Designer Kerry Goodwin
Moorcroft have already told you that this scene could be one of many Market Squares scattered across Britain, a place drenched in history with stories and legends pouring out of every snow -clad building. In truth, the design is inspired by Saffron Walden's market square in the East of England. Like many of the town’s counterparts around the country, ancient Tudor buildings with their black timber framing, often originating from large galleon ships, and wattle and daub walls painted white, have been transformed into such things as high street banks and as we potter about our business in the rush up to Christmas, we often overlook the sheer beauty of the external architecture.
Christmas in the square allows you to contemplate the sleepy, steep- pitched roofs and windows complete with small, diamond-shaped panes held together with lead casings and set in a wooden window frame as well as the slanted angles of the buildings as they tumble into an array of mock-Georgian and modern architecture.
Look closely, you will notice just how all of the buildings have been woven together, where large shop windows mirror nearby Tudor arches and other curiosities. Somehow the past and the present merge to hold us, safe and secure, in familiar surroundings which are all the more special when the Christmas tree lights up the market square and people dressed in colourful gloves, hats and scarves become held still in clay; a frozen moment of calm.
This feeling always reminds me of J.R.R Tolkien’s ‘Shire’ in Lord of The Rings, a place where Bilbo Baggins (the title character of The Hobbit), and four members of The Fellowship of the Ring: Frodo Baggins. Sam Gamgee, Merry Branybuck, and Pippin Took, return after traumatic battles in the rest of the rest of Middle Earth. It is said that Tolkien based the Shire's landscapes, climate, flora, fauna, and place names on rural England where he lived, first, like Moorcroft’s Chairman and his wife, in Worcestershire, as a boy, then in Oxfordshire and his words, and later films, hark back to the safety of this rural idyll. For many townsfolk, the seasonal familiarities, architecture and childhood memories which culminate in dramatic light, window and tree displays at Christmas, hold that same peace.
If truth be known, trauma can sometimes separate us from everyday life and oftentimes it is the familiarity of our hometown that, ever so slowly, bring us back to the simple life in the Shire of Middle Earth. If at first you feel separated, disorientated, like the lapping of waves on the sand, know that in time, and with love, you will return fully, and with deep reassurance to many Christmases in the Square. Granted, things will change, but whilst you are present, as the hands of time slowly tick by, you will be reassured by just how the past and the present combine into completeness.
Kerry’s design takes this a little step further – it drenches the scene in pristine-white, glittering snow and allows us to rest in utter stillness under a clear, blue sky. The quiet, whispering beauty of winter is indeed worthy of celebration too. We need this season to rest. We need long nights to dream. We need space to curl up with our loves and do nothing at all – save contemplate the beauty of Christmas in the Square and all that life holds.