Settlement Association

[Calthrop]

Dryburgh was the first community in Scotland to put up a statue commemorating Willliam Wallace; this was in 1814 -- Sir Walter Scott allegedly disliked the statue. A Wallace statue of much more modern date, which also has by no means pleased everyone -- there's been some controversy -- spent some time in Stirling, before agreement was made for its recent move to Brechin, Angus.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Banchory in Aberdeenshire also has an example of an early-period Christian carved cross-slab.

 

[Calthrop]

Banchory in Aberdeenshire also has an example of an early-period Christian carved cross-slab.

The above-bolded settlement features a potential pronunciation pitfall for English folk: it's pronounced "BAN-cher-ee [hard 'ch' as in 'loch']", not "Ban-TCHORE-ee". Similarly, Findochty (Moray -- on the coast) is pronounced not as spelt; but "Fin-ECK-tay".

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Gardenstown in Aberdeenshire also has Christian Brethren religious places of worship.

 

[Calthrop]

Gardenstown has a whale and dolphin rescue centre. Simliar work is done at the Anglesey Sea Zoo at Llanidan / Brynsiencyn near the Menai Strait.

 

[DerekC]

Brynsiencyn has a pub called Y Groeslon ("The Crossroads), a name shared by a village in Gwynedd.

 

[Calthrop]

Groeslon, Gwynedd lies close to the A487 road. Close to the village there is a "bat bridge", installed in 2010 to guide lesser horseshoe bats across this trunk road. Also of "bat interest" is a nature reserve near Halstock, Dorset (some way south of Yeovil, Somerset); which is a good site for the rare Bechstein's bat.

 

[Springs Branch]

Halstock's parish church is dedicated to the 6th Century Celtic Saint Juthwara, who was believed to have been martyred in the village.

From the 11th Century until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Juthwara's body was located in a shrine (and is depicted today in the 1858-vintage Great East Window's stained glass) at Sherborne Abbey in the Dorset town of Sherborne.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Sherborne Abbey, otherwise the Abbey Church of St. Mary the Virgin, is The Parish Church of the town. A section of a 15th century wooden screen from the Abbey, removed during renovations, is now located at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Sandford Orcas, Dorset.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Abbas Combe in South Somerset was also once administered by the Hundred of Horethorne.

 

[Calthrop]

Abbas Combe is effectively one-and-the-same with Templecombe; which is of course renowned in a sphere which is off-limits for this game. Templecombe has a pub called the Royal Wessex (at present closed); Basingstoke has a pub called the King of Wessex.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Mapledurwell in Hampshire also was once administered by the Hundred of Basingstoke.

Spelling mistake now corrected.

 

[Calthrop]

Mapledurwell in Hampshire also was once administered by the Hundred of Baskingstoke.

A name with a strong resemblance, is that of Mapledurham -- some twenty miles to the north, in Oxfordshire. I learn that Mapledurwell means "maple tree spring"; it can be guessed that, by analogy, Mapledurham will mean "maple tree settlement".

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Wallingford also lies on the line of the River Thames.

 

[Calthrop]

Wallingford's coat of arms features a portcullis; as does that of Arbroath, Angus.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Arbroath FC play in the Scottish Championship and are based at Gayfield Park in the town. The club holds the world record for the number of goals scored in a professional football match: 36 - 0 against Bon Accord of Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup in 1885. Not surprisingly, the latter club folded in the years afterwards, but in the 1980s, they re-emerged in the North East Junior Leagues, when they benefited from the largesse of Bryan Keith, the founder of the Bon Accord Glass company and the Bon Accord Sports Club. They moved from their ground in the fishing village of Findon to the custom-built Keith Park in the Hillhead, Bridge of Don area of Aberdeen. However, when Bryan Keith left the club to become chairman of Montrose FC, Keith Park and the Bon Accord Sports Club was bought by the University of Aberdeen, who eventually renamed Keith Park as the Hillhead Sports Centre. By the summer of 1997 Bon Accord FC were no more.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Both Findon and Bridge of Don are both emboldened above and I am unsure which is meant to be the settlement with which an association is to be made.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Both Findon and Bridge of Don are both emboldened above and I am unsure which is meant to be the settlement with which an association is to be made.

I am sorry ... I changed my mind about which one I was going to use, and had thought that I'd changed the bolding as well, but obviously not. I must remember to check the post before sending!

The original post has now been amended, with Bridge of Don as my contribution.

 

[Calthrop]

The headquarters of the Gordon Highlanders regiment were formerly in Bridge of Don. The renowned folk-singer Jimmy MacBeath (1894 -- 1972) served in the Gordon Highlanders in World War I; he was born in Portsoy, Aberdeenshire.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Oldmeldrum in Aberdeenshire is another settlement that was created a Burgh of Barony.

 

[Springs Branch]

Oldmeldrum is home to what is said to be one of Scotland's oldest whisky distilleries - Glen Garioch, dating back to 1797.

The oldest remaining distillery of all is reckoned to be Glenturret (other contenders are available), founded around 1763 and located just outside the Perthshire town of Crieff.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

In the mid-to-late 19th century health tourism, centring on hydropathic establishments, flourished. Over time, these morphed into a hotel format, with the Crieff hydropathic establishment, now the Crief Hydro, which opened in 1868 being one of the few survivors of that era. Another survivor with a similar origin is the Peebles Hydro Hotel, based in the town of Peebles.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Stirling was also created a Royal Burgh in the 12th century.

 

[Calthrop]

Wells, Somerset; also shares its name with that of an author of some note in the sci-fi / speculative fiction field. (Respectively: the Canadian / U.S. author S. M. Stirling -- alive and busily writing today; and H.G. Wells [1866 -- 1946].)

 

[Springs Branch]

The 1980s TV series Blackadder featured several recurring roles (Blackadder himself, Baldrick, Melchett etc), plus a number of one-off appearances by minor characters.

Among the non-recurring parts were a corpulent and disagreeable Bishop of Bath & Wells, and Freddie Frobisher, the Flatulent Hermit of Lindisfarne (the settlement also known as Holy Island).

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Jarrow in South Tyneside also had its religious houses sacked by 8th century Viking invaders.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

The British comic entertainer and actor George Wood Bamlett OBE (1894 – 1979), known professionally as Wee Georgie Wood, was born in Jarrow but within a few weeks of his birth moved to South Shields where his father owned a pawnbrokers shop. He was one of 21 children, and had a form of dwarfism, as an adult reaching a height of 4ft 9in, and retaining an unbroken voice. He had a lengthy career of over fifty years, appearing in films, plays and music hall revues, based on exploiting the childlike appearance that he retained in adulthood. He died at Gordon Mansions in Bloomsbury, London, in 1979, aged 84.

(Totally off topic for this subject, The Wee Georgie Wood Railway is a tramway in Tasmania, Australia named after him.)

 

[Calthrop]

The British comic entertainer and actor George Wood Bamlett OBE (1894 – 1979), known professionally as Wee Georgie Wood, was born in Jarrow but within a few weeks of his birth moved to South Shields where his father owned a pawnbrokers shop. He was one of 21 children, and had a form of dwarfism, as an adult reaching a height of 4ft 9in, and retaining an unbroken voice. He had a lengthy career of over fifty years, appearing in films, plays and music hall revues, based on exploiting the childlike appearance that he retained in adulthood. He died at Gordon Mansions in Bloomsbury, London, in 1979, aged 84.

Bloomsbury has been a byword -- more many decades ago, than today -- for a locality well-populated by "edgy" progressive-minded intellectuals and artists tending to, shall we say, uninhibited behaviour. In sharp contrast here with Tunbridge Wells -- long regarded popularly, as a bastion of stuffy reactionary-ness: home, of course, of the famous Disgusted.

(Totally off topic for this subject, The Wee Georgie Wood Railway is a tramway in Tasmania, Australia named after him.)

Ah, yes -- a remnant of the 2ft. gauge Tullah Tramway: was 10 km., Tullah to meeting-point with Tasmania's 3ft. 6in. gauge system at Farrell Siding. Name from the comic, via one of its locos (which survives preserved there, today): Wee Georgie Wood, a very cute little 0-4-0T. The line used to have two more locos; named Wee Mary; and Puppy.

 

[D6130]

In sharp contrast to its former stuffy, reactionary reputation, Tunbridge Wells now has a thriving annual gay pride festival....as does Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire.

 

[Calthrop]

Wiki tells us that the town council of enlightened Hebden Bridge have recently followed the example of Modbury (South Devon) in effectively banning all plastic shopping bags, thus being so far the largest community in Europe to do so.