X-Nico

4 unusual facts about West Country


Bromham and Rowde Halt railway station

After the completion of the Devizes line, the junction at Holt allowed the fastest route from London to the West Country.

Holt Junction railway station

After the completion of the Devizes line, the junction at Holt allowed the fastest route from London to the West Country.

Leonard Elliott Elliott-Binns

Most of his life as a parish priest was spent in the West Country.

Sonic Assassins

Hawkwind main writers Robert Calvert (vocals) and Dave Brock (guitar) were living in Devon towards the end of 1977 and had befriended local band Ark, who had often supported Hawkwind at some of their West Country gigs.


Acton Court

The king and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, stayed in the house in 1535, during a tour of the West Country.

Alan Skirton

After 17 games at the start of the 1968–69 season, Blackpool manager Stan Mortensen saw the emergence of Ronnie Brown on the right wing, and he allowed Skirton to return to the West Country where he joined Bristol City for £15,000 on 20 November 1968.

Angels We Have Heard on High

The carol quickly became popular in the West Country, where it was described as 'Cornish' by R.R. Chope, and featured in Pickard-Cambridge's Collection of Dorset Carols.

Battle of Wakefield

They were later joined by the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Devon, who brought their forces from the West Country.

Broadcloth

Around 1500, broadcloth was made in a number of districts of England, including Essex and Suffolk in southern East Anglia, the West Country Clothing District (Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, east Somerset - sometimes with adjacent areas), at Worcester, Coventry, Cranbrook in Kent and some other places.

Bulleid Firth Brown

He later used them on all subsequent designs; the Austerity class in 1942, his Light Pacifics (the West Country and Battle of Britain classes) in 1945, and his Leader class in 1946.

Dulwich College Preparatory School

There were plans to move the school to the West Country, but when these fell through the Cranbrook school was evacuated to Betws-y-Coed in Snowdonia (there remains a memorial planting of trees in that village in memory of this period).

London Co-operative Society

It had creamerys located at various places in the West Country, including Puxton, Somerset which served as a regional railhead, product from which was transported via milk trains to the main London creamery and distribution point at West Ealing.

Northcott Theatre

In its first years, the company originated a number of plays of West Country interest, including new historical drama by Jack Emery and an adaptation of the Cornish Passion Play.

Old Virginia accent

However, Virginia received more colonists from the English West Country, bringing with them a distinctive dialect and vocabulary.

Pitkern language

Both Geordie and West Country have obvious links to some phrases and words, such as "whettles", meaning food, from "victuals".

Sally Lunn bun

A Sally Lunn is a type of enriched yeast bread associated with the city of Bath in the West Country of England, known since the late 18th Century and described by Eliza Acton's as a version of "Solimemne - A rich French breakfast cake, or Sally Lunn".

SR West Country and Battle of Britain classes

A total of 110 locomotives were constructed between 1945 and 1950, named after West Country resorts and Royal Air Force (RAF) and other subjects associated with the Battle of Britain.

St Philip's Marsh depot

The move allowed the removal of the need for the majority of trains operating in the area, mostly in the West Country, requiring to travel through the congested Severn Tunnel.

Wassailing

The West Country is the most famous and largest cider producing region of the country and some of the most important wassails are held annually in Carhampton and Dunster (Somerset) and Whimple (Devon), both on 17 January (old Twelfth Night).


see also

Charles Church, Plymouth

The church remained in that state until 1645 when the town was relieved; staunchly Protestant, it held out against the King's men throughout the Civil War, almost alone in a Royalist West Country.

Crownhill

"Union Street (Last Post)", a track on the 2006 Album "Witness" by contemporary West Country folk duo "Show of Hands" features Crownhill as the home of one of the song's subjects.

Cyderdelic

Cyderdelic was a BBC Three spoof documentary following the activities of a 'West Country direct action group within the growing anti-capitalist movement'.

Cyril Townsend

He resided in the West Country and was a respected journalist for several newspapers in the Middle East, including Al-Hayat.

David Imms

His work is influenced by the West Country landscape and reflects literary and historical associations, such as Thomas Hardy's Dorset, and the prehistoric earthworks and standing stones of Wiltshire.

David Stancliffe

Three years later he returned to the West Country as Chaplain to Clifton College, Bristol.

Drummer of Tedworth

The Drummer of Tedworth is a report of supernatural activity by Joseph Glanvill in the West Country of England, in his Saducismus Triumphatus.

HMNB Devonport

Edmund Dummer a Naval Officer travelled the West Country searching for an area where a dockyard could be built; he sent in two estimates for sites, one in Plymouth, Cattewater and one further along the coast, on the Hamoaze, a section of the River Tamar, in the parish of Stoke Damerel.

John Tutchin

Even after his death under suspicious circumstances, he was not widely mourned, and Alexander Pope, in particular, memorialized him viciously in The Dunciad a full seventeen years after his death, where he has the publisher Edmund Curll given a gift of a tapestry by Dulness showing the fates of dunces, where the whipping of Tutchin through the west country is a featured panel.

Nicholas Upsall

In 1630, their population was increased when the ship Mary and John arrived in New England carrying 140 passengers from the English West Country counties of Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

Northern English

East Anglian English, East and West Midlands English, West Country (Somerset, Devon, Cornwall/Cornish) and Southern English.

SR West Country and Battle of Britain classes

Once it became clear that the locomotives would be used further afield than the West Country, a decision was made to name the remainder after RAF squadrons, airfields, commanders and aircraft that had participated in the Battle of Britain over Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

The SR West Country and Battle of Britain classes, collectively known as Light Pacifics or informally as Spam Cans, are air-smoothed 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotives designed for the Southern Railway by its Chief Mechanical Engineer Oliver Bulleid.

Thomas Chilcot

Following Elizabeth's death, he married Anne Wrey, a member of a prominent West Country family (the Wrey baronets), in 1749.

Will Randall

Educated in London, he taught languages in the English west country for ten years, including 5 years at Blundell's School, before moving to live in the South Pacific islands.

Wiltshire Publications

Wiltshire Publications Ltd, publishes and prints three local newspapers in the West Country: Melksham Independent News (covering Melksham and the surrounding villages), White Horse News (covering Westbury and the surrounding villages) and Frome Times (covering Frome).

WSWR

Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway, a former railway company in the West Country of England.