearby riding stable, but I haven't been able to find out when it was established. In one sense it could be any old bit of heathland with a railway running through it to the sea, but on the other hand this is a bit she knew because she'd have often seen it from the train to Swanage.

The best description of Swanage and Corfe Castle is in the Secret of the Rajah's Ruby

The big question is the location of Kirrin. When I was researching this 10 years ago I went by David Cook's article in Journal 7, Norman Wright's book The Famous Five; everything you wanted to know, and I asked Gillian who was adament that Corfe was Kirrin Castle. We even made a film for the BBC when she described how she hadn't been well at Easter 1940 and the family went for a holiday to Swanage. (I found reference to this holiday when I looked through Teacher's World earlier this year). They went to visit Corfe Castle by train, and took refuge under a gorse bush when it started to rain! A year later Enid wrote Five on a Treasure Island, and it was published a year after that.

I was aware that a letter had been written to Trevor Bolton (again reproduced in Journal 7) where she wrote "Yes. Kirrin was based on an actual village, bay and island - but in the Channel Islands, not England". Crucially she didn't say anything about the castle. Enid had visited Jersey whilst on honeymoon, and would have seen the little Tudor forts on the islets off the main island. Ruined Kirrin Castle has broken arches and imposing tower, is described as a powerful Norman Castle, not a little fort.

I am still prepared to say that Corfe inspired Kirrin Castle, with Enid taking a castle that she knew and an island that she knew, and put one on the other to give us Kirrin Castle and Island. The village in Jersey was an inspiration as well - there is no reference to the Kirrins ever catching a boat train!

In 1957 Corfe Castle was used as a filming location for Five on a Treasure Island, and much has been made by sceptics of how Enid sounds underwhelmd in her diary by the use of Corfe. I'd say that she showed as much emotion recording the day she got engaged! Brevity was her diary style.

For Thomas Hardy fans it is easy to read a bit in a book and then to look around the very place in Dorset where he set the scene. With Blyton it isn't so straight forward. Weknow that at the height of her powers she needed very little inspiration, and could write about 20 imaginerary landscpaes in one book such as the Faraway Tree! Sadly, as dementia kicked in, she then seemed to need real places for her story settings.

There is very little tangible for Enid Blyton fans. The major collection was broken up last year at auction, Kenneth destroyed most of her diaries, and Green Hedges was pulled down. Seven Stories is now getting a collection together in Newcastle but it won't be permanently on display, and Old Thatch offers a warm welcome in the summer.

Last week I went to Salisbury to see an exhibition of John Constable paintings. He only ever visited friends there on holiday, but the city is obviously very proud of the links. Likewise, Enid came to Dorset 3X a year for over 20 years, and a holiday could be a month long. Fans visiting Purbeck can ride on a steam railway as Enid did, scoff a cream tea in the hotel she stayed in, swim around the same pier, and visit the same castle. Some visitors from overseas tell me that Corfe is the first place they head for once they've got off the plane. These visitors aren't looking for a courtroom standard of proof; the possibility is enough, and to relive the magic that is Enid Blyton.

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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by MJE »

     If there are real reasons to connect one of Blyton's fictional settings with a real place, then no doubt that is interesting, and I am as interested as anyone else to know more about it.
     But I have occasionally wondered whether these theories do tend to strain at gnats a little. When there are no clear connections and the speculation gets a bit obscure, I do wonder why people carry these speculations to this length. It's as if they think it's very difficult to make up a totally imaginary place, so they think Enid Blyton must have taken bits from real places.
     I've never found that to be the case. Making up good characters is the part I find most difficult (and possibly I completely lack this skill); but making up settings is almost one of the *easiest* parts of writing a story (for me, at least). It's often the very first part I think of, in the very beginning of thinking up a story.

     Perhaps I could lay the supposed Peterswood/Secret Seven connection to rest once and for all. (Not a hope, I know!) If I recall, the Secret Seven series mentioned the name "Peterswood" only once, and I accept what others have said that this was a mistake. Unlike some enthusiasts, I have never actually gone to the lengths to draw out maps of places Blyton's stories are set in, painstakingly taking clues from the narrative and deducing features in the map from that. But, even without doing that, it is obvious to me from reading both these series that the two groups of children live in different places - the whole feel of them is very different to me.
     Peterswood is a smallish country town, quite rural in atmosphere. I think the Secret Seven's unnamed town is very likely much bigger and more urbanized, much busier, and with more prominent industrial districts (think of the empty warehouse near the pillar-box towards the end of "Well Done, Secret Seven", or the coal-hole and cellar near the end of "Go Ahead, Secret Seven"). They are really quite grimy, industrial settings, even with a gritty, dark edge to them - quite unlike anything I recall ever reading about in Peterswood. The railway setting in "Secret Seven on the Trail" seems to me to be part of this same world, too. Maybe there are a few others, too.
     Sure, Peter and Janet live on a farm - and maybe some of the others of the Seven live in rural settings (don't recall); and certainly many scenes in the books are in very rural areas, yet close to home. But I think this can be explained quite easily by assuming that Peter's family's farm and other locations are on the outskirts of that town. For example, the old castle in "Good Old Secret Seven" and the woods in "Look Out, Secret Seven", and probably others, are clearly much more rural and therefore probably just beyond the outskirts of the town. Go a mile or two in, and maybe it gets very urban and industrial.
     Does anyone have any problems with this theory?

Regards, Michael.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by MJE »

Tony Summerfield wrote:I only know of two instances where Enid has actually confirmed locations. The first was in a letter and concerns Kirrin:
     Goodness me! - I had never heard that before. I thought Kirrin was supposed to be in Cornwall or Dorset or somewhere down that way. But I suppose *located* there (within the story - although I don't recall the location ever being mentioned) is quite different from *inspired by*.
Tony Summerfield wrote:And the second was at the start of Five Have a Mystery to Solve, where she confirmed that Whispering Island was based on Brownsea:
     Yes, I do recall that one, Tony, and I was aware of that note in the front of the book.
     Concerning my previous comment about having seen pictures of Brownsea, I just wonder if maybe back in Enid Blyton's day it was wilder and more overgrown, and thus perhaps closer to Whispering Island. But I did find a web site with several pictures of Brownsea, probably taken quite recently - and it could hardly have been more different than what I thought Whispering Island would be like.

Regards, Michael.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Viv of Ginger Pop wrote:The big question is the location of Kirrin. When I was researching this 10 years ago I went by David Cook's article in Journal 7, Norman Wright's book The Famous Five; everything you wanted to know, and I asked Gillian who was adament that Corfe was Kirrin Castle. We even made a film for the BBC when she described how she hadn't been well at Easter 1940 and the family went for a holiday to Swanage. (I found reference to this holiday when I looked through Teacher's World earlier this year). They went to visit Corfe Castle by train, and took refuge under a gorse bush when it started to rain! A year later Enid wrote Five on a Treasure Island, and it was published a year after that.

I was aware that a letter had been written to Trevor Bolton (again reproduced in Journal 7) where she wrote "Yes. Kirrin was based on an actual village, bay and island - but in the Channel Islands, not England". Crucially she didn't say anything about the castle. Enid had visited Jersey whilst on honeymoon, and would have seen the little Tudor forts on the islets off the main island. Ruined Kirrin Castle has broken arches and imposing tower, is described as a powerful Norman Castle, not a little fort.
There was also another letter to Trevor Bolton, dated July 3rd 1962, which was printed in Journal 31 (Winter 2006). In that letter, Enid Blyton mentions that the island in Jersey had a castle:

"I will see if I can put the 'Five' on Kirrin Island again for you. It was an island I once visited several times when I was in Jersey - it lay off the coast & could only be reached either by boat or by a rocky path exposed when the tide was out. It had an old castle there and I longed to put the island & castle into a book. So I did, as you know!"
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by Moonraker »

I sometimes wonder if people don't forget (and I'm not referring to anyone writing in this thread) the fact that The Famous Five and other series were works of fiction. Why is there this need to factualise (if that is a word) Enid's locations? Personally, I don't give a jot if Peterswood is Bourne End or Kirrin is in the Channel Islands. As far as I am concerned, the actual location is in my head, and I don't wish to know that Kirrin Cottage is in fact Bluebell Cottage, somewhere in Devon!

It also amuses me to read some of the posts (mainly on Keith's site) where people ask if Bets married Fatty, or if George ended up living with her girlfriend. Again, they are fictitious characters - they finished their imaginary lives when Enid wrote the last book of the series.

Of course, the real bonus or benefit of this is that the characters and locations don't age or change. No Kirrin by-pass, no senile Daisy, no Bill Smugs' funeral. They are all there, just as we left them, ready to come out to play when next we call.

Now that's magic. :)
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by Viv of Ginger Pop »

As far as I know, the castles that are on islands off Jersey look nothing like Norman castles. I've asked a big group of people from Jersy if they could think of anywhere, and they couldn't. I quoted this article to Gillian (since she hadn't read that bit in her journal) and her response was "for my money it's Corfe".

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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by Tony Summerfield »

I think the point I was trying to make Viv is that one can only be certain of locations if Enid herself has pointed them out. I should have mentioned Finniston Farm earlier as we know that was based on Manor Farm, but the only time that Enid even mentioned Corfe was in a book, The Adventure of the Strange Ruby. Everybody is entitled to an opinion but the only things that count as fact are those that come from Enid herself, everything else is speculation.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by MJE »

Moonraker wrote:I sometimes wonder if people don't forget (and I'm not referring to anyone writing in this thread) the fact that The Famous Five and other series were works of fiction. Why is there this need to factualise (if that is a word) Enid's locations?
     And similarly with what characters might do in later years.
     I guess people just like to speculate about what might happen if one were to extend the characters' lives beyond the limits of the books. I may occasionally have a few ideas of my own about that.
     Just to illustrate: I *don't* think George is gay (as I have read other people say), and nor do I think she's transgender, transsexual, or anything like that. But I do think she's going to have a hard time when she starts menstruating and otherwise showing signs of womanhood. But she will probably accept it in the end and marry some man, but will probably never be a terribly feminine woman; and ultimately she will make peace with the fact that she's female. And I also think she's really going to take Timmy's death really, really hard - more than most people do when they lose a pet. But she will eventually get another dog. And she may well become a vet or wildlife researcher, or something of that sort. (I won't go on to theorize about Julian, Dick, Anne, etc. - that gives you the idea.)
     So, yes, if I think about it - which I don't all that much - I *do* have ideas about possible events in the characters' lives. But I really don't spend a lot of time thinking about such things, or developing complex theories about them, and the like.
     And I certainly have no interest in writing fan-fiction which develops those ideas; I would much rather put my imagination and creative effort into stories which are entirely of my own creation. (I might enjoy reading the fan-fiction; but that's a different matter.)
Moonraker wrote:Personally, I don't give a jot if Peterswood is Bourne End...
     No, I don't either - especially since to me, as an Australian, Bourne End is nothing more than a name anyway.
     But I am a bit curious as how the connection with Bourne End originated, and why.
Moonraker wrote:As far as I am concerned, the actual location is in my head, and I don't wish to know that Kirrin Cottage is in fact Bluebell Cottage, somewhere in Devon!
     So it's clear that Enid Blyton had just about the opposite approach to some other writers, such as Malcolm Saville, who I have heard set all, or at least most, of his novels in real places, and described them very precisely and realistically, too. (I haven't read any of them; but I've heard that this is so.)
     I guess that approach would be very interesting if you know those places; but I don't personally feel a need for a fictional work to be set in real places (although including situations which break laws of nature or are just logically impossible does upset me rather). And when it comes to my own writing, I invariably make up my own places, and probably wouldn't want to feel limited by having to conform to some real place. Besides, I just don't know enough real places in enough detail to be able to do this anyway, and I'm too lazy to go to those places and research them! Why bother with that, when being set in real places is not that important to me anyway?

Regards, Michael.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

MJE wrote:
Moonraker wrote:Personally, I don't give a jot if Peterswood is Bourne End...
     No, I don't either - especially since to me, as an Australian, Bourne End is nothing more than a name anyway.
     But I am a bit curious as how the connection with Bourne End originated, and why.
Back in Journal 1 (Summer 1996), David Cook wrote an article explaining why he believed that Bourne End in Buckinghamshire (where Enid Blyton lived for almost a decade at Old Thatch) was the inspiration for Peterswood. David points out that Marlow, Taplow, Burnham Beeches and Maidenhead (all mentioned in the Find-Outers books) are near Bourne End, and that there is a Sheepridge Lane not far from Old Thatch (a village called Sheepridge features in one or two of the books). The Find-Outers often walk along the lane to the river, just as Enid did from Old Thatch, and in The Mystery of the Hidden House there's a Bourne Wood and a stream called the Bourne. It is said of Fatty in The Mystery of the Missing Man that he "will now race at a good speed around the county of Bucks", and Bucks is also referred to in the newspaper report of the robbery at the Little Theatre in The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat. David's arguments do seem convincing but it's likely that Peterswood was only loosely based on Bourne End, giving Enid the scope to develop it as she wished.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by MJE »

     Okay, thanks, Anita. I get the idea. It does sort of sound like circumstantial evidence, with all those points of resemblance. But, as you say, the connection may well be loose, and I certainly don't think Enid Blyton would have ever been the Malcolm Saville type of author who would have felt the need to conform exactly to the real place, even if she used many elements of it in her fictional town.

Regards, Michael.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by MJE »

Viv of Ginger Pop wrote:As far as I know, the castles that are on islands off Jersey look nothing like Norman castles.
     Ummm... how does a Norman castle look different from ones near Jersey? I guess, as an Australian, a castle is a castle is a castle to me - which of course no doubt is very ignorant of me.
     I've spoken elsewhere on this forum of my more recent desire to resurrect my childhood ideas of writing a Blytonian adventure - even a series, if it goes well - and I have given thought to whether I should set the stories in Australia or Britain, or leave it as indeterminate as possible. There are arguments supporting each of these - but one of the big ones *against* Australia (despite it being the place I know from personal experience) is the absence of castles. They are just so quintessentially a part of this kind of story that I am very loath to sacrifice them, for the sake of using my own country (which is not particularly Blytonian in atmosphere anyway - not that I want to be *too* Blytonian anyway). The idea of an adventure set at least partly in an old, brooding castle is one of the most appealing aspects of the whole idea of writing adventure stories.
     I don't know whether I'd use a Norman castle or a Jersey-type one, and it probably doesn't matter. I don't recall Blyton's castles ever being described in a way that specified this anyway, although that may be because I didn't know much about castles and thus missed the clues that were plain as the nose on your face in the books, to those who *do* recognize different styles of castle.
     Let's put it another way - is it sheer folly for any Australian who has never seen a castle in person to even begin to imagine that they can write a story set in one, and not make a fool of themselves?
     Anyway, after that digression, I was just curious to know how Norman castles might be different from other kinds.

Regards, Michael.
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Re: Real-life inspiration for novel settings.

Post by pete9012S »

A brief history of castle building over the last two thousand years :D

http://www.ecastles.co.uk/history.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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