Bekonscot is the oldest continuously open miniature village in the world. Almost 16 million people have visited since 1929, and about 15,000 call in each month. In an age of Netflix, Fortnite and artificial intelligence, we may regard it as remarkable that such a thing has not only endured, but thrived and even expanded. How can one possibly explain the appeal? Nostalgia, certainly, but there are numerous bigger, shinier miniature worlds that Bekonscot has inspired – what about them? Is there something else at play? Something utopian perhaps, or something darker for our troubled and unstable times? [...]
But things have changed. It is not really the 1930s we see, but a vision of what we hope the 1930s were like (the early 1930s, before the nervousness). For several decades, Bekonscot tried to keep pace with modern life; there were some brutalist constructions placed among the mock-Tudor semis, diesel railways replaced steam, and on the airfield modern jets (including Concorde) made an appearance. New adverts for the latest products began to appear alongside older ones for Colman’s mustard. But then, with the pace of life accelerating, and the historical integrity of Bekonscot looking increasingly confusing, the people who ran the place decided that the model should go back to its roots. So the modern world was banished, or at least repainted. [...]
Our fascination with miniature objects has been with us since cave paintings, and we will never tire of bringing things down to size in an effort to better appreciate them. The model village has just become the model world. There are few things that Instagram likes more than human giants in a concentrated landscape of Big Ben, Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty. Almost every country offers its own model world these days, and all provide a strategically idiosyncratic combination of nationalistic pride and towering hubris. [...]
But why go to all the trouble to visit these places if you can just go to Mini-Europe in Belgium and see almost everything in one go? One reason for not going to Mini-Europe is because Mini-Europe is terrible, and you must avoid it even if you have absolutely nothing else to do. Mini-Europe is what happens when a civic amusement is designed by a committee on which all the creative and sensible members have consistently called in sick, perhaps only too aware of what was being constructed on their watch. One is greeted at the entrance of Mini-Europe by a person dressed as a giant orange turtle administering unwanted hugs, and it’s all grimness from there. One walks past a soulless array of more than 300 buildings from all the countries in the European Union, including such cheering resin randomness as the Rock of Cashel in Tipperary, Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Stratford and a North Sea oil platform.
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