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What the Dickens is going on here?
By Valentine Low, Evening Standard 02.04.07
Bleak houses: Dickens World in Chatham opens this month
Authentic: the 'Nicholas Nickleby' schoolroom
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It is dark, dirty and smelly, full of thieves, ghosts, murderers and really rather unpleasant schoolmasters. But then that's Charles Dickens for you.
This month a visitor attraction devoted to the life and works of the author will open at a £62million complex in what was once the Royal Naval Dockyard in Chatham, Kent.
Dickens World is close to where he was brought up - his father worked at the dockyard. But its heart is a painstakingly recreated Victorian London, from the cramped streets to Newgate Prison to the city waterways of Oliver Twist.
Attractions include a boat ride the operators claim is the longest of its kind in Europe, and a haunted house featuring the various Christmas ghosts as well as Ebenezer Scrooge.
Escaped convict Magwitch is there with his chilling warning, "You ain't seen me!" And there is a Fagin's den, though it is now a children's soft play area.
No effort has been spared to make the experience as 'orrible as Dickensian London. When the project was launched by Kevin Christie, the International Dickens Fellowship was called in to ensure authenticity. The result looks good.
Newgate Prison's walls are cracked and peeling, the river is a dirty brown - and the smells are as rank as anything the writer had to endure. As Dickens World manager Ross Hutchins said: "The smell here is horribly pungent."
The rickety buildings and walkways of Fagin's Creek convince. It is easy to imagine the winch over the boat ride being the one Bill Sikes used as he tried to escape the police in Oliver Twist. The schoolroom, with its wooden desks, inkwells and homilies to "Respect Thy Elders", could easily pass for Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby - except the desks then did not have interactive screens.
There is also a 20-minute Victorian musical with animatronic performers.
Mr Christie said purists would have no cause to complain: "Dickens was not a purist, he was a populist. He wrote stories serialised for newspapers. If he were alive he would be writing for TV. I think he would have loved this."
The project is also key to the regeneration of one of the most depressed parts of the South-East. When the dockyards closed in 1984, more than 7,000 jobs were lost. Since then millions of pounds have been poured into the area.
Reader views (1)
From the moment we (my family) entered Dickens World I must begin by saying the staff were so helpful and friendly which made our visit so enjoyable. We thought the atmosphere was truly authentic, the cobbled square centralising everything was brilliant and so cleverly constructed. The 4D animatronics and the 3D theatre shows were truly a joy and very lifelike. The boat-ride was amazing, the schoolmaster was very Victorian and it was great to enter into the experience with him. For everyone responsible we send our congratulations on making this a truly wonderful experience which we will certainly tell to our friends and family and encourage them to come along and enjoy the thrill of being transported back in time whilst learning so much. I, myself volunteer at Dr Barnado's Ragged School Museum in the EastEnd of London which is just about the East End and those Victorian times which are enacted every week in our Museum, so it was especially a great thrill for me to see the similarities. Well done everyone and such a big thank-you for making this experience something that will always stay in our memories.
- Sheila De Winter, London, UK
