Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Will Plummergen win the Best Kept Village competition?
Miss Seeton Paints the Town (10)
What you need to know before your trail
Plummergen village folk are keen as mustard to beat neighboring Murreystone and win the Best Kept Village competition. Art teacher Miss Seeton is asked to create some Before and After pictures, showing residents of The Street how to improve the look of their houses. Yet one of her sketches is worrying, showing her own cottage, Sweetbriars, amidst billowing smoke, all too reminiscent of the current spate of murderous arson being investigated. Then another, that looks at first like a cosy Wind in the Willows scene seems to hint at something very dark lurking in the shadows . .
Travel Guide
Where is Plummergen?
It’s fictional but inspired by Appledore in Kent:
Map of Plummergen (c) Hamilton Crane
The author speaks:
Rye (a real place) is 5½ miles south of Plummergen, and Ashford (likewise real) is 15 miles to the east. These aren’t distances on a map, because (using a pair of compasses from my school geometry set) the two locations 15 miles from Ashford and 5½ miles from Rye are both in Sussex rather than Kent.
“Plummergen Station — which, in true English rural tradition, is some two miles south of the village on the road to Romney Marsh – branch left for Ashford” … “Ashford (15 miles east)”: Appledore station is 1½ miles from the centre of Appledore, it’s on Romney Marsh, and the journey to Ashford by road is 15 miles if you take the route past Appledore station.
Miss Seeton’s cottage is “at the southern end of The Street”: sure enough, the main street of Appledore is called just The Street, which seems to confirm the identification of Appledore as the inspiration.
Finally, “Plummergen was only about six miles beyond Brettenden”: After a six mile drive towards London from Appledore we come to Tenterden, which sounds remarkably similar to the invented name.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Miss Seeton Paints the Town (10)
Destination : Kent, Appledore “Plummergen” Author/Guide: Heron Carvic Departure Time: 2000s
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