Bagpuss
A section of this photograph was used by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate for one of the opening sequences in the programme Bagpuss. This was confirmed in 1978 when a Horrabridge resident wrote to the Bagpuss programme and received a reply from Mrs Joan Firmin giving an account of how the picture used came from an old postacrd album which now belonged to her.
The wheelwrights yard is shown on the left and the view is looking south to Station Road taken from the north side of the bridge. This scene has changed little in the last 100 years and is still recognisable today.
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RE: RE: Bagpuss
I was born in Tavistock in 1956. We moved to Horrabridge when I was five, I lived there until I married in 1973. I have many memories of walking along the bridge holding my mother's hand, often we would slide down the weir in the summer. There is a walk through the park along side of the river to Fillace Park where we lived. I often watched the local football team play there of a Saturday. I have fond memories of walking to the bakers on a Saturday morning with my sister to buy the family loaf of fresh bread and picking off the crust on the way home! I now live in Western Australia, but will always think of Horrabridge as home. I have visited in the last two years and intend on returning this August.
Comment from Judith Narayan on Wednesday, 7th March 2007.
RE: RE: Bagpuss
I grew up in Kent but married a local girl from nearby Whitchurch in Tavi. There was a longstanding oral tradition that Horrabridge was the location for the opening sequence of the children's TV series 'Bagpuss', as confirmed by this wonderful archive photograph. However, this same tradition held that Emily's shop itself was also in Horrabridge. Alas, this Mouse of Kent knows that the shop window belonged to the home of the co-creator, Peter Firmin, in Blean, near Canterbury, where the Smallfilms studio was located. The young Emily Firmin was his daughter, wearing a homemade dress for the Victorian vignette photos. Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep, settled into retirement in Canterbury Museum. The fact remains that this spellbinding photograph was used to great effect in the opening sequence (albeit cropped) and this Mouse has fond memories of both the real and fictional locations as I sit here in my mouse mill eating chocolate biscuits.
Comment from Charlie Mouse on Tuesday, 22nd November 2011.