Settlement Association

[John Griffiths]

The Cunard liner RMS Mauretania was built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson at Wallsend and launched in 1906. It was until 1910 the largest vessel afloat and between 1907 and 1909 gained the blue riband for fastest eastbound and westbound Atlantic crossings, records held for twenty years. It was scrapped in 1935 at Rosyth in Fife.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Newcastleton in Scottish Borders also has a ruined tower house.

 

[Calthrop]

The old custom of "Common Riding", carried out at various locations in this part of the world -- annual ceremonial horseback circuit by the local worthies, of the settlement's boundaries -- is nowadays light-heartedly parodied by Newcastleton: done on bicycles, with toasts in tequila instead of whisky. The ceremony is still performed in the old, more solemn, style, in Langholm (Dumfries and Galloway), not far away.

 

[John Griffiths]

The library at Langholm was founded as a subscription library in 1800 and in 1834 received a bequest in the will of engineer Thomas Telford; since 1975 it has been run by an independent trust. Another independent library which benefited from Telford's posthumous generosity is the Westerkirk Parish Library in Bentpath, Dumfries and Galloway.

 

[Calthrop]

Bentpath lies just marginally off the B709 road. Innerleithen, Scottish Borders, is located on that same road; at its intersection with the A72.

 

[Springs Branch]

Mountain biking activities are something of 'a thing' in the Scottish Borders, and Innerleithen is apparently a mecca (as a bit of an outdoorsy type, I tried mountain biking once and ended up with a very sore bottom - never again!)

Another Borders centre for mountain biking (especially in Glentress Forest) is Peebles.

 

[John Griffiths]

Peebles has a hydro, as did, in years past, Hexham (the building is now occupied by a school).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Colchester in Essex also has historical medieval links to the leather trade.

 

[John Griffiths]

Tidworth, Wiltshire, is also a garrison town.

 

[341o2]

Burley also has a golf club

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Borehamwood in Hertfordshire also has a church that is dedicated to St John Fisher & St Thomas More.

 

[341o2]

Ealing is also associated with film studios (Borehamwood's were known as Elstree studios)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Totton in Hampshire also has a Tide Mill.

 

[Calthrop]

Until a fencing exercise carried out in 1967, New Forest ponies were free to roam Totton's streets. Also in earlier times: one of the ?charms of Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, was sheep roaming around the town's streets.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Llanberis in Gwynedd also has historical links to slate quarrying.

 

[Calthrop]

A site just outside Llanberis is called "Electric Mountain" -- a pumped-storage hydro-electric installation. On the A719 road south of Dunure, South Ayrshire, there is a location called "Electric Brae": a short stretch where owing to an optical illusion, an unbraked vehicle will seem to be running uphill, not down.

 

[Springs Branch]

Alkborough in Lincolnshire is also the location of a labyrinth.

 

[Calthrop]

Alkborough in Lincolnshire is also the location of a labyrinth.

We've truly got this -- fascinating-looking -- corner of England on the brain at present, haven't we?

Alkborough can be seen as having an Irish counterpart, in Cheekpoint, Co. Waterford: in both cases, the spot where two big rivers join to form another body of water. (Alkborough -- Yorkshire Ouse / Trent / Humber; Cheekpoint -- Barrow / Suir / Waterford Harbour.)

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Before the building of the pier at Dunmore East (also in Co. Waterford), Cheekpoint was a thriving village, being the station at which the mail packets from England for Waterford stopped. In addition, there were cotton, rope, and hosiery factories which disappeared when the mail packet station was transferred to Dunmore East on 1st July 1818.

 

[Calthrop]

I can't resist this stuff: Clonakilty, Co. Cork, is also twinned with a settlement in the French departement of Finistere. Dunmore East's "twin" is Clohars-Carnoet; Clonakilty's is Chateaulin (which -- irrelevant but interesting matter -- used to be an interchange point between the metre-gauge Reseau Breton, and a north -- south line of the SNCF).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Moycullen in County Galway also has a place of worship called The Church of the Immaculate Conception.

 

[John Griffiths]

Crolly in Co Donegal is also a village in the Gaeltacht.

 

[Calthrop]

Crolly in Co Donegal is also a village in the Gaeltacht.

Crolly -- indeed a stronghold of Irish as a birth-speech -- was the location most of a century ago, of a school for those who wished to learn Irish, or improve their command of it: run on rigorous lines -- if you were caught uttering one word of English, you were out ! The writer and broadcaster Benedict Kiely (1919 -- 2007) writes amusingly of the goings-on there. Many of Kiely's writings centre on -- with great affection -- his home "patch": Omagh, Co. Tyrone.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Newtonstewart in County Tyrone also lies on the line of the River Strule.

 

[John Griffiths]

Thomas Hartley Montgomery, a Sub-Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, was placed in charge of the investigation into the murder of William Glass, a Northern Bank employee, in Newtownstewart in 1871. It turned out eventually that Montgomery himself was the killer; he was executed at Omagh in 1873. Another murderous (former) police officer (a wartime officer) was John Christie, hanged at Pentonville in 1953 for murders committed at his home at 10 Rillington Place in the London district of Notting Hill.

 

[Calthrop]

Thomas Hartley Montgomery, a Sub-Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, was placed in charge of the investigation into the murder of William Glass, a Northern Bank employee, in Newtownstewart in 1871. It turned out eventually that Montgomery himself was the killer; he was executed at Omagh in 1873. Another murderous (former) police officer (a wartime officer) was John Christie, hanged at Pentonville in 1953 for murders committed at his home at 10 Rillington Place in the London district of Notting Hill.

You beat me to it here, with Sub-Inspector Montgomery's misconduct !

Two works by G.K. Chesterton, with their titles involving (stretching it a bit, for the second one) place-names: the novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill; and the poem The Ballad of the White Horse: about Alfred the Great's victory over the Danes in 878 A.D., at Ethandune -- most usually reckoned to be modern Edington, Wiltshire (near Westbury).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Trottiscliffe in Kent also has an example of a long barrow within its environs.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Trottiscliffe was the English home of the artist Graham Sutherland from 1937 until his death in 1980; he was buried by Trottiscliffe parish church. He was born in 1903 in Streatham, London.

 

[Calthrop]

Streatham High Road was voted in 2002, "the worst street in Britain" -- principally, from pedestrians' / residents' point of view, because of the dominance of busy through traffic along it. From the angle of the motorist, rather than his "victim": Bath, Somerset (usually thought an idyllic place), is found to be one of Britain's "nightmare" towns; thanks to traffic congestion / parking costs / its being a difficult and baffling place to navigate.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Odd Down FC are based in the Odd Down area of Bath; they are currently members of the Western League Division One and play at the Lew Hill Memorial Ground. Oldland Abbotonians FC are also members of the same division and play at the Aitchison Playing Fields, Oldland Common, South Gloucestershire.