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 . . . → Read More: The longest posts]]>

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

Footnotes

1. I’m not sure whether my haphazard reading and googling should be dignified by the word ‘research’, but I can’t think of anything else to call it
2. Unix is an computer operating system

This took a long time to write because I decided to write about Lord Montgomery of El Alamein. I’m not sure whether the road is named after him or not, but he was an interesting character and a significant . . . → Read More: More Salisbury links]]> Recent posts – Montgomery

I finally finished another really long post. This one on Montgomery Gardens

This took a long time to write because I decided to write about Lord Montgomery of El Alamein. I’m not sure whether the road is named after him or not, but he was an interesting character and a significant man.

I found an article written by a man who visited Montgomery in his retirement to show him how to play the football pool. I didn’t use it in my post, but I enjoyed reading it:

• BBC – WW2 People’s War – World War 2 – Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.

The next post will be about Montague Road in Harnham.

A video of the tornado ‘over’ Salisbury

Further to the Salisbury Journal story about a tornado that I mentioned in a previous post, a video has been uploaded to YouTube:

• YouTube – Tornado Over Salisbury

You can see part of the city with the tornado in the background, but I can’t quite place which part of Salisbury it is.

Salisbury on the ‘English Buildings’ blog

I found an interesting website that covers buildings in England. The author covers less obvious buildings – and this is what he’s done in his three posts on Salisbury:

• English Buildings: Salisbury, Wiltshire post 1
• English Buildings: Salisbury, Wiltshire post 2
• English Buildings: Salisbury, Wiltshire post 3

David Starkey’s Henry VIII podcasts

Finally, for now, I recommend the recordings of three lectures by David Starkey on King Henry VIII

• British Library Henry VIII Podcasts

Update: I’ve since listened to the podcast on the same site by Philippa Gregory (author of ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’) – it’s also very good!

Visiting Salisbury?

For accommodation, see the Hotels in Salisbury page.

I’ve found a couple of references to the idea that the slang word for a pound, ‘quid’, is derived from the village ‘Quidhampton’. The theory goes that the paper mill at Quidhampton made paper which was then used for the bank notes.

I don’t . . . → Read More: Salisbury and Stonehenge – bits and pieces from the Web]]> Some things I’ve found interesting on the web….

Quid and Quidhampton

I’ve found a couple of references to the idea that the slang word for a pound, ‘quid’, is derived from the village ‘Quidhampton’. The theory goes that the paper mill at Quidhampton made paper which was then used for the bank notes.

I don’t know whether this is likely to be true, but there are a number of references to it on the internet:

• british money slang | plonkee money
• Expand your UK IQ: Quid | Stars and Stripes
• Get a load of the pound sterling

From memory I think the name ‘Quidhampton’ itself comes from a word ‘ceod‘ which means ‘dung’.

Astronomy day

There’s an astronomy event at Sixpenny Handley on the 22nd August:

• Public Astronomy Event

A blogger in Laverstock

I’ve subscribed to a new-ish blog called ‘Across the Bourne‘, written by an American man who has moved to Laverstock. It’s interesting and nicely written.

Salisbury and Stonehenge – ‘blacklisted’ by Google?

It seems that the salisburyandstonehenge.net website was ‘blacklisted’ by Google for a week or so.

Reading a bunch of stuff on Google over the weekend, the most likely cause of this is probably that I had a couple of hundred links on the ‘sidebar’ which appears on every page.

Google don’t like this – presumably sites with lots of links like this tend statistically to be ‘spammy’ or low quality.

Anyhow, I’ve replaced the list of Salisbury’s roads with the ‘road names beginning with the letter…’ list that you should see in the sidebar now.

I then requested that Google reconsider. This can take months according to Google, but my position in the search pages was restored within days.

This is something of a relief. I enjoy writing the website pages, but it would be a bit demoralizing if I thought nobody would ever be able to find them.

Also, I have now got a couple of different photos indexed in Google. The newly indexed ones are pictures of the Red Lion and the White Hart, which are on the Hotels in Salisbury page.

There’s a bunch of stuff that I thought I might usefully cover: