Settlement Association

[341o2]

Acton was once an industrial area, best known for the Napier car factory.
Llantwit Fadre Glamorgan was the location for the Gilbern factory - the only production cars completely designed and manufactured in Wales by a Welsh company.

 

[Calthrop]

Acton was once an industrial area, best known for the Napier car factory.
Llantwit Fadre Glamorgan was the location for the Gilbern factory - the only production cars completely designed and manufactured in Wales by a Welsh company.

The above-bolded settlement is in part named after -- and has a church dedicated to -- the 5th-century Saint Illtyd or Illtud. This sanctified gent appears to be a speciality of the southern parts of Wales (where he is reckoned to have lived and done his stuff) -- seemingly no churches dedicated to him, elsewhere. It would seem that by an unfortunate circumstance, his name is "Englished" -- as in the above-bolded -- as "Twit"; which for obvious reasons, causes embarrassment: as in Llantwit Major (Welsh, Llanilltyd Fawr), Glamorgan -- where the saint is reckoned to have been abbot and teacher -- also with a church dedicated to him. One gathers that many of this town's English-speakers, would like the place to be renamed. (Is there not a long-standing strain in Christianity, re being a "holy fool", or "God's fool" -- this reckoned to be a good thing? -- and wouldn't many saints feel pleased and complimented to be called by the world, a twit?)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Fforestfach in the Swansea District area also has a church that is dedicated to St Illtyd.

 

[341o2]

St Illtyd is one of Wales' most revered saints, St Petroc is one of Cornwall's. Legend has it that he came from Ireland to the Camel estuary, landing in the vicinity of Padstow.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

St Enoder in Cornwall was also once under the jurisdiction of the St Columb Major Poor Law Union.

 

[341o2]

Zelah also is on the route of the A30.

 

[Springs Branch]

The name Zelah has biblical origins (Zelah in Judea was the burial place of King Saul).

Bethesda in Gwynedd is another settlement whose name as biblical connotation (The Gospel of John alleges that Jesus healed a paralysed man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem)

 

[341o2]

Bethesda has the world's largest opencast slate quarry, Delabole is England's oldest working quarry, and the world's deepest, until opencast mining started in the USA and Australia

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

St Agnes also lies within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

 

[341o2]

St Agnes is also the name of the southernmost inhabited island of the Isles of Scilly, Troy Town Farm, St Agnes, is the southernmost settlement in the UK

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Uyeasound on the Isle of Unst is the most northern settlement to have accredited camping sites in the UK.

 

[Calthrop]

Uyeasound on the Isle of Unst is the most northern settlement to have accredited camping sites in the UK.

("Gazumped " ! -- I was just typing out what I considered a splendid post, "Scillies-to-elsewhere"; but not as far as the Isle of Unst ...)

At Uyeasound is Greenwell's Booth: a one-time storehouse of the German trading undertaking, the Hanseatic League. Boston, Lincolnshire, had strong commercial links with that body in its days of wealth and power.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Brothertoft in Lincolnshire was also once under the jurisdiction of the Boston Poor Law Union.

 

[Calthrop]

Brothertoft's church is dedicated to St. Gilbert of Sempringham: part of a scene of which I am rather fond. The said Saint founded the Gilbertine monastic order; the only one of such, of purely English origin. The Order's headquarters were at the Priory of Sempringham, Lincolnshire: about a dozen miles south-west of Brothertoft.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Dunsby in Lincolnshire was also once under the jurisdiction of the Aslackby sub-district of the Bourne Poor Law Union.

 

[Calthrop]

Winthorpe, Nottinghamshire -- near Newark -- also has a church dedicated to All Saints.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Dumfries also has an aviation museum.

 

[John Griffiths]

Robert the Bruce notoriously murdered a rival, John Comyn ('Red Comyn') before the altar of the Franciscan Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfries. Robert later went to meet his maker at his manor of Cardross, believed to have been near Renton, West Dunbartonshire.

 

[Calthrop]

Pomeroy, Co. Tyrone, also has a namesake settlement in the US State of Washington (Pacific North-West).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Teemore in County Fermanagh also has a church that is dedicated to St Mary.

 

[DerekC]

Teemore is on the Shannon-Erne waterway, a combination of canalised rivers and loughs which can take a boat across the border and all the way to the River Shannon near Leitrim, County Leitrim.

 

[Calthrop]

Leitrim -- a tiny place -- is not the county town of its name-county: that honour goes to Carrick-on-Shannon. In similar vein, the county town of Wiltshire is not Wilton, but Trowbridge.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Ludwell in Wiltshire also lies on the line of the River Nadder.

 

[John Griffiths]

Staines, Middlesex, is also located on the A30.

 

[Calthrop]

An unusual figure of renown associated with Staines: is the carrier pigeon All Alone -- hatched, and stationed, there -- who was awarded the Dickin Medal (animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross) for her feat in summer 1943, of flying 400 miles from central France to Staines, in under 24 hours, carrying sensitive information. Other named birds of some historicity -- though here, significant because of "their human", rather than deeds of their own -- are the three pet ravens all named Grip: which Charles Dickens -- clearly a fan of the species -- owned successively, through most of his lifespan. (His character Barnaby Rudge, in the novel of that name, also has a pet raven called Grip.) In the latter part of his life Dickens lived -- presumably raven-accompanied -- in Higham, Kent (between Gravesend and Strood).

 

[John Griffiths]

Higham boasts a large concrete needle known as the Larkin Memorial, a tribute not to the poet who wrote so interestingly about relations between parents and their offspring, but one Charles Larkin (1875-1833), auctioneer and advocate of parliamentary reform. Another place with a large (41m high in total) structure to a parliamentary reformer is Newcastle upon Tyne, where a statue of prime minister Earl Grey stands on a Doric column hewn of sandstone in the heart of the city.

 

[Calthrop]

In this game, I tend to have more trouble with big cities, than with obscure hamlets ! Case in point here: going for my pet bolt-hole -- Gloucester is also twinned with a settlement in the Lorraine region of France. Newcastle's "twin" is Nancy; Gloucester's is Metz.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Northampton also has a Guildhall

 

[D6130]

Kendal in Furness & Westmorland was also once a noted centre for shoemaking.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Sadgill in Cumbria was also once under the jurisdiction of the Kendal Poor Law Union.