SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2010
By ADMIN
Approximate Population: 316,283
Croydon is a large town and major commercial centre in South London, and the principal settlement of the London Borough of Croydon. It is 9.5 miles (15.3 km) south of Charing Cross, and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It is located on the natural transport corridor between London and England’s south coast, just to the north of a gap in the North Downs.
Historically a part of Surrey, at the time of the Norman conquest of England Croydon had a church, a mill and around 365 inhabitants (as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086). Croydon expanded during the Middle Ages as a market town and a centre for charcoal production, leather tanning and brewing. The Surrey Iron Railway from Croydon to Wandsworth opened in 1803 and was the world’s first horse-drawn railway, which later developed into an important means of transport – facilitating Croydon’s growth as a commuter town for the City of London and beyond.
In the early 20th century Croydon was an important industrial area, known for metal working, car manufacture and its airport. In the mid 20th century these sectors were replaced with retailing and service economy, brought about as a result of a massive redevelopment of office blocks and the Whitgift shopping centre. Croydon was amalgamated into Greater London in 1965. Road traffic is now diverted away from a largely pedestrianised town centre, but its main railway station, East Croydon, is still a major hub within the national railway transport system. The town is expected to have its urban planning changed as part of Croydon Vision 2020.
SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2010
By ADMIN
Approximate Population: 142,691
In Middlesbrough in 686 a monastic cell was consecrated by St. Cuthbert at the request of St. Hilda Abbess of Whitby and in 1119 Robert Bruce granted and confirmed the church of St. Hilda of Middleburg to Whitby. Up until its closure on the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1537, the church was maintained by 12 Benedictine monks, many of whom became vicars or rectors of various places in Cleveland. The importance of the early church at “Middleburg”, later known as Middlesbrough Priory, is indicated by the fact that in 1452 it possessed four altars.
After the Angles the area became home to Viking settlers and it is argued by some that ‘old’ Cleveland has the highest density of Scandinavian parish names in Britain. Names of Viking origin (with the suffix by) are abundant in the area - for example, Thornaby, Ormesby, Stainsby, Lackenby, Maltby and Tollesby were once separate villages that belonged to Vikings called Thormad, Orm, Steinn, Hlakkande, Malti and Toll, but now form suburbs of Middlesbrough. Lazenby was the village belonging to a Leysingr - a freeman; Normanby, a Norseman’s village and Danby (in neighbouring North Yorkshire), a Dane’s village. The name Mydilsburgh is the earliest recorded form of Middlesbrough’s name and dates to Anglian times (400 to 1000 AD), while many of the aforementioned villages appear in the Domesday Book of 1086.
Other links persist in the area, often through school and/or road names, to now-outgrown or abandoned local settlements, such as the medieval settlement of Stainsby, deserted by 1757, which amounts to little more today than a series of grassy mounds near the A19 road. In 1952 Stainsby Secondary Modern School, now renamed Acklam Grange Secondary School, was named for this village.
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