Settlement Association

[Springs Branch]

. . . Idle Working Men's Club. Also, the Women's Institute: . . .

I had wondered if anyone would post a humourous association involving the Idle Working Men's Club, and that one is a corker.
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Methil was historically a major port for export of locally-mined coal.

Another port once involved with shipping minerals from coalfields in its vicinity is Blyth, Northumberland.

 

[Calthrop]

I had wondered if anyone would post a humourous association involving the Idle Working Men's Club, and that one is a corker.

Re the celebrated deliberately ambiguous job reference, "Any employer who can have this man working for him, will be very fortunate"; one ponders on whether the subject of it, was a member of the above association...

Methil was historically a major port for export of locally-mined coal.

Another port once involved with shipping minerals from coalfields in its vicinity is Blyth, Northumberland.

Hornsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, is another settlement of some renown in recent times, for nearby offshore wind farms.

 

[D6130]

COALPORT in Shropshire is/was another noted centre for the production of ceramics.

 

[Calthrop]

Coalport has a pub called the Woodbridge Inn -- seemingly a unique-in-Britain hostelry name (there isn't another even in Woodbridge, Suffolk). Guildford, Surrey, has however a pub by the name of the Wooden Bridge.

 

[John Griffiths]

Deleted

 

[DerekC]

In 1968, the remains of what is claimed to be the oldest synagogue in Britain were discovered in Guildford. They date from around 1180. However Jew's Court in Lincoln dates from around the same time and is believed to have contained a synagogue.

 

[Springs Branch]

One of four remaining 13th century copies of Magna Carta is held in Lincoln Castle.

Another of these manuscripts is at Salisbury Cathedral.

 

[D6130]

The spire of Salisbury Cathedral is the tallest in these islands. The second tallest is that of NORWICH Cathedral.

 

[Calthrop]

Stamford, Lincolnshire, also has a namesake settlement in the U.S. State of Connecticut. (No doubt the local twits pronounce the Connecticut N-town, as "Naw-witch".)

 

[D6130]

KINGSTON-UPON-THAMES in Surrey Is also home to a noted railway book shop. (Hope that doesn't count as a railway association per se. It's intended more as a 'shop' connection...
but I realise that I'm sailing a wee bit close to the wind here!)

 

[DerekC]

There are so many Kingstons listed in Wikipedia that I lost count - including many in Canada and one or two in Australia. The capital of Jamaica is probably the biggest. One of the smallest is Kingston on Spey, Moray. (I doubt it has a railway bookshop though)

 

[Calthrop]

Kingston on Spey suffered considerable damage in 1829, in a great flood which was given the name of the "Muckle Spate". Called to mind, obliquely, is the ballad-celebrated, probably apocryphal exploit -- a couple or so centuries earlier, at the opposite corner of Scotland / in the adjacent bit of England -- stirringly versified in Kinmont Willie. Involving dodgy doings in and around Carlisle -- turbulent Scots "free spirits" versus law-bending English authority -- there is supposedly a truce in force between the two countries, so the business has to be carried on mostly by guile, rather than by slaughtering everything that moves (worse luck). Per a verse of the ballad: So we held on for Carlisle town / And at Staneshaw-bank the Eden we crossed; The watter was great and muckle of spate / But the never a horse or man we lost.

 

[DerekC]

Carlisle was the centre of one of the "State Management Schemes" to control the brewing and sale of alcoholic liquor, established in 1916 to mitigate drunkenness amongst the munitions workers at the many armaments factories in the area. The Carlisle scheme (which effectively nationalised the local breweries and pubs) continued, amazingly, until 1973. A similar although smaller scheme was established at Enfield, then in the county of Middlesex. That finished in 1922.

 

[Calthrop]

The world's first ATM (automatic cash dispenser) was inaugurated at Barclays Bank in Enfield, in 1967. Britain's first entirely-self-service supermarket -- featuring self-service checkouts only -- was opened by Tesco in 2009, in Northampton.

 

[D6130]

AYLESBURY also has a sizeable proportion of its population who are of Italian descent.

 

[Calthrop]

The celebrated Aylesbury breed of white duck, now has the official status of a Rare Breed. Britain's only surviving commercial flock of pure Aylesbury meat ducks is thought to be that at the Waller family's farm in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Chesham is known for its four Bs — boots, beer, brushes and Baptists. The first English General Baptist Church was founded Thomas Helwys in Spitalfields, East London in 1612.

 

[Calthrop]

Still on non-standard-Protestant matters (though the folk about to be mentioned were -- I think -- of the Calvinist, rather than Baptist, "flavour"): many refugee Huguenots from France -- after Louis XIV in 1685, got tough with those of their stamp -- settled in Spitalfields. Sizeable Huguenot communities came to be, in those times, in many locations in England; a notable one thereof being Faversham in Kent.

 

[DerekC]

Faversham was the birthplace of the notorious pirate Jack Ward, who operated in the Mediterranean in the early 17th Century. He was originally a licensed privateer who refused to give up his occupation of plundering Spanish ships when James ! signed a peace treaty with Spain in 1603. Operating at about the same time but in a different area was Peter Love. He was born in Lewes, Sussex, but based himself on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, looting anything that came his way including ships from England, Holland, France and Scotland. He was eventually betrayed to the authorities and hanged at Leith in 1610.

 

[Calthrop]

Long Eaton, Derbyshire, is also twinned with a settlement in the French departement of Loir-et-Cher. Lewes's "twin" is Blois; Long Eaton's is Romorantin-Lanthenay (more usually called just Romorantin; and -- incidental "railway" note -- headquarters of the still-in-commercial-service Blanc -- Argent metre-gauge line).

 

[John Griffiths]

The artist Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) was born in Long Eaton; from the late 1930s she and her husband lived at Colwall in Herefordshire.

 

[Calthrop]

Fleet on Hayling Island, Hampshire, also has a pub called the Yew Tree.

 

[DerekC]

Fleet is very close to the Shipwrights' Way (in this section coinciding with the Hayling Billy Coastal Path) - the north end of the former is at Bentley (still just in Hampshire)

 

[Calthrop]

Fleet is very close to the Shipwrights' Way (in this section coinciding with the Hayling Billy Coastal Path) - the north end of the former is at Bentley (still just in Hampshire)

(My italics -- as we've observed in the past, there's a lot of Hampshire...)

Occasionally, one suspects from reading the Wiki entry about a place: that mickey-takers have managed to sneak in, a comedy / "nonsense" entry. One feels this to be the case with the fairly brief one for Bentley: of which one sentence (looking like something written by a person for whom English is not their first language) runs, "[Bentley is] twinned with Newton Haven; the village is proud of its culture." . No direct link given, to any Newton Haven: further Googling revealed the place to be fictional -- featuring in a 2013 film called The World's End, about aliens invading Earth. It would appear that the film's "Newton Haven"" is a fictionalised version of Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire (more often referred to as just Letchworth).

 

[John Griffiths]

Letchworth was the first 'garden city' founded by Ebenezer Howard. The second (and last) was Welwyn Garden City.

 

[D6130]

BURTON LATIMER in Northamptonshire also had a large factory producing breakfast cereal. (Shredded Wheat in WGC and Weetabix in Burton Latimer).

 

[Calthrop]

This which tends to be my easy go-to: St. Albans, Hertfordshire, is also twinned with a settlement in the German State of Rheinland-Pfalz. Burton Latimer's "twin" is Altendiez; St. Albans's is Worms.

 

[John Griffiths]

St Albans boasts Britain's first Christian saint, the martyred Roman soldier Alban. Britain's most recent saint (in terms of date of canonisation) is St John Henry Newman, associated with quite a few places including Oxford and Birmingham, and born in the City of London.

 

[DerekC]

I can't argue that the City of London isn't a settlement! However it is surprisingly small in terms of population. At 8,800 it is about the same as Bridport in Dorset.

 

[Springs Branch]

Bridport is home to a long-running annual Literary Festival.

Another town with a well-established book festival (brown tourist road signs describe it as 'Scotland's National Book Town') is Wigtown, Dumfries & Galloway.