Council Grounds, Salisbury
It took a long-ish time to research 1, because I didn’t (and don’t) know much about either Milton or the Civil War.
It took quite a long time to write because it went through several versions….. and because I tend to waffle on a bit!
Anyway, I thought I’d be interested to see what the longest posts are.
A bit of unix-y2 stuff gave me the answer:
wc -w *| sort -nr
The longest posts are as follows:
- Pembroke Road and Pembroke Court (3191 words) – the longest by a couple of hundred words, largely because the Herbert family has such a long, well documented and sometimes interesting history.
- Montgomery Gardens (2967 words) – revisits the Pembrokes, but mostly about Montgomery of El Alamein, who could, and does, fill several books
- Old Sarum Business Park (2752 words) – I knew some of the history of the ‘old castle’, but I was surprised first by how much it spooked Pepys and others and second by the political venom it attracted as a rotten borough
- Moberly Road (2335 words) – the two Victorian ladies’ ghost story is fascinating, as is the mountain of subsequent literature
- Milton_Road_SP2.html (2207 words) – I’m struggling to understand much about Milton, but in this context it’s specifically how a man with the blood of an English king on his hands gets a road named after him.
- Nelson Road (1923 words) – I decided no to precis a life of Nelson, but to discuss whether the almost adjoining Hamilton Road is a reference to Lady Hamilton. On balance, I think not.
- Queen Alexandra Road, Alexandra Close and Alexandra Drive (1400 words) – the post is mainly about why so many different things were named after her. There are, I’m afraid, the inevitable comparisons with Princess Diana.
- Radnor Road (1207 words) – as much information as I could find on the internet about the Pleydell-Bouveries
- Newton Road (1164) – I did a ‘timeline’ style list of the events of Newton’s life.
- St Davids Close (1103) – King David has a long and interesting life story. I was listening to podcasts about Churchill at the time when I was reading about King David. There are points of similarity – both writers, men of action in their youth and saviours of their nation in later life.
- Neville Close (1021) – Bishop Neville isn’t very interesting but I wrote about two of his relatives – the ‘Kingmaker’, and another possible ‘real Shakespeare’
- Netheravon Road and Netheravon Close (1008 words) – I can’t work out why it’s called Netheravon Road – it’s going the wrong way.
- St Nicholas Road, St Nicholas Close, Nicholas Court SP2 (1004 words) – the three Saint Nicholases all have good stories
- St Margarets Close (978 words) – I barely scratched the surface of the literature on the Saint Margarets
- Queensberry Road (976 words) – ‘Old Q’ is one of the more colourful characters in the Salisbury A to Z. The later ninth Marquess of Queensberry was less impressive.
- Petersfinger Road, Milford (940 words) – probably my favourite post. I grew up in Laverstock not knowing where the name Petersfinger comes from, I’ve not yet found it in any books, or on the internet, but I think a couple of unrelated items I found on Google have provided the answer.
- Pullman Drive (903 words) – Pullman was so hated his tomb was encased in concrete.
- Old George Mall – Cromwell, Pepys and Buddy Holly and the Crickets all stayed at the Old George Inn
- Mizmaze Hill – I would love to know where the Mizmaze is.
- St Christophers Close – another superstar saint
- Radcliffe Road – I re-visited this post having stumbled across the derivation of all the road names in the area in an old W.I. booklet
