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Settlement Association

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Rhynie's most famous son is probably Alexander Murdoch Mackay (1849 -- 90), who served as a missionary in Uganda from 1876 to 1890: had some difficult times there, but short of actual martyrdom for his faith -- his death, aged 40, was from malaria. Another 19th-century missionary stalwart in the -- broadly speaking -- African realm, was David Griffiths (1792 -- 1863): his missionary activity was in Madagascar, 1821 -- 42 --with some interruption owing to (as befell Mackay in Uganda) un-keen-ness on Christianity on the part of local rulers. Griffiths translated the Bible into the Malagasy language; after returning to Britain, he continued with Malagasy-language-related work. Griffiths was born near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire.
 
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Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, also has a wildlife rescue hospital. Barlow's specialises in swans; Haddenham's, in hedgehogs.
 
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The Angel and Royal Inn in Grantham's High Street, is one of a number of contenders for the title of the oldest inn in England. A rival for that distinction, is the Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham.
 
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Cheating a wee bit, perhaps: Cardiff's coat of arms features a Welsh red dragon; as does the coat of arms of Carmarthenshire -- whose county town is of course Carmarthen.
 
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Well-known (on that particular scene) fox-hunts -- "what pursued", nowadays varying according to nation -- bearing the name of the settlement at which they are or were based: the "Galway Blazers"; and the Pytchley Hunt -- formerly based at Pytchley, Northamptonshire (just south of Kettering) -- headquarters shifted northward in the 1960s, but name retained. (According to one account, the Blazers got their name from an incident long ago when, in a hard-drinking celebration after a hunt, they managed to burn down the hotel where they were staying.)
 
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There seems to be a shortage of things findable about Scaldwell -- other than voluminous stuff about industrial railways, which of course "won't wash" here. I'm reduced to: Tring, Hertfordshire, also has a church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul.
 
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Barnoldswick (pronounced 'Barlick') in Lancashire (but pre-1975 in the West Riding of Yorkshire) also lies on the line of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal).
 
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A general theme which I have mentioned before -- though not, I think, re the above "Yorks. / Lancs." settlement -- Dunsop Bridge, and Haltwhistle, Northumberland: are rival claimants for the status of geographic centre of Great Britain. Vague feeling which I -- admittedly not a scholar of such matters -- get: is that this entire thing is a bit suspect -- assorted elaborate and rather dubious arguments can be dreamt up, for one's favoured settlement being thus, the geographic centre !
 
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We learn that Coanwood was "anciently written" as "Collingwood", meaning "hazel trees / wood". Brings to mind (though it would seem, no direct link between the settlement and the gentleman concerned), Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, First Baron Collingwood (1748 -- 1810): a Northumbrian, and by all accounts a thoroughly "good egg", concerned re humane and just treatment of the ordinary R.N. sailor. When not at sea, the Admiral lived at Morpeth, Northumberland -- was wont to go walking in the neighbouring hills, bringing with him a pocketful of acorns: which he planted at suitable spots, with view to helping there to be, far into the future, a continuing supply of oak trees for the construction of warships.
 
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The engineer and inventor Sir Charles Parsons (1854 -- 1931) -- best-known for invention of the compound steam turbine -- is buried, with his wife, at the parish church of Kirkwhelpington (wife's home town). He came from the Anglo-Irish "Ascendancy" Parsons family; their family seat, the castle of Birr, Co. Offaly (that settlement known 1620 -- 1901, from the family name, as Parsonstown).
 
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Close by Sharavogue is the Sharavogue Bog Special Area of Conservation: a protected site of turf bogland in its natural state. A counterpart in Northern Ireland is the Main Valley Bogs Special Area of Conservation, near Dunloy, Co. Antrim (a few miles south-east of Ballymoney).
 
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"More natural-history stuff" -- Aghanaglack lies in the large parish of Boho: an upland area, not intensively farmed, and thus with a wealth of assorted -- some scarce -- fauna and flora; including occasionally sighted pine martens (Martes martes). A good pine-marten venue in Scotland, is the sizeable area of old-growth woodland at Loch Arkaig: nearest settlement reckonably Achnacarry, Highland (some ten miles north-east of Fort William).
 
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Newtonmore lies on the little River Calder, at the point where it flows into the River Spey. Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, is located on a "bigger and better-known" River Calder.
 
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