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Settlement Association

Calthrop

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81.7% of Trawsfynydd's population is Welsh-speaking, making it one of the five top Welsh-speaking communities in Gwynedd. The very top position in this "league" is held by Llanrug, between Caerarfon and Llanberis, with 87.8% Welsh-speakers.
 
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Calthrop

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Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire, also has the remains of a Roman fort, set up beyond the more-settled areas of Roman Britain.
 

EbbwJunction1

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Kirkintilloch Rob Roy FC are based in Kirkintilloch, although they currently play their home games at Guy's Meadow, Cumbernauld, the home of Cumbernauld United, whilst they wait for a new home ground to be built in Kirkintilloch.
 
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Some scenes for the Welsh language sitcom 'C'mon Middfild!' were filmed at Llanrug. The series was about a small village football club, based on Pontrhydfendigaid FC in Ceredigion.
 

Calthrop

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Kirkintilloch Rob Roy FC are based in Kirkintilloch, although they currently play their home games at Guy's Meadow, Cumbernauld, the home of Cumbernauld United, whilst they wait for a new home ground to be built in Kirkintilloch.

Cumbernauld has received twice (in 2001 and 2005), the magazine Urban Realm's irregularly-bestowed "Carbuncle" or "Plook on the Plinth" Award, for "the most dismal town in Scotland". 2013's recipient of that Award, was New Cumnock.
 
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Calthrop

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Wickham Skeith's village pond was the scene in 1825, of one of Britain's last "swimmings" as a test for suspected witchcraft (nothing worse, subsequently befell the victim). On a similar theme: the last, or almost so, conviction under this country's Witchcraft Act, was the celebrated one of the (reckoned fraudulent) medium Helen Duncan, in 1944 -- involving odd wartime doings which authority feared might pose security risks. Ms. Duncan was born in 1897 in Callander, Perthshire.
 

Calthrop

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Rudolf Hess, after reaching Scotland on his attempted peace mission to Britain in May 1941, was initially confined at Buchanan Castle near Drymen. His arrival in Scotland involved his crash-landing his aircraft at Waterfoot, East Renfrewshire.
 

Calthrop

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The above-bolded settlement has no connection with the military headgear called the "busby" (re which the dictionary says "origin unknown"). Said name is often misused for the more familiar, taller black fur cap correctly called a "bearskin". One of the regiments with the right to wear the bearskin, is the Coldstream Guards; founded at that Scottish Borders town in 1650.
 

EbbwJunction1

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The English poet and dramatist John Gay, best known for the Beggar's Opera", was born in Barnstaple on 30th June 1865. He died in London on 4th December 1732, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in the City of Westminster.
 

EbbwJunction1

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The Abbey was restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott between 1871 and 1873 (who restored much of the Nave for use), and again in 1889 and 1890 by his son John Oldrid Scott, who restored the choir. The latter was also responsible for works at St Bartholomew's Church, Hints, Staffordshire between 1882 and 1883.
 

Calthrop

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... St Bartholomew's Church, Hints, Staffordshire between 1882 and 1883.

The name Hints as above, is thought to be derived from the Welsh hynt = road: referring to the old Watling Street, more recently the A5, on whose route the village lies. Situated on the same ancient / modern road route, and with a name alluding to it, is Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire: the name's "Stratford" element coming from the Anglo-Saxon denoting "ford on a Roman road".

(Find "Hints", a rather odd-looking / sounding name for a settlement -- although the place is pretty-much just down the road from where I live, I'd never heard of it before @EbbwJunction's post.)
 

Calthrop

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At Wendover, the A413 road north-west out of London intersects the route of the ancient Icknield Way. Royston, North Hertfordshire, is also on the Icknield Way.
 

Calthrop

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The Prime (Greenwich) Meridian passes through Royston and the East Sussex town of Peacehaven.

Indulgence begged, for a rather "tangled tale" here; the entrepreneur who founded w.e.f. 1916, the above-bolded settlement: publicised it by holding a competition for a name for the new community -- this stuff got rather acrimonious. Involved therewith among other things, was the original winning name, "New-ANZAC-on-Sea" (in tribute to the heroism of Australian and New Zealand troops in the recent Gallipoli campaign), being scrapped in favour of the less wordy Peacehaven. Around the same time, Winston Churchill -- "under a cloud" in the then government, re the failure of the Gallipoli venture which had been his brainchild: was assigned for a while to the sinecure of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
 

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