Recent content by Calthrop

Silverton (has my mind reflexively going to Colorado, rather than Devon :smile:)

We are told that single-syllable place names are uncommon in Sussex. Another such rarity, along with Hove: is Pett, East Sussex (between Hastings and Winchelsea).

Tiverton Junction

Beam Bridge

Scotland would seem to specialise in crazily poetic names for football clubs -- one which I especially like, is that of Hamilton: Hamilton Academicals. English ditto, tend to be mostly a bit humdrum in comparison; with a few exceptions, such as "Argyle" (heaven knows where that came from). The...

Norton Fitzwarren

With what is now Northern Ireland having long been reckoned -- re its Protestant element -- a stronghold of extreme sabbatarianism; perhaps a bit surprisingly: so far as I know, Sunday rail passenger workings have never been, there, a "no-no" -- even post-partition. Severe Protestant types in...

Durston

Brent Knoll

My italics above -- that was in fact, a bit of a near-run thing. In our earlier days of railroads, there were assorted rival gauges: as well as four-eight-and-a-half, "great carload lots" of 5ft. -- especially down South -- plus a number of other weird widths. If the Confederacy had successfully...

Bleadon and Uphill

I was aware of the confusion, re this figurative bit, between "strait" (old-fashioned word meaning the same as "narrow"); and "straight" = not bendy -- many folks have as it were conflated, into the expression "the straight and narrow path" -- doesn't Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress, do some...

Puxton (I hope -- this is one of those little patches which I dread)

Prominent also on the coat-of-arms of Glasgow, are generally "water creatures". Worthing's features three fishes of the fins-and-scales kind, and a shrimp or prawn -- Glasgow's has two fishes of similar sort, as supporters; plus on the actual shield, rather weirdly, another of same lying on its...

Flax Bourton (1st station)