Helen Cresswell, a BAFTA award winning children’s author, was passionate about developing the imagination and creativity of youngsters. She travelled all over the UK visiting schools to share her belief in the power of reading. In 1984 she approached the Educational Advisor for the National Trust to suggest that imaginative stories set in their properties could raise children’s interest in them. More advanced moondials can include charts showing the exact calculations to get the correct time, as well as dials designed with latitude and longitude in mind. And, again - who was Miss Raven and what truly was her objective? With just that little bit more, this book could have had full marks from me. Regardless, I did enjoy it, and will probably gladly reread it at some point. And I will read further works by this author, time and availability permitting. :)

Moondial’ (1988): An Appreciation » We Are Cult ‘Moondial’ (1988): An Appreciation » We Are Cult

Moondial was very much the final flurry of a very particularly and beloved strain of British children’s television that had mainly flourished in the seventies. There were attempts to revive it, some successful (Tom’s Midnight Garden and a couple of the Nesbit Five Children adaptations), some not (Archer’s Goon) and Century Falls (which as a child I recognised immediately as a cynical attempt to emulate this era and hated with a passion. But Moondial was the final masterpiece: strange, eerie, unsettling and genuinely spooky - and strangely far more so than the book that it was adapted from Minty is staying with her Aunt Mary in a little cottage on the edge of an Crumpton Manor which is now always open to visitors. Minty has a mystic streak and realises there are unhappy ghosts who are trapped. With some aid from old Mr World she is drawn towards the moondial and decides to solve the mystery but she has to overcome many obstacles. Moondial, a children’s book written by Helen Cresswell, was jointly published in October 1987 by Faber and Faber and the National Trust. The story is set in 1985 Belton village and at Belton House. This magical, at times, harrowing, and engaging six-parter signalled an end of an era as the decade closed to allow the 1990s to begin where children’s drama would continue its shift for faster-paced viewing with less quiet tones. Colin Cant reflects upon this change of pace. Moondials are very closely associated with lunar gardening (night-blooming plants) and some comprehensive gardening books may mention them.

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The narrative both in the novel and the adaptation doesn’t offer a clear resolution or straight-forward explanations and appears to deliberately leave us with a fair degree of ambiguity. Even director Colin Cant admits being puzzled by the scripts and having to explore their meaning further. Regarded as a nostalgic favourite by followers of 1980s BBC children's drama, Moondial employs extensive location filming (in the grounds of Belton House in Lincolnshire) and fantastical, dreamlike imagery. The series was produced by Paul Stone and directed by Colin Cant. Other cast members include Valerie Lush as Minty's aunt Mary, Arthur Hewlett as the elderly, mysterious Mr. World and Jacqueline Pearce in the dual role of the vicious Miss Vole (who seems to have lived in the 18th Century) and the present-day ghost hunter Miss Raven. Moondials are time pieces similar to a sundial. The most basic moondial, which is identical to a sundial, is only accurate on the night of the full moon. Every night after it becomes an additional (on average) [note 1] 48 minutes slow, while every night preceding the full moon it is (again on average) [note 1] 49 minutes fast, assuming there is even enough light to take a reading by. Thus, one week to either side of the full moon the moondial will read 5 hours and 36 minutes before or after the proper time. [ citation needed] I spoke to one school child who went on the ‘Below stairs’ tour and experienced life as a kitchen boy. He dressed up as a servant polishing the silver in the kitchen which was used as part of the filming of the television series. He learnt that all the kitchen boys were called Tom. Tom in Moondial is the kitchen boy from the 1860s. Connecting the house to the kitchen is a tunnel with a rail for moving food to the dining room. When the kitchen boys were in the tunnel, they had to whistle or hum to stop them eating anything on the way.

Moondial’ - Lincolnshire Life Belton House and ‘Moondial’ - Lincolnshire Life

Minty (Siri Neal), is a gifted child who can sense things that many cannot (this is subtlety alluded to during the opening of episode one much like the opening paragraphs of the novel although the adaptation omits the dark notion of Minty sensing a past act of suicide on the landing in her own home and realised her ability when she could hear her father’s voice even though he is dead). Neal gives Minty a rather fearless and unconventional quality to her character along with an incredibly real vulnerability having already lost a parent and is now facing the very real threat of losing the other. The closing moments of the show feature a poignant scene where Tom is reunited with his sister Dorrie and, along with Sarah, walk off into the distance before fading from Minty’s view entirely. Lux et Umbra vicissim, sed semper Amor, Light and shadow by turns, but always Love. The illustrator of Moondial, P J Lynch, was a young man who had recently left Brighton Art College and was illustrating book covers for Faber when he was given Moondial to read. He told me that once he had read the book, he was excited about illustrating it. There are around twelve line drawings which are evocative of the mood of the story and add an air of mystery to the book. P J Lynch’s front cover cleverly captures several elements of the book, including the Halloween masks taken from the faces on the urns in the garden and the cloaked figure of Sarah. He was particularly pleased with the front cover which is still used by Faber. Ariminta (Minty) Cane, reluctantly separated from her mother, stays with her Aunt Mary (Valerie Lush) in Belton, Lincolnshire and it isn’t long before the curiosity of the nearby Belton House and its mysterious Sundial leads her to cross the threshold of time and encounters ghostly presences who appear to be caught in the trappings of life as much as she is.In her autobiography, Helen wrote ‘I played with words as other children play with Lego’. Her play with words began with poetry at age 6, later producing around 100 children’s stories including Moondial. After becoming a teacher, she returned to writing in 1963. Helen wrote early in the morning, with a pot of tea beside her. She would sit on the floor and write in a large plain book, with ‘real pens and real ink’. When writing Moondial, as with other timeless fantasies, she used a white pen with sepia ink. After writing between 500 and 3,000 words, she would then type up her work, while it was fresh in her mind. Helen never edited the content once it was written. The series was released on video in 1990, and reissued in 1995, but only in a shortened "movie edit". This was released on DVD in 2000, but has long since been deleted. The full episodic version was released in 2009 by Reader's Digest and later re-released on DVD by Second Sight in May 2015. The moondial, for example, is the central device from which all the twists and turns of the story and furiously stoked, but do we ever find out how or why it does what it does? Like hell we do! Okay, there's a brief discussion between Minty and World about 'moontime', which attempts to broach the subject but this is sadly smothered by vague notions. And Miss Raven's appearance in the modern day is an exciting twist, but, Moondial’ (1988) is available on DVD from Second Sight Films, originally released 4 May 2015. BBFC classification PG. Running time 158 mins. Catalogue no. 2NDVD3274. David Ferguson’s theme tune and score is wonderfully ethereal, and he would go on to become a regular collaborator of director Colin Cant, the pair later working together on The Country Boy, Dark Season and Century Falls. Ferguson, unusually for BBC children’s productions of the time, wasn’t part of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and operated on a freelance basis but his work has a very similar feel to the best of the Workshop. His music sounds timeless, not suffering at all from sounding like it comes from the 1980s, and not sounding as if it was crafted on the usual synthesisers. It is one of the finest aspects of this production and deserves a wider audience. Sadly, Ferguson passed away in just his mid-50s, so listeners were denied hearing any more of his excellent, talented work.