Cabin in the Clearing, The – Nostalgia Central

1 9 5 9 (UK)
5 x 30 minute episodes

This Sunday afternoon children’s serial from the BBC was set in the time when white settlers in America were steadily driving the Red Indians westward from their hunting grounds. Then it was that Silas Sutherland (Thomas Heathcote) came to the Ohio wilderness with his wife, Polly (Brenda Dunrich), and daughter, Alice (Ann Hanslip), and there, with his axe and his two hands, he built their log-cabin home.

This was the country of the Shawnee and Miami tribes. Sometimes they were at peace with the white men, and sometimes they were at war.

Whenever news of an imminent Red Indian attack came, the settlers in their lonely cabins had a hard choice. They could barricade their doors, block up their narrow windows, and fight it out. Or – if they were warned in time by the white scouts and frontiersmen – they could take refuge in the nearest blockhouse.

But if they did, they left behind the home they had built and the crops they had raised to certain destruction.

In his cabin in the clearing, Silas Sutherland is faced with just such a choice. The five episodes explored what happened to him and his family, to the young frontiersman, Brayton Ripley (Derek Aylward), who brought them warning, and to Mul-keep-mo (Ewen Solon), the Rattlesnake, the Indian warrior who had befriended them.

Three members of the cast – Ann Hanslip, Derek Aylward and Ewen Solon – reprised their roles from the original 1954 BBC production.

Adapted from the novel of E. S. Ellis by Felix Felton and Susan Ashman, and directed by Patrick Dowling, the series was filmed entirely in the studio, complete with a fake log cabin and wobbly trees.

Episodes aired between 4 January and 1 February 1959.

Silas Sutherland
Thomas Heathcote
Polly Sutherland
Brenda Dunrich
Alice Sutherland
Ann Hanslip
Brayton Ripley
Derek Aylward
Scipio
Joseph Layode
Mul-keep-mo
Ewen Solon
Haw-hu-da
John Woodnutt
Simon Kenton
Patrick Troughton
Hugh Sutherland
Peter Welch
Captain of the Fort
Alan Browning

Episodes

Friends and Foes | Besieged | Ordeal by Fire | A Desperate Plan | The Break-Out