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Settlement Association

Calthrop

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Wellesbourne has a football club, Wellesbourne Wanderers. Another such with a nicely alliterative name; is Cardiff City.
 
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DerekC

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One of the best known facts about Liverpool (aside from football and musical associations) the presence of the two "Liver Birds" on top of the Royal Liver Building on the waterfront. According to legend, if the Liver Birds were to fly away, the Mersey would burst its banks and flood the city.

The Liver Birds were derived originally from a mediaeval seal of the city which depicted a rather badly drawn bird. Opinions on what this was intended to be differ, some suggesting a dove and some an eagle. One way or another, the origins were forgotten and the city settled on a cormorant as the symbol to be included in its coat of arms. There is also a vague cross-reference to William Warburton, author and Bishop of Gloucester in the 18th Century, who had three cormorants on his coat of arms.
 

Calthrop

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Gloucester has an American Football team called the Gloucester Banshees. Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, has one called the Scunthorpe Alphas.
 

Calthrop

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Leicester also gives its name to a now rare breed of sheep -- the Penistone, and the Border Leicester, respectively.

(Re the general "Problem" mentioned; I've always liked the town in Albania called Ballsh ...)
 

Calthrop

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The prolific historical novelist Philippa Gregory (some adverse critics consider that she's rather often historically inaccurate) -- best known for her many novels about the Plantagenet and Tudor royal families -- has also authored one, A Respectable Trade, about the past-centuries slave trade centred on the Bristol area -- much of its action taking place in Clifton. Gregory has also written a series -- Tidelands -- about the 17th-century ups and downs of a family hailing from a bleak and impoverished outpost on the Sussex coast: with a fictional name, but tentatively identifiable with Thorney Island, just east of the Sussex / Hampshire border; chief settlement thereof West Thorney, West Sussex.
 

Calthrop

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There is in the gardens of Balmerino's now ruined abbey, a large and impressive Spanish chestnut tree: dated as 450 years old. It is "put in the shade" in a couple of ways, however: by the Majesty Oak at Nonington, Kent -- between Canterbury and Dover -- which is reckoned to be Britain's largest tree, and to be something between 600 and 1,000 years old.
 

Calthrop

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Margaret Roding, Essex -- one of a fair number of villages named " ***** Roding", in this area between Chelmsford and Bishop's Stortford -- also has a church dedicated to St. Margaret of Antioch.
 

Calthrop

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Also in this general patch of Essex is -- seven miles east of Chelmsford -- the village with the utterly wondrous name of Shellow Bowells (better go and see the doctor about that :smile:).
 

Calthrop

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Just cannot tear self away from the marvellous names in this part of Essex -- close by Willingale Spain, is its "twin" village of Willingale Doe. (My Michelin Britain road atlas, features merely a single settlement, labelled just "Willingale".)
 

High Dyke

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Little Casterton, Rutland is also home to an outdoor theatre featuring productions by William Shakespeare.

Porthcurno - Minack
Little Casterton - Tolethorpe Hall
 

Calthrop

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An unfortunate collision between two military aircraft -- with considerable loss of life -- occurred very near Tinwell in July 1944. Among the dead were 26 members of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. These were buried at the Polish Cemetery at Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire.
 

Calthrop

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Hinckley, Leicestershire, is also twinned with a settlement in the German State of Nordrhein-Westfalen. Bury St. E.'s "twin" is Kevelaer; Hinckley's is Herford.
 

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