Approximate Population: 51,998

Cheshunt is a town in Hertfordshire, England with a population of around 52,000 according to the United Kingdom’s 2001 Census. It is a dormitory town and part of the Greater London Urban Area and London commuter belt served by Cheshunt railway station. The town is located 14 miles (23 km) from Charing Cross, making it one of the closest parts of Hertfordshire to Central London.

The town name comes from the Old English name (as recorded in the Domesday Book) for the area, Cestrehunt, which probably refers to a “castle, erected by the romans”, the word word cestre (along with the form ceastre), or even its modern forms, chester and caster being derived from the Latin castrum meaning “fort”. The town Chester also derives from this root and it is an element in various places. This is commemorated in the arms of the former Cheshunt urban district council.

Cheshunt is famous in several ways. Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, died here in 1712. The town’s Bury Green neighbourhood was once the home of singer Cliff Richard. Lotus Cars as well as the nationally famous Debenhams were also founded in Cheshunt, and the headquarters of Tesco, the UK’s largest and most profitable supermarket chain, is also located here. The nearby village of Goffs Oak is the original home of Victoria Beckham of Spice Girls fame. In 2002, Cheshunt hosted the only officially licensed European BotCon convention ever.

In 1825, Cheshunt was also the location of the Cheshunt Railway. Running from the town’s High Street to the River Lea near the present-day Cheshunt railway station, this 0.75 mi (1.21 km) horse-drawn line was the first passenger-carrying monorail and the first railway line to be built in Hertfordshire.

Cheshunt Hertfordshire Computer Services

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Approximate Population: 136,940

West Bromwich is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands, England. It is 5 miles (8.0 km) north west of Birmingham lying on the A41 London-to-Birkenhead road. West Bromwich is part of the Black Country. West Bromwich is the largest town within the Borough of Sandwell with a population of 136,940 (2001).

West Bromwich is famous for its football club, West Bromwich Albion.   The club was founded in 1878 and in 1888 it became one of the twelve founder members of the Football League.   It won the league championship in 1920 and has won the FA Cup five times, most recently in 1968.   The club recently won the Coca Cola Championship in 2008.   Albion were based in and around the centre of West Bromwich during their formative years, but moved further out of the town in 1900 when they switched to their current ground, The Hawthorns.

Engineering and chemicals are important to the town’s economy, as it played a crucial part in the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century and still retains many manufacturing jobs to this day, despite a steady nationwide decline in this sector since the 1970s.

Sandwell General Hospital is located near the town centre.   It is part of the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, one of the largest NHS teaching trusts in the United Kingdom.  William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth had his seat at Sandwell Hall.   Legge was unusual as an aristocrat of this period by being a Methodist and attending the Wednesbury Methodist meetings, where fellow Methodists - many of them colliers and drovers - knew him as “Brother Earl”.

West Bromwich West Midlands Computer Services

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Approximate Population: 82,056

Halifax is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale, in West Yorkshire, England, with a population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England’s woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece Hall. Internationally famous for its Mackintosh chocolate and toffee (now owned by Nestlé), the Halifax Building Society and Shibden Hall.

Halifax was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1848 under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and with the passing of the Local Government Act 1888 became a County Borough in 1889.   Since 1974, Halifax has been the administrative centre of the Metropolitan District of Calderdale, part of the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire.

North Halifax is noted for its local support of the far-right British National Party; the suburb of Mixenden became the first area in West Yorkshire to popularly vote in a BNP councillor, with Illingworth soon to follow.

Topographically, Halifax is located in the south-eastern corner of the moorland region called the South Pennines. Halifax is situated about 4 miles (6.4 km) from the M62 motorway close to Bradford, Huddersfield and Rochdale.   The Tees-Exe line passes through the A641 road, which links nearby Brighouse with Bradford and Huddersfield, The town lies 65 miles (105 km) from Kingston upon Hull and Liverpool, and about 200 miles (320 km) from the cities of London, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin and Cardiff as the crow flies. The major waterway is the River Calder.

Halifax West Yorkshire Computer Services

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Approximate Population: 136,082

Stockport is a large town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground on the River Mersey at the influx of the rivers Goyt and Tame, 6.1 miles (9.8 km) southeast of the city of Manchester.   Stockport is the largest settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, and has a population of 136,082, the wider borough being 281,000.

Stockport in the 16th century was known for the cultivation of hemp and rope manufacture and in the 18th century the town had one of the first mechanised silk factories in the United Kingdom.   However, Stockport’s predominant industries of the 19th century were the cotton and allied industries.   Stockport was also at the centre of the country’s hatting industry which by 1884 was exporting more than six million hats a year.   In December 1997 the last Stockport hat works closed. The town’s hatting heritage is preserved at ‘Hat Works - the Museum of Hatting’.

Dominating the western approaches to the town is the Stockport Viaduct. Built in 1840, the viaduct’s 27 brick arches over the River Mersey carry the mainline railways from Manchester to Birmingham and London.   This structure featured as the background in many paintings by L.S. Lowry.

The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 made Stockport a municipal borough divided into six wards with a council consisting of 14 Aldermen and 42 Councillors. In 1888, its status was raised to County Borough, becoming the County Borough of Stockport. Since 1972, Stockport has been twinned with in Béziers in France. In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972 Stockport amalgamated with neighbouring districts to form the Unitary Authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport in the now ceremonial metropolitan county of Greater Manchester.

Stockport Greater Manchester Computer Services

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Approximate Population: 80,000

Bath is a city in the ceremonial county of Somerset in the south west of England. It is situated 97 miles (156 km) west of London and 13 miles (21 km) south-east of Bristol. The population of the city is about 80,000. It was granted city status by Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth I in 1590, and was made a county borough in 1889 which gave it administrative independence from its county, Somerset. The city became part of Avon when that county was created in 1974. Since 1996, when Avon was abolished, Bath has been the principal centre of the unitary authority of Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES).

Archaeological evidence shows that the site of the Roman Baths’ main spring was treated as a shrine by the Celts, and was dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans identified with Minerva; however, the name Sulis continued to be used after the Roman invasion, leading to the town’s Roman name of Aquae Sulis (literally, “the waters of Sulis”).  

Messages to her scratched onto metal, known as curse tablets, have been recovered from the Sacred Spring by archaeologists. These curse tablets were written in Latin, and usually laid curses on people by whom the writer felt they had been wronged.   For example, if a citizen had his clothes stolen at the baths, he would write a curse, naming the suspects, on a tablet to be read by the Goddess Sulis Minerva.

The temple was constructed in 60–70 AD and the bathing complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years.  During the Roman occupation of Britain, and possibly on the instructions of Emperor Claudius, engineers drove oak piles into the mud to provide a stable foundation and surrounded the spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead.  In the 2nd century, the spring was enclosed within a wooden barrel-vaulted building, which housed the calidarium (hot bath), tepidarium (warm bath), and frigidarium (cold bath).  The city was given defensive walls, probably in the 3rd century.  After the Roman withdrawal in the first decade of the 5th century, the baths fell into disrepair and were eventually lost due to silting up.

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Approximate Population: 99,876

The first historical reference to Basildon is in records from 1086.   It is mentioned in the Domesday Book as ‘Belesduna’.  The name ‘Basildon’ means ‘Beorhtel’s hill’ and is derived from the Anglo-Saxon personal name ‘Beorhtel’ and the Anglo-Saxon word ‘dun’, meaning hill.   In historical documents, this name had various forms over the centuries, including Berdlesdon, Batlesdon and Belesduna.

By the beginning of the 1900s, Basildon had evolved with much of the land having been sold in small plots during a period of land speculation and development taking placed haphazardly with building by plotowners ranging from shelters created from recycled materials to brick-built homes and with amenities such as water, gas, electricity and hard-surfaced roads lacking.

In the 1940s, Billericay and Essex County Councils, who were concerned about the lack of amenities on the area and how it had evolved, petitioned the Government to create a New Town, and on January 4 1949, Lewis Silkin, Minister of Town and Country Planning, officially designated Basildon as a ‘New Town’.  

Basildon Development Corporation was formed in February 1949 to transform the designated area into a modern new town.   The New Town incorporated Laindon and Pitsea and was laid out around small neighbourhoods with the first house being completed in June 1951.  The first tenants moved into homes on 18 June 1951, in numbers 59, 61, and 63 Redgrave Road in Vange.

Basildon Essex UK

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Approximate Population: 189,474

Northampton became significant in the 11th century, when the Normans built town walls and a large castle under the stewardship of the Norman earl, Simon de Senlis.  The original defence line of the walls is preserved in today’s street pattern (Bridge St, The Drapery, Bearward St and Scarletwell Street). The town grew rapidly after the Normans arrived, and beyond the early defences.   By the time of the Domesday Book, the town had a population of about 1500 residents, living in 300 houses.

The town and its castle were important in the early 12th century and the King often held Court in the town. During his famous fall out with Henry II, Thomas Becket at one time escaped from Northampton Castle through the unguarded Northern gate to flee the country.

Northampton had a large Jewish population in the 13th century, centred around Gold Street.   In 1277 300 Jews were executed, allegedly for clipping the King’s coin, and the Jews of Northampton were driven out of the town.

The town was originally controlled by officials acting for the King who collected taxes and upheld the law.   In 1189 King Richard I gave the town its first charter.   In 1215 King John authorised the appointment of William Tilly as the town’s first Mayor and ordered that: ‘twelve of the better and more discreet residents of the town join him as a council to assist him’.   In 1176 the Assize of Northampton laid down new powers for dealing with law breakers.

Northampton Northamptonshire Computer Services

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Approximate Population: 13,720

Bebington is a small town and electoral ward within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England. It lies 5 miles (8 km) south of Liverpool and 34.5 miles (56 km) west southwest of Manchester, along the River Mersey on the eastern side of the Wirral Peninsula. Nearby towns include Birkenhead and Wallasey to the north northwest and Heswall to the west southwest.

It had a total resident population of 13,720 at the 2001 Census.

The town includes the areas of Port Sunlight (an early planned factory town), Higher Bebington (which includes the Mount Estate), Lower Bebington, Poulton Lancelyn, Spital, Storeton and Woodhey.

Bebington railway station opened in 1838 and is situated on the Wirral Line of the Merseyrail network.

The Church of St. Andrew, on a site occupied since Saxon times, dates from the 14th and 16th centuries.

In 1838, the footprints of an archosaur later called the Chirotherium storetonese were found in a sandstone bed at Storeton Quarry. Examples can be seen at the Liverpool Museum and at Christ Church within the parish of Higher Bebington.

Stone quarried at Bebington was used for the construction of Birkenhead Town Hall, some of the villas around Birkenhead and Rock Parks and most famously of all the Empire State Building in New York City. The stone is considered to be a high quality sandstone which is creamy in appearance. The Quarries were eventually filled in with debris removed during the construction of the two Mersey Tunnels.

Mayer Hall, Bebington Village, was formerly an art gallery built by Joseph Mayer, a Liverpool Businessman. It is now a community resource and still boasts many of its original features.

The Brackenwood golf course was cited in 2004 as a likely site for the Battle of Brunanburh in 937.

Bebington Merseyside Computer Services

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Approximate Population: 257,000

Kingston upon Hull, almost invariably referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.  It is located 25 miles (40 km) from the North Sea on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary.  Hull has a resident population of 257,000 (2007 est.).  

Renamed Kings town upon Hull by King Edward I in 1299, the town and city of Hull has served as market town, military supply port, trading hub, fishing and whaling centre, and industrial metropolis.  Hull was an early theatre of battle in the English Civil Wars, and was the backdrop to events leading to the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

The city was unique in the United Kingdom in having a municipally owned telephone system from 1902, sporting cream, not red, telephone boxes. After suffering heavy damage during the Second World War, Hull weathered a period of post-industrial decline, during which the city gained unfavourable results on measures of social deprivation, education and policing.   However, the city has embarked on a programme of regeneration and renewal and a range of sporting and cultural activities is available.

Kingston upon Hull is home to the University of Hull, which was founded in 1927 and received its Royal Charter in 1954. It has a student population of 16,000. Associated with the university is the Hull York Medical School, which took its first intake of students in 2003 as a part of the British government’s attempts to train more doctors.

Hull Humberside Computer Services

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Approximate Population: 81,203

In the Anglo-Saxon period, the area of Wigan was probably under the control of the Northumbrians and later the Mercians.   In the early 10th century there was an influx of Scandinavians expelled from Ireland.   This can be seen in place names such as Scholes – now a part of Wigan – which derives from the Scandinavian skali meaning “hut”.   Further evidence comes from some street names in Wigan which have Scandinavian origins. Although Wigan parish church was mentioned in the Domesday Book, the current building dates to the 15th century.

Although Wigan is not mentioned in the Domesday Book, possibly because it was included in the Neweton barony (now Newton-le-Willows), it is thought that the mention of a church in the manor of Neweton is Wigan parish church.  The rectors of the parish church were lords of the manor of Wigan, a sub-manor of Neweton, until the 19th century.  

The incorporation of Wigan as a borough happened in 1246 following the issue of a Charter by King Henry III to John Maunsel, the local church rector and lord of the manor.  The borough was later granted another Charter in 1257–1258, allowing the lord of the manor to hold a market on every Monday and two annual fairs.

Edward II visited Wigan in 1323 in an effort to stabilise the region which had been the source of the Banastre Rebellion in 1315.   Edward stayed in nearby Upholland Priory and held court in the town over a period of several days.  During the medieval period Wigan expanded and prospered and in 1536, antiquarian John Leland described the town, saying “Wigan paved; as big as Warrington and better builded.   There is one parish church amid the town. Some merchants, some artificers, some farmers”.

Wigan Greater Manchester Computer Services

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