Blyton Locations

[number 6]

Interesting story, number 6.
I just read the same in a DuMaurier biography that the sea in front of Par/Polkerris in Cornwall is milky white due to the clay (I have to admit that I didn't notice it when I was there 21 years ago).

I've also heard of this, but I've never had the opportunity to visit. Maybe one day soon.

[Moonraker]

I've always assumed the Blue Pool at Furzebrook near Corfe to be the inspiration for the 'Green Pool' - ... in the story in 'Five Get Into Trouble'

Oh definitely, Enid even tells us the colour (although green, not blue) is caused by chemicals. Gloomy Water bears no resemblance to Blue Pool in Dorset.

[Rob Houghton]

I've always assumed the Blue Pool at Furzebrook near Corfe to be the inspiration for the 'Green Pool' - and in the story in 'Five Get Into Trouble' the Five camp nearby not knowing it is private and the owner's son Richard Kent says that that isn't generally known as it isn't fenced off. This was the real life situation there as of the 1940s, and the owners - the Barnards - later did fence it off and charge admission. Enid has the Five cycling to 'Coker's Corner' nearby which would seem likely to be inspired by real-life 'Creech Corner' - a mile or so along the road South - and they later camp in 'Middlecombe Woods', like real life 'Middlebere Woods' a few miles away to the NE on the Arne peninsula. From 'Five Go To Mystery Moor', there is the trackway of a real former private 'railway line'/ tramway . over nearby Hartland Moor , set up by the owners of a clay extraction quarry to transport their clay to Poole Harbour for shipment. They were Victorian industrialists, the Pike brothers - did Enid turn them into the ferocious 'Bartle brothers'?.

Yes, this has always interested me a lot, because the atmosphere and locations are certainly very Blytonian. As people have said in the past, I don't think Enid actually used locations for a particular place, but took inspiration from them. After all, a writer looking for intriguing settings is bound to be influenced by places they have visited.

In a Journal article a few years ago I explored quite a few of these ideas, particularly Heartland Moor, which had been mentioned by Norman Wright a few Journals before. I believe at one time there was even a rusty old steam engine overturned in the gorse...so this definitely seems to have been an inspiration to the setting of Mystery Moor.

Blue Pool could equally have been the setting for any number of Blyton Lakes. Further evidence that it could have been the inspiration for Hike is that there is a village not far away called 'Steeple' - one of the clues in Hike! . It also seems likely as inspiration for the lake in Five Get Into Trouble, and maybe even for the lake in Billycock Hill. The caves in Billycock Hill are very much like the Tilly Whim caves in Durleston Country Park.

I've always assumed the Blue Pool at Furzebrook near Corfe to be the inspiration for the 'Green Pool' - ... in the story in 'Five Get Into Trouble'

Oh definitely, Enid even tells us the colour (although green, not blue) is caused by chemicals. Gloomy Water bears no resemblance to Blue Pool in Dorset.

I disagree that it bears no resemblance. I immediately thought of Gloomy Water when I visited Blue Pool! The setting is very very similar! Mind you, I know some people on here have stated quite categorically in the past that NO real places are Blyton settings, as she made them all up!!!!

[number 6]

There are a multitude of places in the Purbeck area that Enid could've used in her stories. She spent several holidays a year in & around Swanage (over a 20 year period), so something special kept her coming back time after time. The scenery she saw on her travels around this particular area of Dorset would've captured her imagination & influenced her future writing in some way. Has anyone ever visited the Purbecks for the first time & thought they'd recognised places which look & feel like a Blyton 'location' from one of her stories? If you have, then this may be the closest you will ever get to putting yourselves in Enid's shoes & seeing the scenery through her eyes as she had intended.

timv mentioned Creech (Near Corfe). Well, Creech hill looks strikingly odd from the Wareham/Corfe road & always reminds me of the funny shaped hill in Five on a hike together! Obviously pure imagination, but quite intriguing all the same!

[Chrissie777]

I walk in the Corfe area a lot, and like to think of it as the heart of 'Blyton country' with Enid having holidayed at Swanage; odd names and bits of geography resemble those in many Blyton books, including the Malory Towers series with Dancing Ledge pool. Perhaps a 'Blyton places tour' could be arranged? 'Spiggy Holes' is I think more likely to be inspired by east Devon - the 'Beer Holes' smugglers' caves at Beer.

Hi Tim, in 2008 when we spent a weekend in the Corfe area there was a brochure available called "Enid Blyton Country" published by the Purbeck District Council. It mentioned several places that were believed to have inspired EB to some of her FF books and Malory Towers. I've kept that brochure and wonder if it's still available today for the public?

[Rob Houghton]

Hi Tim, in 2008 when we spent a weekend in the Corfe area there was a brochure available called "Enid Blyton Country" published by the Purbeck District Council.

That was the name of my article in Journal number 26.

[sayantani]

Oh, how I wish I could see it! I will search it on the Internet. Being very far away in India I try to imagine what the Purbeck area is like. Of course bits and bobs of the landscape Enid actually saw would have fired her superb imagination, but some areas are uncannily similar to what the books describe. I would still go with Blue Pool as Gloomy Water though! From a You Tube video on the old Harry Rocks, I thought that the beach trail and secluded caves resembled the Spiggy Holes descriptions, but I will check the Devon locations on You Tube. Being so far away from it all gives me an advantage of detachment in these matters!!

[sayantani]

Rob, would the 2008 edition of the Journal with your article be available still? I would be interested.

[Rob Houghton]

Unfortunately it's sold out I think!

[Chrissie777]

... weekend in the Corfe area there was a brochure available called "Enid Blyton Country" published by the Purbeck District Council.

That was the name of my article in Journal number 26.

Rob, does that mean that you created the text and information for that particular Purbeck brochure? I enjoyed it!

Unfortunately my EBS Journal collection does not starts before # 41 (and only thanks to Daisy who gave them to me as a present, because she had them twice when we all met at the Spade Oak in 2014).
Wish I had become a society member in 2005!

[Rob Houghton]

Rob, does that mean that you created the text and information for that particular Purbeck brochure? I enjoyed it!

I doubt it - unless they stole it from an EB magazine!!

[timv]

I have usually assumed that 'Gloomy Water' and its surroundings are vaguely inspired by either Dartmoor or Bodmin Moor, more likely the former as Enid refers to a prison nearby and this is within earshot of the children on the hike before they go up onto the moor. They hear the 'bells' announcing that a prisoner has escaped en route to 'Blue Pool Farm' (the name of which clearly comes from the Furzebroook site), and the moor must be fairly large as the boys' and the girls' schools are said to be on either side of the moor. Enid would have passed both moors en route to St Ives where she and Hugh stayed once, in the mid-1920s I think, but the only real large lake (as opposed to a later reservoir not built by the 1940s) in the middle of either of these moors is Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moor.

I suspect that Creech Hill, a couple of miles West of Wareham, played a part in the creation of 'Billycock Hill' due to its odd shape. It is conical at the top and stands out from the main Purbeck range, and can be seen clearly from the Swanage-Wareham road and the railway line. It does have a former mine nearby (cf the one where the spies dump the kidnapped airmen in the Billycock Hill book), now shut off - I have tried to find it but it is on private land - plus a farm, ie East Creech Farm with its caravan-site. It is also is a mile or so from a former 'Butterfly Farm' (research station) which was the only one in this part of England when it was active in the 1950s. This unit was near Furzebrook and the Blue Pool. The 'secret airfleld' is invented, but there is still an Army firing-range and tank-training 'restricted zone' , based on Lulworth, close to the site - with ponds for the one where the Five illegally bathed. A 'Billycock' was the old word in late Victorian times for a trilby hat, which was rounded rather than flat so a 'domed' hill could be called this, and was generally also used for a haystack of that 'rounded' appearance. '

[Chrissie777]

I have usually assumed that 'Gloomy Water' and its surroundings are vaguely inspired by either Dartmoor or Bodmin Moor, more likely the former as Enid refers to a prison nearby and this is within earshot of the children on the hike before they go up onto the moor.

Tim, I went to Dartmoor Prison to take a picture once, but don't remember a pool/pond/lake.

[Rob Houghton]

the moor must be fairly large as the boys' and the girls' schools are said to be on either side of the moor.

That's interesting! I've read Hike several times, and it's probably my most favourite Famous Five book - yet I never noticed before that the schools are either side of the moor. I just presumed the schools were a fair way away from the moor. Must pay more (or Moor) attention in future!

I find the idea of locations endlessly fascinating...sometimes we feel they are definitely based on this place or that place, but as has been said, I'm sure that many of them are amalgamations of several places and none of them really exist in their entirety.

Having written my own Famous Five recently, I started analysing the settings in that, as I know what I based them all on...but none of them are 100% real or even 50% real! For example, the canal is based on five or six different stretches of canal, and various locations along it are based on places as far flung as Kings Norton, Fradley Junction in Staffordshire, canal shop in the same area, the village of Snitterfield in Warwickshire, Alrewas in Staffordshire, Ashby De La Zouch and Swadlingcote in Leicester and Derbyshire and Crummock Water in the Lake District, as well as other assorted villages and towns with a house from here and a lane from there and a hill from somewhere else!

[pete9012S]

I didn't realise there actually was a real 'Billycock Hill' :

Billycock Hill (68°10′S 66°33′WCoordinates: 68°10′S 66°33′W) is a rounded, ice-covered hill in Antarctica, which rises to 1,630 metres (5,350 ft) and projects 180 metres (590 ft) above the surrounding ice sheet. It is situated close north of the head of Neny Glacier on the west coast of Graham Land. First surveyed by the United States Antarctic Service, 1939–41, it was re-surveyed in 1946 by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, and named by them for its resemblance to a billycock hat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billycock_Hill" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;