Settlement Association

[Springs Branch]

The manor house at Nether Winchendon has been used as a location for filming two separate episodes of the TV series Midsomer Murders.

Another popular venue appearing in this long-running series is The Six Bells pub (a.k.a. the fictitious Black Swan at Badger's Drift) in the real-life Oxfordshire village of Warborough.

 

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The Forty Club Wales XI played at Warborough and Shillingford Cricket Club during the 2021 season. The club plays on a ground adjacent to the pub named above, and very nice it is too! Another ground that we played on during the season was at Cirencester Cricket Club.

 

[Calthrop]

Kidderminster is also twinned with a settlement in the German State of Schleswig-Holstein. Cirencester's "twin" is Itzehoe; Kidderminster's, Husum.

 

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Sir Rowland Hill, KCB FRS (1795 – 1879) is usually credited with originating the basic concepts of the modern postal service, including the invention of the postage stamp. He was born on 3rd December 1795 in Kidderminster and died, aged 83, on 27th August 1879 at at Bartram House, Hampstead, London.

 

[Calthrop]

The journalist and satirist Michael Wharton (1913 -- 2006) for many years wrote a satirical / humorous column in the Daily Telegraph, under the pseudonym of Peter Simple. His general views were right-wing in an extreme and apoplectically angry way -- much of the content of his column was, in my opinion, bitter and vitriolic bordering on the vicious; but just occasionally, he seemed to forget politics and the dire state of the country and world; and waxed gloriously, and for me side-splittingly, harmlessly and totally silly. He had a large stable of crazy fictional characters whose doings were told of in the column: one was "Mrs. Dutt-Pauker, the Hampstead thinker" (and gullible Communist sympathiser). Wharton was born in Shipley, West Yorkshire.

 

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The British actor Bryan Mosley (1931 – 1999), who was best known as grocer Alf Roberts in Coronation Street lived in Shipley for many years until his death. Another notable role was as the local gangster Cliff Brumby in Get Carter (1971); he is famously killed by Jack Carter (Michael Caine), who beats him up and throws him from the roof of the Trinity Square multi-storey car park in Gateshead, after discovering Brumby's involvement in his brother's death.

 

[Calthrop]

Half of the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was manufactured at Robert Stirling Newall's works in Gateshead. That cable entered service in 1866: running between Valentia Island (present population about 665), Co. Kerry; and Newfoundland.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Moycullen in County Galway also has a church that is named the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

 

[Calthrop]

Leenaun aka Leenane, Co. Galway, is also located on the N59 road.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Kinsale in County Cork also lies on the route of the long-distance footpath known as The Wild Atlantic Way.

 

[Calthrop]

Kinsale has Ireland's only mead-producing establishment. The same beverage is also made by the Lancashire Mead Company of Bolton.

 

[DerekC]

Bolton Wanderers FC plays in EFL League 1. The originators of the name "Wanderers" for a football club (Wanderers FC) expired in the 1880s but has recently been revived as a charity club based in Upper Norwood.

 

[Calthrop]

Local legend has it that Sir Francis Drake's ship the Golden Hind was built of timber from trees felled in the Upper Norwood area. A replica of that vessel is permanently moored, and on display, at Brixham, South Devon.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Starcross in Devon also has a yachting and sailing club.

 

[Calthrop]

Hoping that this is not too "close to the line": while Starcross has the probably uniquely named Atmospheric Railway Inn; pubs called the Railway, or Railway Inn, are of course legion. Cheltenham has one.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Charlton Kings was also once administered by the Hundred of Cheltenham.

 

[Calthrop]

Charlton Kings was the childhood home of Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833 - 70): who emigrated to Australia aged 20, and achieved some prominence there as a poet and balladeer -- a forerunner of Australia's most renowned versifier, "Banjo" Patterson. Gordon lived for the final part of his shortish life, in the suburb of Melbourne which is named after the Sussex resort of Brighton.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Weymouth in Dorset also has a clock tower.

 

[Calthrop]

Weymouth has a Sea Life Adventure Park; Birmingham has the National Sea Life Centre (a marvellously bonkers feature, I have to feel, for the furthest-inland large city in Great Britain).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Rubery in Worcestershire also lies on the line of the River Rea.

 

[Calthrop]

Rubery's name comes from the Old English rowbery = "a rough hill" (there is or was one in the village). By rather the same token, the name of Roughton, Norfolk (near Cromer) is from OE meaning "rough farm / settlement", referring to the character of the ground there.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

East Lexham in Norfolk also has a round-tower church.

 

[Calthrop]

East Lexham lies in Norfolk's administrative district of Breckland (pretty much the driest and most Middle-East-like region of Great Britain). The same applies to -- near the other end of the district -- Garboldisham, Norfolk.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Quidenham in Norfolk was also once administered by the Hundred of Guiltcross.

 

[Calthrop]

According to a local tradition, Queen Boudicca / Boadicea is buried in Quidenham. Along similar lines, there is a legend that King Arthur and his knights are sleeping in a cave under the castle of Richmond, North Yorkshire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Reeth in North Yorkshire also lies on the line of the River Swale.

 

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One of the five Yorkshire Dales National Park Centres is located in Reeth; another can be found in the market town and civil parish of Grassington, North Yorkshire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Ulverston in Cumbria also hosts an annual Dickensian festival.

 

[Calthrop]

I can't resist "twin town" ones -- especially with having found what is Ulverston's twin: Albert, French departement of Somme. Burgess Hill, West Sussex, is also twinned with a settlement in that departement (Abbeville). Albert's chief claim to fame is the World War I phenomenon by which when the town was mostly destroyed by artillery fire: a statue of the Virgin Mary, on the church tower, was dislodged; but remained precariously attached, horizontally, and stayed so for years without falling down -- the "Hanging Virgin of Albert".

 

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The National Association of Local Council’s Star Council Awards are the only awards in England that recognise the local (parish and town) council sector’s positive contribution to its communities, rewarding local councils, councillors, young councillors, county associations and clerks.

Burgess Hill Town Council was awarded the status of Town Council of the Year 2006. The winner of the same award for 2020 was Farnham Town Council; one of the category Finalists was Great Dawley Town Council in Shropshire.