I was born in March 1949 in New Mills. This is a small town of about 8,000 people in North Derbyshire. It is sort of in the Midlands, but if it was a mile or less further north it would be in Lancashire, which is in the North of England and we all speak (or in my case, spoke) funny like Mancunians (natives of Manchester), so we think we’re Northerners.
Not that that is a real big deal, most Southerners i.e. Londoners and their ilk, think that anything north of Cockfosters (which is the most northerly station on the underground) is the deep north and should be avoided at all costs. Who cares what they think anyway! They’re almost as bad as the French and have spawned the likes of Margaret Thatcher.
Most thinking people recognise that the further you travel from London except South and East, (where they’re all cast in the same mould and even closer to France) the friendlier the people. West Country folk are very nice and not averse to smuggling a few barrels of brandy etc. from the accursed French.
They also make a very nice apple cider (called scrumpy which is best described as ‘Rough Cider’ including the skin and pips and rots your socks off . Up north a bit, you’ve got the Southern Welsh who were kind enough to give me a tertiary education. (more of that later).
East from there, after you jump over Offa’s Dyke you’ve got the Potteries Counties. The dyke was dug by some geezer called Offa and his tribe to keep the Welsh where they belonged, although it could have been intended to keep the Anglo Saxons out of Wales.
A bit further north is the Black Country, which was originally named because of all the factories belching out smoke, during and just after the ‘Industrial Revolution’. These days all the dark satanic mills have been moved offshore to China and India.
Further north still, you’ve got your good people from Manchester, Liverpool and if you hop over the Pennines, Sheffield. The other Yorkshire folk are a bit strange, but alright in small doses. Then you go up further and you get to the Geordies, who are some of the best I’ve met and invented Newcastle Brown and other delicious beverages.
Over to the left, you’ve got the Lake District which is very picturesque and that’s about all I’ve got to say about it. I’ve been there once and it’s got a few lakes and some famous people and poets lived there. I think Wordsworth may have wandered through a host of golden daffodils in that neck of the meadows.
In the far north you cross Hadrian’s wall, obviously built by a Roman Wally called, you got it! Hadrian. This was designed to keep the mad buggers called Picts and Scots back over the border in Glasgow fighting among themselves. The Scots are supposed to be a bunch of dour sods, but the ones I’ve met love a bevy or two and rarely get violent, I may have been lucky there.
To get back to New Mills, it’s situated on the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett (which will never get a mention in any documentary on the great rivers of the world). Although they do eventually flow into the Mersey and if you’ve never heard of that you shouldn’t really be reading this. As you were obviously born after the Beatles and the rest of the Scousers conquered the music scene.
These two, not so mighty, rivers were trapped behind a weir and forced into a mill race, which strangely enough turned a mill wheel, which provided power for a mill or maybe two, milling corn. The local idiot savant said “Oh! New Mills” and the local villeins and serfs clapped delightedly and the name stuck. That’s enough geography for the time being, I don’t want to bore you too much.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull
http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com
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