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Settlement Association

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Calthrop

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The actor George Cole (1925 -- 2015) was born in Tooting. One of the many films in which he appeared, was The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1963): about smuggling in that part of the world in the Napoleonic Wars era, centred on Dymchurch.
 

Calthrop

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There is an old tale according to which the people of Wing -- in not-very-bright fashion -- tried to keep it forever spring, by making a hedge around a cuckoo so as to keep the bird permanently in the vicinity. This legend is told of various settlements up and down the country; best-known for it, is Gotham (Nottinghamshire).
 
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EbbwJunction1

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Sheffield lies on the River Don, which has its four tributaries, the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin and the Sheaf. The Rivelin rises on the Hallam moors, in north west Sheffield, and joins the Loxley at Malin Bridge.
 

Springs Branch

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According to Wiki, the source of Malin Bridge's name appears a bit uncertain.
But however the name came about, the fact remains that it is shared with one of the regions mentioned in that great British institution, the Shipping Forecast.

Another town lending its name to a Shipping Forecast sea area is Cromarty.
 
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EbbwJunction1

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Cromarty Harbour was designed by the Civil Engineer John Smeaton FRS (1724 – 1792). Among many other projects, he was responsible for the design of the Coldstream Bridge, which links Coldstream in the Scottish Borders with Cornhill-on-Tweed in Northumberland, which was built between 1763 and 1766.
 

Calthrop

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According to local legend: when Cornhill-on-Tweed's parish church was enlarged in 1840, an 8ft. man was found buried under the nave. As a matter of historical record -- the tallest Irishman ever, was Patrick Cotter O'Brien: 8 feet 1 inch, born 1760 in Kinsale, Co. Cork.
 

EbbwJunction1

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The female pirate Anne Bonney was born near Kinsale in 1697. She married around 1715 and moved to Nassau in the Bahamas, a sanctuary for pirates. It was there that she met Calico Jack Rackham and became his pirate partner and lover. She was captured alongside Rackham and another female pirate Mary Read in October 1720. All three were sentenced to death, but Bonny and Read had their executions stayed because both of them were pregnant. Read died of a fever in jail in April 1721 (likely due to complications from the pregnancy), but Bonny's fate is unknown. In 2020, a statue of Bonny and Read was unveiled at Execution Dock in Wapping, London; it is planned to eventually take the statue to Burgh Island in south Devon, which is near the small seaside village of Bigbury-on-Sea.
 

Calthrop

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Horrabridge is also nine and a half miles, as the crow flies, from the centre of Plymouth.
 
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An image of Horrabridge featured in the opening sequence of the TV series 'Bagpuss', but the bow-window frontage of the shop where Bagpuss, Professor Yaffle and the others live was located in Blean, Kent.
 

Calthrop

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The Royal Navy had a World War II-era "Hunt" class destroyer named HMS Blean; after the above-bolded settlement's Blean Beagles Hunt. Another ship of the same class was HMS Pytchley; after Pytchley, Northamptonshire -- home of a rather better-known hunting outfit.
 

Springs Branch

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According to John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1872 (which no doubt everyone has on their bookshelf), West Haddon held a fair each May.
Another village with a long-running annual village fair is the Essex settlement of Great Holland.
 
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Author and aeronautical engineer Nevil Shute Norway lived in Portsmouth in the 1930s. He had previously lived in Howden, East Riding, where he had been working on the R100 airship project.
 

Calthrop

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Howden has been famous in the past, for its annual horse fair. Appleby-in-Westmorland is still prominent today on that same scene.
 

341o2

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Author and aeronautical engineer Nevil Shute Norway lived in Portsmouth in the 1930s. He had previously lived in Howden, East Riding, where he had been working on the R100 airship project.
Actually Shute oversaw the construction of the R101 at Cardington Beds, "The people's airship", while the R100 was a private project regarding design and construction although Government funded

https://www.nevilshute.org/Reviews/sliderule1.php
Quote
The Nevil Shute autobiography of his early years in aviation and the R101 Airship disaster
 

Calthrop

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Ilkley, West Yorkshire, also has a "twin" settlement in the departement of Manche, Normandy, France. (Launton's twin is Gavray; Ilkley's, Coutances.)
 

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