Settlement Association

[EbbwJunction1]

Burleigh Court Hotel, Brimscombe, occupies a Grade II listed early 19th century manor house, built for George Harmar (d.1827) and rebuilt in the 1920s by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis. Known most notably for his creation of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales, his first commission was Larkbeare, a summer house for Anne Wynne Thackeray in Cumnor, Oxfordshire, in 1903 - 1904 (finished 1907) which he designed while still a student.

 

[Calthrop]

Newbury, Berkshire, also appears in disguised and "re-named" form, in the novels of Thomas Hardy. Cumnor, "Hardyfied", is Lumsdon; Newbury is Kennetbridge.

 

[DerekC]

US ground launched nuclear armed cruise missiles were deployed in the 1980s to RAF Greenham Common near Newbury and also to RAF Molesworth.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Sudborough in Northamptonshire was also once under the jurisdiction of the Thrapston Poor Law Union.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Sudborough is bypassed by the A6116 road, which runs from the North Northamptonshire settlements of Thrapston and Rockingham.

 

[Springs Branch]

Thrapston is located on the navigable section of the River Nene, which extends from The Wash as far inland as Northampton.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Gloucester alsohas a Guildhall

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Gloucester, Northampton and Leicester all have Premiership rugby teams.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Derby also lends its name to a type of cheese.

 

[DerekC]

One of the major employers in Derby is Rolls Royce plc, which has its headquarters at King's Place in the London Borough of Islington.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Colsterworth in Lincolnshire is another settlement on the route of the Great North Road.

 

[Calthrop]

Born in Colsterworth -- or at least its adjacent hamlet Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth -- was Sir Isaac Newton. His fellow-scientist contemporary Robert Hooke was born in Freshwater, Isle of Wight.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Luccombe on the Isle of Wight also lies on the route of the circular long-distance footpath known as the Isle of Wight Coastal Path.

 

[Calthrop]

Dunstable, Bedfordshire -- and near environs -- is also a noted venue for hang-gliding and paragliding.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Kilsby in Northamptonshire also lies on the route of the Roman road known as Watling Street.

 

[Calthrop]

Kilsby is at one end -- its junction there with the A5 -- of the A361, Britain's longest road with a three-digit identifying number. The road's other end is at Ilfracombe, North Devon.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Exeter was another of the defensive military settlements of the Celtic people known as the Dumnonii.

 

[Calthrop]

Kipling's poem Public Waste, satirises corruption -- mild; but it would seem, in the poet's view, nonetheless deplorable -- in the high echelons of Britain's governing of its Raj in India. The victim of same in the poem: is a railway administrator for whom Kipling invents a marvellous name, borrowing those of two settlements in England -- one Exeter Battleby Tring.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Wem in Shropshire also has a church that is dedicated to St Peter and St Paul.

 

[Calthrop]

A much-loved British jest: is the humorous claim of various settlements' being the location of "mines" for assorted commodities which self-evidently are not, and cannot be, mined: a prime favourite among such products, being treacle. In this tradition, Wem supposedly has treacle mines; so has Binsey, near Oxford.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Holywell in Flintshire also has a noted holy well.

 

[Calthrop]

Emlyn Williams (1905 -- 87) -- writer, dramatist and actor -- attended Holywell Grammar School. He was born just a little way down the Dee Estuary on the Welsh side, at Mostyn.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Ysceifiog in Flintshire was also once under the jurisdiction of the Holywell Poor Law Union.

 

[Calthrop]

Higher Bockhampton, Dorset -- a little way east of Dorchester -- is also located close to woodland of interest to students of fungi.

 

[D6130]

The great Victorian novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was born at Higher Bockhampton in 1840. Following his death in 1928, his body was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart is interred in a grave - next to those of his two wives - in the churchyard at Stinsford, where he was baptised.

 

[Calthrop]

Buried in Stinsford churchyard is -- as well as Hardy's heart and wives -- Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972: buried there according to his wishes, he having been a great admirer of Hardy. Day-Lewis was born near Stradbally, Co. Laois.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Strathaven in South Lanarkshire also has a church that is dedicated to St Patrick.

 

[D6130]

Scottish singer and music hall artist Sir Harry Lauder died at Strathaven (incidentally, pronounced "Stray-ven") in 1950. He was born in Portobello - nowadays an Eastern suburb of Edinburgh - in 1870.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Worthing in West Sussex also has marine gardens.

 

[Calthrop]

Some centuries ago, Worthing was only a small mackerel-fishing hamlet: it has developed greatly since. A place which seems often to pop up in this game is Peterhead, Aberdeenshire -- its significance in this turn, being that it is nowadays Britain's most prominent port for fishing for mackerel; with a greater quantity thereof landed there, than anywhere else in the country.