Settlement Association

[Calthrop]

Another marvellously-named settlement -- Brightwell Baldwin (Oxfordshire -- near Watlington) -- is also a couple of miles from an English Civil War battlefield (H.W. -- Marston Moor; B.B. -- Chalgrove).

 

[EbbwJunction1]

The parish church of Brightwell Baldwin, St Bartholomews, has a bell tower with a ring of six bells. Several foundaries have supplied these bells, with the majority coming from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The foundry closed in June 2017, after nearly 450 years of bell-making and 250 years at its Whitechapel site, and the bell patents were sold to the bell-hanging company Whites of Appleton in Oxfordshire, with which the foundry had a business relationship for 197 years.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Eriswell in Suffolk also has a church that is dedicated to St Laurence.

 

[Calthrop]

Feltwell, Norfolk, also lies on the B1112 road.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Weeting in Norfolk was also once administered by the ancient Hundred of Grimshoe.

 

[Calthrop]

There took place in 2011, police investigations into allegations of phone hacking connected with the News of the World newspaper; and into inappropriate payments to the police by those involved in phone hacking; titled respectively Operation Weeting, and Operation Elveden. Elveden is in Suffolk, some seven miles south-east of Weeting -- the police operations' names would seem to have been chosen at random, after little-known East Anglian villages: nothing actually to do with those settlements.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Holkham in Norfolk also has a noted tall war memorial.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Holkham parish church, dedicated to Saint Withburga, is just south of the coast road, hidden in the trees of the Holkham Estate. The church contains several memorials to various members of the Coke family of Holkham Hall; during the post medieval period, many members of the family were also buried in the parish church of St Mary at Tittleshall, Norfolk.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

King's Newnham in Warwickshire is another settlement that has Neolithic ring ditches within its environs.

 

[Calthrop]

If in doubt, go for "River Avon's" ... Salford Priors, also in Warwickshire, also lies close by the Stratford Avon -- further down its course.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

St Matthew's Parish Church, Salford Priors is part of the Heart of England Group of Parishes, which also includes St Andrews, Temple Grafton.

 

[Calthrop]

Temple Grafton is, as "Hungry Grafton" (poor soil, bad crops) one of the "entries" in the (first couplet of) the four-line verse concerning villages in the Stratford area -- attributed (a bit doubtfully) to Shakespeare -- of which I'm rather fond. Verse's second couplet runs:

Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford,
Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford

Am going for -- as above -- Broom, Warwickshire -- partly because of an "irrelevant-to-game" thing: the village enjoyed a spell as the westernmost point of the Stratford & Midland Junction Railway, where it connected with the Midland's Alcester and Evesham loop line.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Both the town of Alcester and the village of Broom are on the route of the River Arrow; the former is more northerly than the latter.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Hinchwick in Gloucestershire also lies on the route of the Roman road known as Icknield Street.

 

[Calthrop]

Hinchwick's Manor House was designed by the noted architect Charles Robert Cockerell (1788 -- 1863). This gentleman met his wife-to-be -- with whom he ultimately had ten children -- at Dalmeny (City of Edinburgh).

 

[John Griffiths]

The church at Dalmeny was (re)built c.1130 by Gospatric, Earl of Dunbar, son of an exiled Northumbrian noble. Gospatric's daughter Juliana was a founder of Newminster Abbey at Morpeth, Northumberland, an attractive and historic town sadly overlooked by many visitors to NE England.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Mitford in Northumberland also lies on the line of the River Wansbeck.

 

[Calthrop]

Scots Gap also lies on the B6343 road, some way west of Mitford.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Welshpool in Powys also holds a livestock market.

 

[Calthrop]

Welshpool has a preserved cockpit building (not used for that purpose since the outlawing of the practice -- viz. cock-fighting -- in 1849). There is another such in the grounds of the St. Fagans Welsh National Museum of History in Cardiff; rebuilt after transferring from Denbigh, where it formerly stood.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Northallerton in North Yorkshire was also chosen as a site for a Carmelite Priory.

 

[Springs Branch]

Northallerton is the county town of North Yorkshire.
More useful ammunition for pub quizzes - another slightly non-intuitive location of a county town is Matlock in (and county town of) Derbyshire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Parwich in Derbyshire was also once administered by the Hundred of Wirksworth.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

St Peter’s Church, Parwich is a Grade II* listed Church of England parish church. The current church replaced a medieval building and was erected between 1872 and 1873 by Henry Isaac Stevens and Frederick Josias Robinson. Henry Isaac Stevens was responsible for many buildings, including another St Peter's Church at Fordcombe, Kent between 1847 and 1849.

 

[Calthrop]

Prominent around Fordcombe are and have been the local Hardinge family; members of which played a considerable part in the administration of Britain's Indian Empire. A fictional family, succeeding generations of whom play a similar role -- though largely on the military side -- in the Raj: is the Savage family, creation of the novelist John Masters (1914 -- 1983), who served in Britain's Indian Army; and attended school at Wellington College, Crowthorne, Berkshire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Bournemouth also has a Symphony Orchestra.

 

[341o2]

Bournemouth converted three of its trolleybuses to open top for a summer tour, Hastings likewise had some open top double deck trolleybuses.
One example of each has passed into preservation, Bournemouth 202 and Hastings 3A

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Lancaster also has a Society of Friends Meeting House.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

The Ashton Memorial is a folly in Williamson Park, Lancaster, which was built between 1907 and 1909 by the millionaire industrialist Lord Ashton in memory of his second wife, Jessy, at a cost of £87,000. It is in the Edwardian Baroque style and was designed by the English architect John Belcher RIBA RA (1841 – 1913). John Belcher was responsible for many buildings in London and elsewhere, and also designed Redholm, Champion Hill, Dulwich, in 1885 for himself; he lived there until his death.

 

[John Griffiths]

The Ashton Memorial is a wonderful Edwardian baroque domed structure with no particular function which dominates the skyline of Lancaster, built by lino magnate and former local MP James Williamson (Lord Ashton) in memory of his second wife (of three). Ashton was born in Lancaster, and died in 1930 at Ashton Hall in Thurnham, a few miles south of the city.

Great minds...