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Settlement Association

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Calthrop

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South of Catcliffe is a small lake called Catcliffe Flash -- a nature reserve -- formed by interaction of coal-mining subsidence, and the River Rother and adjoining land. A little way west of Sandbach, Cheshire, there is something similar but on a bigger scale: a number of pools named [this, that and the other] Flash: the whole, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, with much-and-varied interest to the biologist.
 

EbbwJunction1

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Sandbach is perhaps best known as the original home of Foden and ERF Lorries, although neither company now exists in the town. The Foden's Brass Band came from the former company, and are the current (September 2021) holders of the National Brass Band Championship. No competition was held in 2020; the previous winners (in 2019) were The Cory Band, whose home is in Treorchy in the Rhondda Valley.
 

Calthrop

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Anneka Rice was born in Cowbridge. Among the innumerable places where she has televisually "done her stuff", is the flight of locks on the Grand Union Canal at Hatton, Warwickshire.
 
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Calthrop

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Exhall -- in Nuneaton and Bedworth, not far away -- also has a church dedicated to St. Giles.
 

Calthrop

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Bulkington in Warwickshire also has historical connections to the trade of ribbon making.

Good old George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) -- she's saved my bacon in this game before now. Born nearby in Nuneaton, she was well-acquainted with Bulkington; which is thought to be fictionalised as "Raveloe" in her Silas Marner. She is buried in Highgate Cemetery, north London.
 

D6130

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Lancaster is situated at the lowest bridging point on the River Lune. Another, less well-known, River Lune flows into the Tees at Mickleton, Co. Durham.
 

Calthrop

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Gok Wan, the fashion consultant / author / cook / television presenter lives, believe it or not, in Hunderthwaite. He grew up in Whetstone, near Leicester.
 

D6130

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Whetstone is the site of the factory where Sir Frank Whittle developed the first jet engine during the second world war. He is buried at Cranwell in Lincolnshire.
 

Calthrop

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Dumfries also has an aviation museum.

Oh, Lord, I hate Dumfries -- always have great difficulty finding anything to say about it. The town's name is a bit notorious as the subject of feeble cryptic-crossword clues, involving unintelligent chips. In similar case is Holyhead -- the clue-setters always seem to fall back on stuff about religious leaders ...
 

Calthrop

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Dolgarrog in Conwy County Borough is another Welsh settlement that once had an aluminium smelting facility.

Adjacent to the above-bolded, is Coed Dolgarrog National Nature Reserve: featuring beech woodland, which is rare in Wales. A well-known NNR featuring that species of tree -- in a more beech-friendly part of Britain -- is that of Burnham Beeches, close by Burnham, Buckinghamshire (near Slough).

Sorry....slightly OT, but there's loads to say about Dumfries - much of it involving Robert Burns, who died and is buried there.

I'm sure there are indeed plenty of Dumfries-related topics -- and I'm sure the town is a grand place in general (I've never been there); I just seem to have, context Settlement Association, a mental block as regards this particular settlement.
 

Calthrop

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Bernard Vann, the only Church of England clergyman to be awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions as a combatant in World War I (posthumously -- he was killed very near the end of the war) -- and incidentally, also a keen amateur footballer -- was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire; but spent much of his childhood in Coates.
 

D6130

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Rushden was also the birthplace of novelist H. E. Bates, who wrote - amongst other books - The Darling Buds of May. He died in Canterbury, Kent.
 

Calthrop

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The travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915 -- 2011) -- who wrote relatively few, but IMO exquisite, books; and "specialised" above all, on Greece and Crete -- was for a while an (undistinguished) pupil at King's School, Canterbury. He is buried in the churchyard at Dumbleton, Gloucestershire (between Winchcombe and Evesham).
 

Calthrop

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Bishops Waltham was terrorised in the early 18th century by a local gang of deer-poachers called the Waltham Blacks. Another locality of lore about hunting deer which are not one's own to hunt, is -- in the imagination of song-makers, at any rate -- Arnold, near Nottingham: adjacent to which were, reputedly, Thorneymoor Woods; referred to in the folk song of that name (which identifies the poachers as the good guys).
 

Calthrop

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Otley has no less than five -- of assorted variants / "species" thereof -- Morris-dance sides. Alton, Hampshire, has likewise a Morris side.
 
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