I started school in the spring term of 1966, a moment that marked the end of an era in television as far as I was concerned. For as long as I could remember, the BBC’s Watch With Mother had been a staple of my daily viewing, traditionally occupying a weekday lunchtime slot but also broadcast mid mornings (from April 1963 to September 1966).
The school timetable brought an end to all that. Lunch was from 12 till 1, and Watch With Mother’s lunchtime slot was 1.30, so that even though I came home for my dinner, I was no longer able to watch any of those old favourites, except during the school holidays.
Watch With Mother’s content had remained relatively static for years. The days of the week varied over time, but a typical schedule saw Picture Book on Monday, Andy Pandy on Tuesday, The Flowerpot Men on Wednesday, Rag, Tag and Bobtail on Thursday and The Woodentops on Friday. The first big change came about when Rag, Tag and Bobtail was replaced by the real life adventures of Hammy Hamster and friends in Tales of the Riverbank. Tales… had originally been broadcast at teatime, beginning in January 1963, before being added to the Watch With Mother line-up later the same year. It wasn’t quite the end for Rag, Tag and Bobtail, which continued to be repeated for another two years, but in December 1965, the three glove puppet friends were seen for the very last time, disappearing from the schedules along with another WWM staple, Picture Book.
The first week of 1966 brought a revised line-up. Picture Book, which had occupied the Monday slot, now made way for a brand new series, Camberwick Green. The rest of the week was business as usual: The Woodentops on Tuesday, Andy Pandy on Wednesday, Tales of the Riverbank on Thursday and The Flowerpot Men on Friday. But change was afoot, and notice had been served on the old guard.
The new series was the work of producer and puppeteer Gordon Murray, who had previously produced A Rubivian Legend using conventional marionettes. From Camberwick Green onwards, Murray adopted stop-motion animation for his productions, and also took the decision to film in colour. As a result, his so-called ‘Trumptonshore Trilogy’ series would continue to be shown on television for over three decades, long after the BBC had called time on the monochrome exploits of Bill and Ben, the Woodentops and Andy Pandy.
I can dimly remember the arrival of Camberwick Green, mainly because of the simple fact that I wasn’t going to be able to watch it. The series began on Monday 3 January 1966, and the spring term didn’t start for about a week. As I recall, I got to see one or maybe two episodes before being whisked away to the reception class in the local infants school. I liked what I saw of Camberwick Green, but it was my brother, two years younger, who really got to enjoy it, and was soon bought an LP record of stories and songs from the series.
This was really the end of the line for me and Watch With Mother. I would continue to see occasional episodes during school holidays, but nothing more. 1966 was something of a watershed year for the brand, with three new titles joining the line-up. As well as Camberwick Green, we got Pogles’ Wood (7 April) and Joe (3 October). I never cared much for Joe – it was far too sentimental and childish for my taste (at the mature age of five and a half!). Every episode’s plotline built to a point at which, to quote from the narration, ‘Joe... began... to cry.’
Pogles’ Wood, on the other hand, was not to be missed – yet, sadly, I was seldom able to watch it, and to this day have never managed to see all of the 32 episodes produced. It was the same story with Camberwick Green and its successors. Between 1966 and 1985, Camberwick Green was broadcast no fewer than 32 times by the BBC, and in all that time, I still hadn’t seen all the available episodes. Only 13 were produced, but the repeats were frequent. In its first year alone, the series was shown three times. The first run ended on Monday 28 March, but it was back again the following week at the earlier time of 10.45am. This second run ended on 27 June, with a further repeat beginning on Wednesday 5 October, and ending on 28 December. Two more repeat runs followed in 1967 (Friday 6 January – Friday 31 March/ Tuesday 4 July – Tuesday 26 September), by which time it had been joined by its sibling series Trumpton (commencing 3 January 1967).
The frequency of these repeats meant I had plenty of opportunities to catch up on Camberwick Green during school holidays, but watching the series was like trying to collect bubblegum cards – every time I had a chance to view, it always seemed to be the same episode (either Windy Miller whistling for the wind or Private Lumley of Pippin Fort who couldn’t tell his right from left). I’m quite sure I didn’t complete the series until the 1990s, by which time it had transitioned to Channel 4. If that sounds bad, consider the situation with Chigley, the third and final Trumptonshire series, which I didn’t finish watching until acquiring a DVD in 2023.
I may have struggled to see it, but Camberwick Green quickly became a favourite. Within a year of its debut, the first items of merchandise had begun to arrive in the toy shops, of which the ultimate was the set of model buildings, which my brother and I received as presents at Christmas 1967. Of course, we had no idea that the episodes had been made in colour – for the record, the series was first broadcast in colour on 9 january 1970 – but the LP sleeve showed us just how colourful a place Camberwick Green really was. The LP, of course, featured the music of Freddie Phillips, whose Spanish guitar settings of Gordon Murray’s lyrics added greatly to the appeal of the series, and it was through repeated plays of this record, as much as the actual broadcasts, that I really came to know the inhabitants of Camberwick Green.
The end of Watch With Mother may seem trivial in the grand scheme of things, but at the time it felt like a significant moment. A marker had been passed, and things would never seem quite the same again. When, in adult life, I occasionally tuned in to see an episode of Camberwick Green, it felt like unbottling a vintage from childhood – the blissful closing music evoking drowsy, summery afternoons of the unreachable past.
The Watch With Mother branding came to an end in 1975, replaced by less well remembered names like ‘See-Saw’. Camberwick Green continued on the BBC until 1985, and saw a brief revival on Channel 4 in the following decade. For years, the Trumptonshire series were poorly served by physical media releases, appearing initially on VHS tapes comprising only selected episodes, and eventually finding their way onto DVD, albeit badly remastered, with serious image defects. Happily, these have now been rectified and the most recent high definition scans were released a few years back on blu-ray by the Fabulous Films label.
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| Images scanned from the sleeve of the LP 'Welcome to Camberwick Green' (MFP 1109, 1966) |
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