Settlement Association

[Springs Branch]

Sedgwick in Cumbria is another village where gunpowder has been manufactured.

 

[Calthrop]

Dunkerton (Bath & North-East Somerset) also has a disused aqueduct, pertaining to a one-time canal -- for Sedgwick, drained section of Lancaster Canal; for Dunkerton, Somerset Coal Canal.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Farleigh Hungerford was also once administered by the Hundred of Wellow.

 

[Calthrop]

According to Farleigh Hungerford's Wiki entry, there is near the village "a spot on the River Frome which is used by what is claimed to be the only river swimming club still active in Britain". Elsewhere on the Net, however, there appears information about any number of organisations all around the country, which practice what they call "wild swimming" -- a fair few of them, river-focused: one being the Dedham (Essex) River Swimmers -- presumably doing their thing in the local Stour.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Halkyn in Flintshire also has a church that is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin.

 

[DerekC]

Halkyn has an EP named after it by the Electronica group "I Looked and Beheld a Pale Horse" (I have no idea why). Portishead had an album named after it by the band "Portishead", which kind of goes one better.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Stodmarsh in Kent also has a National Nature Reserve within its environs.

 

[Calthrop]

Stodmarsh's name comes from the Saxon words stode = horse, and merse = marsh: signifying grazing area on the local marshland, for horses and cattle. The same derivation gives the name of Stody (Norfolk -- near Holt) -- Saxon-wise, "enclosure for horses".

 

[Springs Branch]

Hersden in Kent is also in the CT3 Postcode District.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

The Church of England vicar and religious controversialist the Reverend Thomas Pyle was born at Stody in 1674 and died in Swaffham, Norfolk, in 1756.

 

[Calthrop]

W.E. Johns, author of the "Biggles" books, lived and worked for a while in Swaffham: including in 1914, when -- he being in the Territorial Army -- he was immediately called up to serve in World War I: in the course of which he was introduced to aviation, providing much inspiration for his subsequent fiction output. Johns was born in Bengeo, now a suburb of Hertford.

 

[341o2]

Bengeo was once served by London Transport Country buses route 333, the same number is now used for a route which starts at the Elephant and terminates at Tooting

 

[Calthrop]

The route of the Roman road Stane Street -- London to Chichester -- runs through Tooting (Tooting High Street follows it); quite near its opposite end, it passes through Bignor, West Sussex.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Fishbourne in West Sussex is where the remains of a large Roman building was built that can be seen today by the public.

 

[DerekC]

Castleton in Derbyshire also has a pub called The Bull's Head. However the Sussex pub is a Fullers house whereas the one in Derbyshire serves Robinsons, which I confess I have never tried.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Taunton also once had a medieval period leper hospital.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Jennifer Ann (Jenny) Agutter OBE was born in Taunton on 20th December 1952. She's famous for playing Roberta in a BBC adaptation of The Railway Children (in 1968) and then in Lionel Jeffries's 1970 film of the book. A number of different locations were employed for various scenes, with the house called "Three Chimneys" being in Oxenhope.

 

[Calthrop]

Oxenhope's 19th-century Anglican Church of St. Mary the Virgin was founded "at the behest of" the Rev. Patrick Bronte, father of the novelists. It seems that the Rev. Joseph Brett Grant actually did the hard work, including the fundraising. The Rev. Bronte was born near Rathfriland, County Down.

 

[Springs Branch]

Amble in Northumberland also has a clock tower war memorial

 

[Calthrop]

About a mile off Amble is Coquet Island, a splendid bird reserve where -- among other ornithological joys -- puffins nest in season. In times past, the town has held at appropriate time of year, a "Puffin Festival" -- basically, planned to attract people to come and spend. Another Northern settlement -- but on the opposite coast -- featuring on the puffin scene, is St. Bees, Cumbria. The nearby St. Bees Head is the only location in the British Isles, where all of these islands' four species of annual-visiting-and-breeding auk -- puffin, razorbill, common guillemot, black guillemot -- are in the late-spring / early-summer season -- all present and doing their thing.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Shap in Cumbria also lies on the route of the 192 mile long Coast to Coast Walk.

 

[D6130]

The Coast to Coast Walk was first planned by Alfred Wainwright MBE, the well-known fell-walker, journalist, guide book author and illustrator, who was born in Blackburn, Lancashire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Durham also has an Anglican cathedral.

 

[D6130]

Bishop Auckland is also situated on the River Wear.

 

[Calthrop]

A British meme in fairly recent times, has been ironically to call places -- not (putting it politely) prominent jewels in the country's tourist crown -- " *** Vegas", after the extremely popular resort in the US. Bishop Auckland thus sometimes referred to as "Bish Vegas"; Stalybridge (Greater Manchester) as "Staly-Vegas".

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Eccles in Greater Manchester also has an archery club.

 

[Calthrop]

Eccles shares a name with a character in the -- beloved in various forms, over the past pretty-well three-quarters of a century, Goon Show. Another -- lesser -- character therein, is Minnie Bannister (with her -- significant other? -- Henry Crun): Minnie sharing part of her name, with part of that of Bannister Green, Essex (between Great Dunmow and Braintree).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Wicken Bonhunt in Essex was also once administered by the Hundred of Uttlesford,

 

[Calthrop]

Wicken Bonhunt in Essex was also once administered by the Hundred of Uttlesford,

There is a county northward, another Wicken (Cambridgeshire) -- a little way south of Ely -- close to which is Wicken Fen nature reserve: nearest likely approximation to what eastern England's Fen country was like, pre-draining.

 

[DerekC]

Wicken possesses the only dodecagonal smock mill in working order remaining in England. Smock mills on other plans are relatively easy to find. The tallest, a hexagonal mill, is the Union Mill at Cranbrook in Kent.