Settlement Association

[Calthrop]

Stobo's main feature would seem to be its Castle, built in the early 19th century, and now a health spa. The Castle was owned between 1905 and his death in 1935, by the English cricketer Hylton Philipson; who was born in Tynemouth, Northumberland.

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

ALSTON is near the other end of the (South) Tyne.

 

[Calthrop]

According to some news sources, the two towns in Britain with the greatest population imbalance between male and female inhabitants (the former heavily outnumbering the latter) are, coincidentally: Alston (Cumbria), and Bere Alston, Devon.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Ilfracombe in Devon also has a badminton club.

 

[Calthrop]

The once-daily return boat service between the mainland and Lundy Island, usually plies between Bideford and the island; there are certain times, though, when tidal conditions in the dual Torridge / Taw estuary rule out using Bideford for the purpose -- when this obtains, Ilfracombe substitutes as the mainland port.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Lancaster was also a noted settlement where witch trials were once held.

 

[Springs Branch]

Stagecoach's bus route 555 is one of the most scenic local routes in England, operating between Lancaster and Keswick.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

In the late 19th century and into the 20th, Keswick was the focus of several important initiatives by the growing conservation movement, often led by Revd Hardwicke Rawnsley, vicar of the nearby St Kentigern's Church, Crosthwaite and co-founder of the National Trust, which has built up extensive holdings in the area.

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

Saint Kentigern was Welsh of course, a hospice in St ASAPH bears his name.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

St David's also has a cathedral with Grade I listed status.

 

[Calthrop]

The Adur district of Sussex (main town Shoreham-by-Sea) is also twinned with a settlement in the French departement of Puy-de-Dome (St. David's's [is that how you spell the possessive?] "twin" is Orleat; Adur's, Riom.)

 

[Springs Branch]

Shoreham-by-Sea was unfortunately the scene of a fatal plane crash during an airshow in 2015.
Another location where a jet aircraft crashed during an airshow (in 1952) is Farnborough.

 

[Calthrop]

Farnborough has a pub called the Tumbledown Dick: nickname mockingly given to Richard Cromwell, briefly and unsuccessfully Lord Protector of England in succession to his father Oliver. Richard Cromwell was -- like his dad -- born in Huntingdon.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Lyme Regis in Dorset also has a church that is dedicated to St Michael the Archangel.

 

[Calthrop]

The genesis of the much-loved figure Lassie the collie dog, is reckoned to have been at Lyme Regis in 1915: bodies of victims of a German submarine's sinking of a Royal Navy vessel were brought to a pub in the town; the owner's collie Lassie licked the face of one of them -- he proved to be still alive, and recovered. Lassie really "took off" in different guise: as heroine of the 1940 novel by Eric Knight, Lassie Come-Home -- subsequently translated to the screen, where featured variously and for many years. Though he spent most of his life in the U.S.A., Eric Knight wrote chiefly on British themes; he was born in Menston, West Yorkshire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Holme Chapel (not too far removed from the Burnley area of Lancashire) also has a church that is dedicated to St John the Divine.

 

[Calthrop]

Also in the area of the picturesque Cliviger Gorge, is Portsmouth (not to be confused with the Hampshire city of naval note) -- now (just) in West Yorkshire: this settlement has over time, been something of a "football" between Yorkshire and Lancashire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Erringden in West Yorkshire was also once under jurisdiction of the Todmorden Poor Law Union.

 

[Calthrop]

According to an 1870 topographical work, Erringden holds -- or did -- a fair annually "on Erringden-Moor", on the Friday after 11th October. Similarly with Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, on the second Tuesday in September. However, unlike with the Devon settlement: there isn't (subject to correction here by @Xenophon PCDGS) a song about Erringden's fair.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Ipswich in Suffolk also has a church that is dedicated to St Pancras.

 

[Calthrop]

The actor David Garrick (1717 -- 79), born in Hereford: made his acting debut at the theatre in Ipswich in 1741: playing the part of Aboan in the play Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave.

 

[John Griffiths]

Stirling Lines, Hereford is famously the regimental headquarters of the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS). The SAS, founded 1941, was disbanded in 1945 but reformed in 1947, taking in the Artists Rifles and based at Dukes Road, Euston, London.

 

[Calthrop]

One understands that the London district of Euston takes its name from association with the Dukes of Grafton; their ancestral home being Euston Hall, near the village of Euston, (just) in Suffolk -- nearest town Thetford (Norfolk).

 

[EbbwJunction1]

The parish church in Euston Park is dedicated to Saint Genevieve, and dates from 1676. The saint has no known connections with Suffolk, but her name was used as the name of a film in 1953 about the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. This still takes place (this year is the 125th Anniversary), and the cars stop half way at Crawley.

(Yes, I know that it's a tenuous connection, but I thought that you'd like it!)

 

[Calthrop]

Tenuous is good !!

Romesh Ranganathan, comedian and TV presenter (he of the resplendent bushy black beard) was born, and lives, in Crawley. Before his comedy career took off, he was for a time a teacher in Banstead, near Reigate, Surrey.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Thank you ... this one's not so tenuous, though!

The spire of the Anglican parish church of All Saints was the guiding marker for the first proper, scientific, mapping baseline. This was the Anglo-French Survey (1784 - 1790) by which precisely scaled mapping of the country was enabled, led by General William Roay. The modern locations of the southeast end points is in Roy Grove, Hampton, in the London Borough of Richmond.

 

[Calthrop]

A notable feature of Hampton is, of course, Hampton Court Palace: a notable feature in turn of which, is its Great Vine: reputedly the largest grape vine in the world. The Great Vine was initiated in 1768, via a cutting from a vine at Valentines Mansion, Valentines Park, Ilford, Essex.

 

[John Griffiths]

John Logie Baird lived in Ilford in the late 1920s, working on developing his television system. He was born in 1888 in Helensburgh on the Clyde estuary.

Also, I used to walk past Roy Grove every day on my way to school.

 

[DerekC]

In 1864 the skull of a woolly mammoth was unearthed in Ilford (said to be the only complete one ever found in the UK). You may have read that a leg bone from the same species (but presumably not the same individual) was found during excavation for the A14 at Fenstanton in Cambridgeshire.

Oh kn***ers - I was rather pleased with my mammoth. Think again!

The "Helensburgh Advertiser" had an interesting article recently about the discovery of "bone circles" made of mammoth bones on the plains of Russia and the Ukraine. You may have read an article in the "Guardian" in 2018 about the finding of a leg bone from the same species (but of course a genuine British Mammoth) during excavation for the A14 at Fenstanton in Cambridgeshire.

(Made it!)

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

Tenuous again

Yesterday the Guardian reported about an exhibition in a museum in Leiden NL about DOGGERLAND, a lost country under what is now the North Sea. The connection is that many animal bones, artefacts, tools have been found there.

Doggerland would of course have belonged to the UK, had it not been drowned 8200 years ago.

There is a utube film about the exhibition, in Nederlandse with English subtitles.

Besides, I have been to Doggerland, or rather passed over it while asleep on a cruiseferry.