Settlement Association

[Calthrop]

Dunstable, Bedfordshire, also has a pub called the Pheasant.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

North Weald in Essex was also chosen as a site in which to erect a priory for the Augustinian Canons Regular.

 

[Calthrop]

Roydon, Essex, also lies on the B181 road.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Theydon Garnon in Essex was also once under the jurisdiction of the Epping Poor Law Union.

 

[Calthrop]

Playing a bit fast and loose (Theydon Garnon "not on the map") -- close by, and formerly in Theydon Garnon parish, is the hamlet called Fiddlers Hamlet: after its Merry Fiddlers pub. While that establishment is still thriving; the one-time pub of the same name in Dagenham, Essex, has been demolished -- there is a supermarket in its place.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Hornchurch in Essex also lies on the line of the River Beam.

 

[D6130]

Manston in Kent was also the location of a World War 2 RAF fighter base.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Penrith in Cumbria also has a church that is dedicated to St Catherine.

 

[Calthrop]

In the English Civil War of the 1640s / 50s, the citizens of Penrith rather poignantly wished for no involvement on either side -- presumably wishing that the idiots concerned, would stop their fighting over a pointless and not-worth-it issue. In some other parts of England, citizens feeling the same way attempted to make their area's neutrality, official (this almost never worked). The folk of Cheshire tried to do so, by means of an agreement -- not adhered to -- signed at Bunbury in that county (north-west of Nantwich) in 1642.

 

[Springs Branch]

During WW2, most of the Luftwaffe's bombing Blitz was aimed at large British cities and industrial or military targets.
Sometimes stray bombs also fell on market towns and outlying villages.

Bunbury was one such victim, in the aftermath of an air raid on Liverpool. Another was the village of Hatford now part of Oxfordshire, then in Berkshire which was one of the first places in the county to suffer casualties through bombing when three young children were killed by German bombs in September 1940. By a stroke of bad luck, the children had been evacuated from London to the 'safety' of the rural village.

 

[Calthrop]

One of my favourite people in this game: the poet-from-peasant-roots Stephen Duck (1705 -- 1756) -- born in Charlton, Wiltshire (near Pewsey) -- did farm work at one time, at Hatford. (Duck had a difficult life -- later, mingling with "the great and good", which he found stressful -- sadly, ended up committing suicide.)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Poole Keynes in Glocestershire was also once administered by the large area remit of the Hundred of Malmesbury.

 

[Calthrop]

In the parish of Poole Keynes, is part of the Cotswold Water Park: the largest marl lake system in the UK. A marl lake is, we learn, a type of alkaline lake: this especially applicable to lakes (often artificial ones, created by the extraction process) which have been dredged or mined for marl -- a mixture of clay and carbonate minerals. There is also a marl lake at Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire -- now effectively part of the Luton / Dunstable "conurbation".

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire also lies on the line of the River Ouzel.

 

[Calthrop]

In World War II there was at Leighton Buzzard, a secret codebreaking and communications facility; with similarities to -- but a lot less well-known (in more recent times), than -- that at nearby Bletchley Park, Bletchley, Bedfordshire.

 

[DerekC]

Bletchley possesses the Blue Lagoon nature reserve, centred round a lake which was originally a flooded clay pit. The Blue Pool at Wareham in Dorset has a very similar origin.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Dorchester in Dorset also lies on the line of the River Frome.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy based the fictional town of Casterbridge on Dorchester, and his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge is set there. Hardy's childhood home is to the east of the town, and his town house, Max Gate, is owned by the National Trust and open to the public. Hardy is buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart was removed and buried in Stinsford, southwest Dorset.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Charminster in Dorset was also once administered by the Hundred of St George.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Charminster is a village and civil parish in west Dorset, England, situated on the River Cerne and the A352 road north of Dorchester. The hamlet and civil parish of Nether Cerne also lies on the A352 road.

 

[DerekC]

Old Holy Trinity Bothenhampton, like All Saints Nether Cerne, is a Dorset church maintained by the Churches Conservation Trust (previously the Redundant Churches Fund).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Bradpole in Dorset also lies on the line of the River Asker.

 

[Springs Branch]

Beeston near Nottingham also has a thoroughfare named Middle Street.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Papplewick in Nottinghamshire was also once under the jurisdiction of the Basford Poor Law Union.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

St James' Church, Papplewick is in a joint parish with St Michael’s Church, Linby.

 

[341o2]

Woodgreen near Fordingbridge and not a suburb of London according to google maps, also has a Horse and Groom pub.

 

[Calthrop]

The "Wood" part of Woodgreen's name, refers to Godshill Inclosure: which separates Woodgreen from the rest of the New Forest. The Inclosure's name comes from Godshill -- also in Hampshire -- a couple of miles south of Woodgreen. (This Godshill, not to be confused with the better-known one in the Isle of Wight.)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Huddersfield in West Yorkshire also has the site of an Iron Age fort within its environs.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Although Harold Wilson was born in Huddersfield on 11th March 1916, his parliamentary seat for the majority of his time in parliament was Huyton, which is centred around the Merseyside town of the same name.

 

[Calthrop]

The prolific, and chiefly science-fiction, author (specialising rather, in apocalyptic scenarios) John Christopher (1922 -- 2012) -- real name Sam Youd -- was born in Huyton. He lived for many years in Rye, East Sussex.