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The Dantean Anomaly

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(Caution: Contains spoilers for Episodes: 14×06: The Night of the Stag)
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On a colourfully decorated village square, a very well-attended, joyous fete takes place. There are stalls and plenty of alcohol to drink. We are at the Midsomer Abbas May Fayre, which is celebrated jointly by residents from Midsomer Abbas and Midsomer Herne – always on the first of May. Malmsey wine is served in a sweet version (= the well-known sweet Madeira wine) and in a tart version. Now, a man, Reverend Conrad Walker, enters the wooden platform and speaks into a microphone and welcomes the crowd.

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Midsomer’s Old Railways

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(Caution: Contains spoilers for Episode: 08×01: Things That Go Bump in the Night)
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Map of the London and North Western Railway and Caledonian Railway systems, about 1900. Public Domain. (Click to enlarge it.)

Joyce and Tom Barnaby are guests of Elizabeth Key in Fletcher’s Cross. They go out of the cottage into the garden. Elizabeth Key carries a tray with three cups and saucers, sugar bowl and creamer. Joyce carries the teapot in her hand. The two women walk side by side in front, Tom Barnaby with his hands in his trousers behind.

The Barnabys admire the garden and the location and Elizabeth Key enlightens them that back then in Victorian times, there was a railway just behind a row of trees near the house. Joyce is startled and apparently imagines express trains. But back then they were only steam locomotives, of course. However, the line was later closed.

Now, the railway is to be partially restored and Fletcher’s Cross Station reopened. We learn later at the railway inauguration festival that it is mainly thanks to James Griss! But he is not quite respected in Fletcher’s Cross because he is a bit of a show-off.

Barnabys and Elizabeth Key sit down at a small table and set it and talk about Elizabeth’s parents and the upcoming meeting of the Spirit of Friendship Group. Just before the scene change, you hear the rattle and toot of a steam locomotive, but you don’t see it.

A steam locomotive is also seen in Great Worthy in another episode (14×03: Echos of the dead), but without any further information about the railway system there.

Old, new railway stations

The episode takes up a rather topical theme – both at the time of filming and the first broadcast and today. In the 19th century, the construction of railways was booming, even in rural areas, but in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, many of these railways were closed down because they were no longer lucrative enough.

Especially since the turn of the millennium, there have been repeated initiatives to reopen these disused stations. Though the plans always fail to materialise because demand remains too low or costs too much to open. And that is also the difficulty in Fletcher’s Cross. That’s why James Griss is talking to potential investors.

Some former railway stations become museums – like Quainton Road Railway Station, now Buckingham Railway Centre. Fletcher’s Cross station was filmed there. The name of the village is Old English for Queen’s Estate. It presumably refers to the estates of Edith, who was the wife of King Edward the Confessor.

A good 800 years later, in 1860, the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway Company was founded and the line opened 8 years later. Initially it only connected the Wycombe Railway (Maidenhead-Abingdon) in Aylesbury to the south and the Verney Junction of the Buckinghamshire Railway (Bletchley-Banbury-Oxford) to the north. In 1899 a junction was added to the north just beyond Quainton station, linking the line with the Great Central Main Line (Sheffield-London).

Unlike the connection from Fletcher’s Cross to Causton, the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway had no connection to Wallingford, 30 miles (about 50 km) away, which is known to be the filming location for Causton.

Quainton Road Railway Station

Ravenseft: Quainton Road Railway Station, Buckinghamshire, 2008. CC-BY SA 2.0.

Quainton Road Railway Station was one of six stops on the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway. Although it opened in 1868, it was not worthwhile in this underpopulated area and yet it was probably the most important stop on the line. It had a special status because the Brill Tramway started here – or ended here, depending on which way you were travelling.

The Brill Tramway’s main purpose was not to transport people, but goods. The Dukes of Buckingham were all interested in railway construction and this new means of transport. Their new estate, Waddesdon Manor, was being planned and was to have its own railway station nearby. Because of lobbying, the planned line was extended to Brill.

The tramway overcame a first financial decline of the line due to newer and faster connections to London and the north of England, as it was modernised and the trains now travelled 7.5 mi/h (12 km/h) instead of 4 mi/h (6.4 km/h). This meant that goods were now taken from Brill to Quainton in 40 minutes.

The tramway became part of the London Metropolitan Railway. Therefore part of the London Underground even as late as 1933, although 40 mi (64 km) from London and this train route was anything but underground. But two years later it was over. When the last train left Brill Station on its way to Quainton on 30 November 1935, hundreds of people watched and some members of the Oxford University Railway Society travelled from Oxford to get a last ticket.

A new life as a museum and well-known film location

After the Brill Tramway was closed, Quainton Road Railway Station also lost its importance. However, the station was closed to passengers in 1963 and to local goods in 1966. Three years later the Quainton Road Society was formed with the aim of preserving the station and started The Buckinghamshire Railway Centre as a museum. In 1971 the London Railway Preservation Society took over its collection of historic railway equipment, which included many locomotives, and passenger and non-passenger rolling stock.

Thanks to the society, Quainton Road is one of the best preserved railway stations in England. It is also still part of the railway network and can be booked for special events. As a film location it was not only used for Midsomer Murders, but also for Doctor Who and other films and shows.

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The Chronology of Midsomer County by Year or by Episodes • Deep Dives into Midsomer & History

Further readings

The Rail Map Online maps historic transport maps and lists the so many railways in the UK, most of which no longer exist today. See: https://RailMapOnline.com/

Literature
- Oppitz, Leslie: Lost Railways of The Chilterns. Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire. Newbury 2017.
I would like to point out that this is an unofficial fan site and I am not connected to Bentley Productions, ITV or the actors.

First published on MidsomerMurdersHistory.org on 27 November 2023.
Updated on 5 December 2024
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Midsomer Connections: Episodes & Epochs

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Under the menu item „Midsomer Connections“ you may have already seen the sankey chart in the lower half. It connects episodes with historical events from the respective era. In contrast to the charts above, this one not only includes references to British history, but also to Midsomer’s own history: Sir Hugo Melmoth, Ellis Bell, St Cicely, and so on.

The chart shows it clearly: the 20th century is very strongly represented in Midsomer Murders, especially the period after the Second World War. Tudor, Stuart, Georgian are equally represented, as are Victorian and Modern 1.

It is much more often mentioned that a tradition or estate has existed since Henry VIII than since the Domesday Book. And the period before the Tudors, especially before the Battle of Hastings, is very under-represented. (Under “Medieval” I include everything between William I and the Wars of the Roses, i.e. Normans and Plantagenets).

That’s not so surprising, because Midsomer is actually typically Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, where most of the film locations are. It’s precisely here and in rural surroundings because small hamlets are usually synonymous with idyll, peace, order, even sleepiness, and in such an atmosphere very bizarre murders have a very strong effect. Midsomer Murders is almost a parody of cosy crimes (sometimes pokes fun at its own type) and the really extreme, exaggerated types of murder make us laugh rather than feel horror.

An archetypal English tale with a certain creepy edge

Essentially, Midsomer Murders is an archetypal English tale with a certain creepy edge, but it remains cosy because we know that DCI Barnaby will solve the series of murders with the help of his sergeant and his family. He will put things right – that is his function and he says exactly this in one of the filmed books, Death in Disguise, when he tries to find the murderer of Master Ian Craigie out of the intimidated Tim in his tree house at the Lodge of the Golden Windhorse.

The reference to history – of Midsomer or England, not British – reinforces the stereotypical idyll. But tradition has two directions. It strengthens identity and inhibits progress. Inhibiting process is very rigid form and makes things stay the way they have always been – it becomes preservative and is therefore a particular stylistic device in episodes by Brian True-May, for whom Midsomer County is an area that was a kind of sleeping beauty, but is torn from this fairytale sleep by bizarre murders by people who want to disrupt the established order. (Not always the case, but very often.)

Historical references before and after Season 15

However, tradition can also provide support through identification. In the episodes after True-May, there are some historical references, but more often in a parodic way. Midsomer is no longer so archetypal, and can also be completely atypical of Oxfordshire or Buckinghamshire. But still, history (and the Midsomer-y landscape of the Chiltern Hills for that matter) remains the stabilising element of the show.

This is wonderfully taken to extremes in the very first episode after True-May, The Dark Rider, when Sarah Barnaby attempts to re-enact the Battle of Naseby on the DeQuetteville estate in a historically accurate way but, completely frustrated and annoyed, gives up and hanging the microphone on the holder, causing the feedback to squeak.

Let’s look at the time before and after Brian True-May’s time with Midsomer Murders in the sankey chart.

While the epochal segmentation of the left graph differs imperceptibly from the pattern of all MM episodes, a shift can be seen: exactly half of the historical references are from the 20th century, and there are hardly any references to the time of the Tudors and Stuarts and thus Henry VIII. So there really is a shift.

It is also quite apparent that there are fewer episodes with a historical connection. Now the episodes without Midsomer or English history are not listed in the graphics, so I’ll list them here:

Pilot and 1-14	15-22
Altogether 89 episodes	Altogether 43 episodes
Thereof 54 episodes with history = 61%	Thereof 15 episodes with history = 35%
Per each (histo) episode 1.3 historical references	Per each (histo) episode 1.2 historical references

From the pilot episode to the end of season 14 there are 89 episodes, and from season 15 to the end of season 22 there are 43 episodes. Of these, references to history are made in 54 and 15 episodes, totalling 70 and 18 times respectively.

So there are also fewer “histo episodes” in percentage since season 15, but if it is one, there’s not too much difference given the historical references.

Cosy crimes needs nostalgia

I mentioned tradition and its different directions at the beginning. At its best, tradition is something that gives you identity and forms a base for you. But it’s not something you have to carry around with you; ideally, you can continue to build on it and take responsibility for ensuring that the tradition remains sustainable and keeps up with the times. Tradition is a conscious transfer of history that you want to preserve for the future – like a special family heirloom that you have slightly adjusted so that you can wear it every day and it doesn’t end up in the drawer. And the historical references in Midsomer Murders are in this way, too, because it was and will always be cosy crime and therefore nostalgia takes over the role, the position of identity and the base on which a story from our present day is then told.