Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Marlow in Buckinghamshire also lies on the line of the River Thames.
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DerekC
Established Member
Gloucester houses a Beatrix Potter museum based on her story The Tailor of Gloucester. The author herself lived and died at Near Sawrey in Cumbria.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Beddgelert in Gwynedd also has historical connections to the mining of copper.
Springs Branch
Established Member
Beddgelert has a hotel named The Prince Llywelyn.
There is also a Prince Llywelyn B&B on Anglesey at Aberffraw.
There is also a Prince Llywelyn B&B on Anglesey at Aberffraw.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Newborough was also a commotal centre in Ynys Mon.
(My italics -- my new word for today !)
For bird-lovers -- the Brecon Beacons, south of Brecon: another good location for seeing ravens.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Crickhowell also lies on the line of the River Usk.
Springs Branch
Established Member
Days Bakeries operate a number of branches in Essex, Herts. and Cambs., including outlets in Standon and Royston.
John Griffiths
Member
Royston, a medieval new town, grew astride the boundary of two counties (Herts and Cambs) and a rather large number of different parishes - seven, I think. Another town that developed in two counties is Wokingham: Berkshire and a small exclave of Wiltshire (until spoil-sports put an end to that kind of thing with the Detached Counties Act 1844).
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Sudbury in Suffolk also has medieval links to the silk trade.
Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1375 until his death six years later, was born in Sudbury. In the course of the Peasants' Revolt, the rebels invaded the Tower of London on June 14th. 1381 -- and dragged out thence Sudbury, who had with other "top brass", taken refuge there; and beheaded him. The same fate at the same time befell Sir Robert Hales, the King's Lord High Treasurer; equally hated by the rebels, for his policies. Hales's birthplace was High Halden, Kent.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
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I could be being dense here; but the connection with High Halden and Kent, escapes me.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
I think the oracle that I consulted has had an off-day today, so I shall strike through my earlier posting. I will consult another oracle.....
Biddenden in Kent was also once under the jurisdiction of the Tenterden Poor Law Union.
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Thanks !
Biddenden is of some fame for the "Biddenden Maids", commemorated in the village: Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst, "Siamese twins" supposedly born there in 1100. Continuing with a slightly macabre theme: Leicester was the birthplace in 1862 of the very severely deformed Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man"; whose life story was told in a play and a film, both of that name, as of date about forty years ago.
John Griffiths
Member
Leicester City FC until recent years played at Filbert Street, a name that for many of us posters of a certain age is indelibly connected with Basil Hallam's 1914 hit, 'Gilbert the Filbert (the colonel of the knuts)'. Hallam died in France in 1916, his parachute failing after bailing out from an observation balloon under enemy attack. He was born in 1889 in Brighton.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Ozleworth in Gloucestershire also has a church that is dedicated to St Nicholas of Myra.
More birds: one interpretation of Ozleworth's name is -- from the Old English osle + worth -- "enclosure frequented by blackbirds". Another name associated with the species Turdus merula is Blackbird Leys, a civil parish and ward in Oxford, on the south-eastern edge of the city.
Springs Branch
Established Member
There is a handful of other roads known as Blacksmith Hill dotted around the country, including in Devon at the village of Dunchideock.
Continue from Blackbird Leys........
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Penicuik in Midlothian also has a church that is dedicated to the Sacred Heart.
Sticking with the birds: Penicuik's name is derived from the old Brythonic Pen y Cog, meaning "hill of the cuckoo". Another cuckoo-associated settlement is Heathfield, East Sussex: where at the annual Spring Fair in late April, a character called the Old Woman releases a cuckoo from her basket; after which spring is deemed "officially" to have begun. (I gather that for various reasons -- including cuckoos' having in recent times, become rather rare in this country -- a pigeon is nowadays substituted.)
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Liddington in Wiltshire also lies on the route of the ancient trackway known as The Ridgeway.
John Griffiths
Member
Liddington has the remains of a control bunker for a WW2 'Starfish' decoy bombing target site; so does Auchenreoch Muir at Bellsmyre, Dumbarton.
The celebrated clipper ship Cutty Sark was built at Dumbarton in 1869. Her name derives from an incident in Robert Burns's poem Tam O'Shanter: with the eponymous hero witnessing late at night, wild and abandoned dancing by witches in the Haunted Kirk of Alloway, South Ayrshire (Burns's birthplace); Tam's attention being particularly caught by one charming young witch wearing an abbreviated garment or "cutty sark".
John Griffiths
Member
Alloway, unsurprisingly, has a monument to Robert Burns; as does Walker in Newcastle upon Tyne.
With its mines and shipyards, Walker expanded rapidly in the nineteenth century, and attracted very many workers from Ireland, Wales and Scotland; members of this last group formed a Burns Club, which paid for a statue to be erected Walker Park.
With its mines and shipyards, Walker expanded rapidly in the nineteenth century, and attracted very many workers from Ireland, Wales and Scotland; members of this last group formed a Burns Club, which paid for a statue to be erected Walker Park.
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Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
A BRIEF ASIDE
Many years ago, when in Newcastle upon Tyne, we visited a folk club and a local group sang about Byker Hill and Walker Shore, which I was told were the name of of two collieries. One of the verses concerns someone with the surname Charlton who had a pig, so he hit it with a shovel and it danced a jig. The chorus last line mentions a woman called Elsie (?) Marley who I was told was a landlady of a pub a couple of centuries ago. Amazing that at 76, I remember such events as if they occured only yesterday, but real-time events are now becoming harder to recall.
John Griffiths
Member
Ha! I've never heard it sung, but the chorus runs, I think..
Byker Hill and Walker shore
Collier lads for evermore
Byker Hill and Walker shore
Collier lads for evermore