Author Topic: Atlas of a Fictional Britain  (Read 4755 times)

JennyB

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Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« on: 07 January, 2018, 01:07:58 pm »
I don’t  know if there is such a thing, but I wish there were.

The premise is that well-known fictional places: Manderley and Pemberly, Warmington on Sea and Wessex, all co-exist in the same parallel Britain,  and each have their own histories apart from the stories we know of them.

Is it possible to draw a comprehensive and consistent atlas of this fictional Britain? I imagine quite a lot of ingenuity would be required. Major towns and rivers would be the be the same, of course, but the detail would be very different.

It would be best to place the fictional shires first. Where exactly is Wessex, and what non-Hardy fictional places must fall within its bounds?

Sometimes we may have to resort to  'formerly known as'. Would it make sense if the modern spelling of Barchester was Borchester?
Jennifer - Walker of hills

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #1 on: 07 January, 2018, 01:23:58 pm »
Interesting idea.

Hardy’s Casterbridge is based on Dorchester. He used a lot of real places with fictional names.

I used to think Borchester must be Birmingham but Brum exists independently in the Archerverse. Borchester could be Warwick or Coventry, perhaps.

Barchester is somewhere else, I think. Not sure where though. Winchester? Salisbury?

I think of Middlemarch as probably being somewhere in Leicestershire, or maybe Notts.

Arnold Bennett’s Five Towns is a thinly disguised Stoke on Trent, which was formed as an amalgamation of six towns. One of the towns, Burslem, is used as a setting in The Old Wives Tale, but reappears as the fictionalised Bursley in Clayhanger.

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Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #2 on: 07 January, 2018, 01:27:34 pm »
In the 10th century, Wessex was effectively all of England south of the Humber. But I guess that's not quite what you're thinking of!
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Mr Larrington

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Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #3 on: 07 January, 2018, 01:44:17 pm »
I'm sure I read somewhere that Middlemarch was based on Coventry.  I think it was in Mike Lawrence's book on Grand Prix cars of 1945-65, in the chapter dealing with Coventry-Climax engines.  Mr Lawrence, BTW, had a day job as an English teacher :P
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citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #4 on: 07 January, 2018, 01:52:37 pm »
I'm sure I read somewhere that Middlemarch was based on Coventry.

Close enough to Leicestershire for that to count as a good guess!
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

robgul

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Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #5 on: 07 January, 2018, 02:25:53 pm »
Interesting idea.

Hardy’s Casterbridge is based on Dorchester. He used a lot of real places with fictional names.

I used to think Borchester must be Birmingham but Brum exists independently in the Archerverse. Borchester could be Warwick or Coventry, perhaps.

Barchester is somewhere else, I think. Not sure where though. Winchester? Salisbury?

I think of Middlemarch as probably being somewhere in Leicestershire, or maybe Notts.

Arnold Bennett’s Five Towns is a thinly disguised Stoke on Trent, which was formed as an amalgamation of six towns. One of the towns, Burslem, is used as a setting in The Old Wives Tale, but reappears as the fictionalised Bursley in Clayhanger.

Borchester is usually deemed to be Worcester, not being far from Inkeberrow that is reputed to be Ambridge (even with The Bull pub - actually there are two, The Bull's Head and The Old Bull - the latter being stuffed with Archer-ish stuff)

Someone with a sense of humour named the medical centre in Inkberrow "Grey Gable Surgery"

AND still on the Archers - I stood behind Tony Archer at the checkout in the Stratford Waitrose last Sunday.

Rob

Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #6 on: 07 January, 2018, 02:29:29 pm »
Rummidge, which features in David Lodge's "Campus trilogy", was based very strongly on Birmingham.

ETA - the list of place on this Wiki page makes a good starting point for a fictional atlas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fictional_populated_places_in_England
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Wowbagger

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Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #7 on: 07 January, 2018, 03:19:37 pm »
There is an Ambridge Road in Coggeshall. There are other streets/closes etc. names Ambridge, but they all appear to me to be new developments. The Coggeshall one is mostly a bridleway and therefore likely to have had its name before the 1950s. But that's conjecture.

Edit: gonads! It seems that in the 19th century it was called Robin's Bridge Road.

http://maps.nls.uk/view/104188997
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citoyen

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Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #8 on: 07 January, 2018, 04:03:58 pm »
Borchester is usually deemed to be Worcester, not being far from Inkeberrow that is reputed to be Ambridge

Ah! I didn't know that. Thanks!
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #9 on: 07 January, 2018, 04:13:33 pm »
Wodehouse provides rich pickings for fictional locations. Castle Blandings (and Market Blandings) are referred to in the books as being in Shropshire - 'in the picturesque Vale of Blandings'. Valley Fields I take to be roughly equivalent to Dulwich Village, and Wrykyn is also clearly based on Dulwich College, where Wodehouse was a schoolboy. Steeple Bumpleigh is in Hampshire.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #10 on: 07 January, 2018, 04:31:20 pm »
I'm sure one or two of the Blandings stories refer to a local paper as the "Shifnal and Codsall Argus".
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JennyB

  • Old enough to know better
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #11 on: 07 January, 2018, 04:45:28 pm »
Rummidge, which features in David Lodge's "Campus trilogy", was based very strongly on Birmingham.

ETA - the list of place on this Wiki page makes a good starting point for a fictional atlas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fictional_populated_places_in_England

Yes, that looks very useful. I can see I'm going to have to be selective. Mainly where a place is said to be 'based on' will determine how it is placed, but perhaps not always. For instance, there's no use putting Rummidge instead of Birmingham if other sources I use clearly refer to Birmingham.  The fun will be in seeing if I can get places from different works close enough to share features that are not found in our Britain.
Jennifer - Walker of hills

Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #12 on: 07 January, 2018, 07:13:16 pm »
As to Warmington-on-Sea, the original Dads' Army series was filmed in Norfolk and Suffolk, mostly centred aroung Thetford - many of the town scenes were filmed there and woodland/heathland in the area. As Thetford is several miles from the sea, the few beach scenes were filmed North of Gt Yarmouth and locations around Sherringham also featured.
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Juan Martín

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Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #13 on: 08 January, 2018, 06:36:08 am »
As the characters in the Dad's Army platoon wear West Kent Regiment cap badges I assumed that Warmington on Sea stood for somewhere like Folkestone or Hythe.

JennyB

  • Old enough to know better
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #14 on: 08 January, 2018, 11:38:11 am »
Found this map for TV series.
Jennifer - Walker of hills

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #15 on: 08 January, 2018, 12:03:52 pm »
Just remembered another - Tilling, the setting for the Mapp & Lucia books, is based on Rye in East Sussex. Mallards, Mapp's home in Tilling, was based on the real Lamb House in Rye where EF Benson lived. A number of other real-life properties in Rye are recognisable in the books.

All of the books are set in Tilling except the first, which is set in Riseholme, based on Broadway in Worcestershire.

The only other location that features in the books (iirc) is London, which is based on London.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #16 on: 08 January, 2018, 12:17:34 pm »
Does Arthur Ransome's fictionalised Lake District count? IIRC and without googling, The Lake is (based on) one lake while the surroundings are from another/others.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #17 on: 08 January, 2018, 12:27:08 pm »
RAF Brocklington in "Bomb Run" by Spencer Dunmore is a not very disguised version of RAF Pocklington.  IIRC Dunmore went to Pock skool, in spite of being Canadian.
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citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #18 on: 08 January, 2018, 01:05:01 pm »
As the characters in the Dad's Army platoon wear West Kent Regiment cap badges I assumed that Warmington on Sea stood for somewhere like Folkestone or Hythe.

Good knowledge. I always assumed Warmington to be in Sussex - probably based on somewhere like Worthing or Eastbourne - but I didn't know about the badges.

However, Folkestone and Hythe would have been East Kent Regiment. West Kent Regiment wouldn't have included any coastal towns - unless you count the Hoo Peninsula as coastal. In which case, the only realistic candidate for Warmington on Sea would be Cliffe.

"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Kim

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Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #19 on: 08 January, 2018, 01:05:10 pm »
Found this map for TV series.

It's the Doctor Who entry that makes it  :D

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #20 on: 08 January, 2018, 01:10:11 pm »
The Champion by Tim Binding is set in a nameless Kent town that is easily recognisable to those who know it as Ashford - it's a slightly fictionalised version of Ashford, but I presume the main reason it remains nameless is because he's not very complimentary about it. There's an episode that takes place in a restaurant in a nearby village, which I'm pretty certain is meant to be the Wife of Bath restaurant in Wye. Not a particularly notable work of literature and would only be worth including for completism.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #21 on: 08 January, 2018, 02:01:38 pm »
This reminds me of Dave Hutchinson's "Europe" trilogy.
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clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #22 on: 08 January, 2018, 04:02:50 pm »
Warmington-on-Sea (I thought 'Walmington' myself) is definitely described as a town on the South Coast.  It has a pier and a lighthouse.  I'd assumed Hastings, but the Kent connection is pretty specific, so over the border seems most likely.

As for a well-mapped area, Francis Brett Young's 'Far Forest' novels fictionalise the area West and South West of the Birmingham conurbation to the Welsh borders.  I believe there is somewhere on the interwebs there exists (or did, back in the day) a list of corresponding towns, villages and other features.

The Wizard of Whirlaw was one of William Holt's books set in Calderdale - specifically Todmorden, in that case.  I can't recall the others.

There is another layer, though: Real places in fictional contexts.  I think of After London, by Richard Jeffries, or War of the Worlds, by HG Wells, which is pretty specific about locations.  His History of Mr Polly and Kipps have some obvious markers.

As a fan of the Raffles books, I have looked into the locations used, many of which are real, and a few lightly fictionalised.  I even began to plan a ride based around a particular story (notably involving bikes).
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citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #23 on: 08 January, 2018, 04:20:06 pm »
Warmington-on-Sea (I thought 'Walmington' myself) is definitely described as a town on the South Coast.

Just looked it up on Wiki - you're right about the spelling:

"Walmington-on-Sea is on the south coast of England which, following the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk during the Second World War, found itself on the front line against Hitler. It is in Sussex and the nearest large town is Eastbourne."

Pevensey?
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: Atlas of a Fictional Britain
« Reply #24 on: 08 January, 2018, 04:45:28 pm »
Warmington-on-Sea (I thought 'Walmington' myself) is definitely described as a town on the South Coast.

Just looked it up on Wiki - you're right about the spelling:

"Walmington-on-Sea is on the south coast of England which, following the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk during the Second World War, found itself on the front line against Hitler. It is in Sussex and the nearest large town is Eastbourne."

Pevensey?

Pevensey is the strongest candidate from the description you quote, but "maps" of Walmington tend to show cliffs to the eastern end of the town, making it more like Hastings - see the one in the Wiki article and this one:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d7/f5/4f/d7f54f51f121e9b2be2446e9630a9b70--sea.jpg

The real Pevensey area is pretty flat...
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche