Background of my Smuggler Bill project
When I was young my family used to often travel to Birchington in Kent to stay with an uncle and aunt during our summer holidays. At the time we lived in the Tunbridge Wells area and used to travel to Birchington by car. Shortly before arriving we would approach Acol and our father told us the story of Smuggler’s Leap.
In choosing a story to base my first iClone project on, I wanted something based on historical legend which was reasonably short. I tracked down a copy of the Ingoldsby legends (among which is the story of Smuggler Bill) on eBay and started from there. I realised from the outset that making something historically accurate would be too great a challenge, but I wanted to add some realism where possible.
Clearly the first set would need to be Reculver. Reculver is a real location on the Kent coast. When I first started the project in iClone2 I was aware that the twin towers originally had spires and so I created a set that looked like Reculver does now but with a couple of spires on top. There is a picture of that set in my post “‘My Approach to Animation Movie Making” in the “Approach” category.
As more and more information about Reculver appeared on the internet, I realised that at the time of Smuggler Bill (early 18th century), St. Mary’s Reculver would have been a complete church, not just a couple of towers with spires. According to a Wikipedia article the demolition of the church commenced in 1805. I would need to build Reculver again. Furthermore there has been rapid erosion of the cliff at Reculver. The towers are much nearer to the sea now than they were 300 years ago.
My thanks to those who posted the pictures included above
Of course the story has to end at Smuggler’s Leap. Today it is a caravan park. What might it have looked like then? Old maps show other chalk pits in the area. Is the one currently called smuggler’s leap the one that Smuggler Bill really rode into? Certain other landmarks are also mentioned such as Sarre Bridge and a windmill at Monkton. The only picture I have been able to locate of Sarre bridge is a very unimpressive little thing, hardly wothy of mention in such an epic story. Old maps show that the river that the bridge crosses was considerably wider in times gone by. But how wide was it at the time of Smuggler Bill? What did the bridge look like then? At the time of writing this I still have no idea. There is still an old windmill at Sarre. I will probably pop a model of that in somewhere. There is also an old pub called the Crown Inn which I will include. Was it called the Crown then? Was it painted white as it is now?
It seems likely that Bill and Gill may have galloped past the Church of St. Mary Magdelene, Monkton, so I will need to build a set for that. However he was probably too far north to sight the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Minster. What did smugglers and excise men wear in the early 18th century? What did a “skiff” of that time look like?
The point is one can take research so far, but if I want to answer all these questions we will probably be on iClone version 25 by the time I get around to actually making a movie.
Time to bite the bullet I think.
Tony