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Settlement Association

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Calthrop

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There used to be near Scoulton, a thriving inland breeding colony of black-headed gulls; whose eggs the locals were happy to collect "for the table" -- they were an important ingredient of the now obsolete dish "Scoulton Pie". A better-known -- and still made -- idiosyncratic "local" pie, is Stargazy Pie (a fish one, baked with the heads of the fishes -- preferably pilchards -- sticking out of the pastry so that they're [reproachfully?] looking at you): originated in Mousehole, Cornwall -- which we had in the game earlier this month.
 
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Another Matlock Bath happening / attraction: what Wiki describes as the Parish Council's organising Pro Loco events in the area. These turn out -- perhaps disappointingly -- to be nothing to do with rail motive power: but, a Latin term, "for the sake of the place" -- wording and idea originating, appropriately, in Italy: grass-roots initiatives seeking to promote a particular settlement and its attractions. Matlock Bath's such, are art and photographic competitions, entry free of charge. Last year at any rate, Hayfield -- also in Derbyshire -- held a similar Pro Loco art competition.
 
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Richard Graves (1715-1804), cleric, poet and novelist, wrote part of his novel 'The Spiritual Quixote' while living and working in Tissington. He was born in Mickleton, Gloucestershire,
 
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Wiki writes in its Mickleton entry, a good deal about Meon Hill (194 m. above sea level), a mile or two from Mickleton -- although the hill is in fact on the far side of the county boundary with Warwickshire (Mickleton being, incidentally, the northernmost settlement in Gloucestershire). Meon Hill is a focus for assorted "spooky and sinister" lore; including the factual -- and still unsolved -- 1945 murder of Charles Walton, whose body was found on the slopes of the hill: suspected witchcraft connections to the crime. Walton was from Lower Quinton, Warwickshire; which is fractionally closer to Meon Hill, than is Mickleton.
 
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Xenophon PCDGS said:
Childswickham in Gloucestershire was also once administered by the Hundred of Kiftsgate.
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Morpeth, Northumberland, also has a church dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin.

(Point of information: Childswickham was formerly in Gloucestershire, but has been in Worcestershire since 1931. County boundaries in this general area were "in days gone by", extremely convoluted, tangled, and complicated.)
 
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Desperation department -- seeing Wiki's info concerning bygone days: "Littleborough was a chapelry and component area of Hundersfield, an ancient township ..." I initially misread this H-place as Huddersfield, some fifteen miles to the east and in Yorkshire; and thought, "odd" ...
 
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The body of King Richard II was -- after his probable murder in 1400 at Pontefract Castle (now in West Yorkshire) -- initially buried at All Saints' Church, Kings Langley. Later re-interred in Westminster Abbey.
 
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One of what I tend snobbishly to regard as "desperation stations" in the game: Ockham gave its name to one of the Ham class minesweepers of the Royal Navy. Another settlement similarly commemorated, is Rampisham, Dorset: some miles north-west of Maiden Newton.
 
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Verwood's name has developed over time, from the Old English Fairwod = "beautiful wood". It would appear, oddly, that the settlement was first named by the conquering Normans, as Beau Bois -- "beautiful wood" in Norman-French: this subsequently "made over" into English instead of, as more commonly, the other way round. Nomenclatorial cross-fertilisation between "us and them" also occurred with Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex. Pre-1066, simply Hurst -- Anglo-Saxon for "wooded hill". After the Conquest, the settlement became the property of the de Pierpoint family: hence addition of the second and third syllables.
 
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Interesting trivia item just learned: there was some seventy or eighty years ago, a song highly popular in Ireland -- by the bandleader Bert Flynn -- with its action supposedly set in Roscommon town: called She was Plucking a Duck by the Old River Suck (which river flows quite close to the town, though not directly by it). A somewhat older, basically humorous Irish song also with an anatine theme: is Nell Flaherty's Drake (old lady calls down curses on the scoundrel who has killed, and presumaby eaten, her cherished bird): is, per the wording, set in Cootehill, Co. Cavan.
 
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Wigan, Greater Manchester, is also twinned with a settlement in the French departement of Maine-et-Loire. Ballinasloe's "twin" is Chalonnes-sur-Loire; Wigan's is Angers.
 
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