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Birmingham West Midlands

Approximate Population: 1,010,200

Birmingham is the fourth most visited city by foreign visitors in the UK.   In 1998, Birmingham hosted the G8 summit at the International Convention Centre, on the site of Bingley Hall, the world’s first purpose-built exhibition hall, and remains a popular location for conventions today along with the National Exhibition Centre in nearby Solihull.

In 2007, Birmingham was ranked as the 55th most livable city in the world and the second most in the UK after London, according to the Mercer Index of worldwide standards of living.

People from Birmingham are known as ‘Brummies’, a term derived from the city’s nickname of Brum.   This comes in turn from the city’s dialect name, Brummagem, which is derived from one of the city’s earlier names, ‘Bromwicham’.   There is a distinctive Brummie dialect and accent, both of which differ from the adjacent Black Country.

Rent Houses Birmingham

West Midlands

Rent Houses Lowestoft Suffolk

Approximate Population: 57,746

Lowestoft is a coastal town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England, lying between the eastern edge of The Broads National Park at Oulton Broad and the North Sea within the parliamentary constituency of Waveney. It is home to Lowestoft Ness, the most easterly point of the United Kingdom.

Lowestoft is Suffolk’s second largest town and is divided in two by Lake Lothing, home of its port, divided into an inner- and outer- harbour by a bascule bridge carrying the A12 through the town. Both north and south sides of the town contain a variety of business and residential areas, with the main shopping centre lying just to the north and the award-winning Blue Flag beaches to the south.

The town has two piers, situated on the south beach. The southerly pier, called the Claremont Pier, originally served as a port of call for steamers travelling to and from London. The pier structure itself has been closed for many years, now in a state of disrepair and not open to the public, though the building at the land end still hosts an arcade, bar, club and fish restaurant. Just over half a mile (1 km) to the north of that is the South Pier (so called because it is placed on the south side of the outer harbour).

Lowestoft railway station is centrally placed within the town, as well as also being within walking distance of the beach, providing services to Norwich along the Wherry Line and Ipswich on the East Suffolk Line. Some services also continue on through to London Liverpool Street along the main line from Ipswich. All services are operated by National Express East Anglia.

Rent Houses Lowestoft Suffolk

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Colchester Essex

Approximate Population: 104,390

Colchester is noted for its Victorian architecture. Significant landmarks include the Colchester Town Hall and the Jumbo Water Tower.  In 1884 the town was struck by the Colchester earthquake, estimated to have been 4.7 on the Richter Scale causing extensive regional damage.

The Paxman diesels business has been associated with Colchester since 1865 when James Noah Paxman founded a partnership with the brothers Henry and Charles Davey (’Davey, Paxman, and Davey’) and opened the Standard Ironworks.   In 1925 Paxman produced its first spring injection oil engine and joined the English Electric Diesel Group in 1966 – later becoming part of the GEC Group.   Since the 1930s the Paxman company’s main business has been the production of diesel engines.

The £22.7m eight-mile A120 Colchester Eastern Bypass opened in June 1982.  Colchester and the surrounding area is currently undergoing significant regeneration.

Colchester Town Watch was founded in 2001 to provide a ceremonial guard for the Mayor of Colchester and for civic events such as the Oyster Feast.   The historic re-enactors wear a livery based on late Elizabethan dress. Colchester Town Watch is accompanied by the musicians of the Colchester Town Waits  – a musical tradition dating back to the 14th century.

Rent Houses Colchester Essex

Rent Houses Colchester Essex

Approximate Population: 104,390

Colchester claims to be the oldest town in Britain. It was for a time the capital of Roman Britain and also claims to have the United Kingdom’s oldest recorded market. Colchester is 56 miles (90 km) northeast of London. It is connected to the capital by the A12 road and the Great Eastern Main Line.

Colchester is claimed to be the oldest recorded town in Britain on the grounds that it was mentioned by Pliny the Elder in AD 77. Its Celtic name was Camulodunon, meaning ‘the fortress of (the war god) Camulos’. Following the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, a Roman legionary fortress was established and the name Camulodunon was modified to the Roman spelling of ‘Camulodunum’. Camulodunum served as the first Roman capital of Britain, but was attacked and destroyed during Boudica’s rebellion in AD 61.

Sometime after the destruction, London became the capital of the province of Britannia but it would seem that the council of the provincial natives still met at Colchester, where the Temple to the Divine Claudius served as the seat of this council. Later, when the Roman frontier moved north (c. AD 49), Camulodunum became a colonia known as Colonia Claudia Victricensis. In 2004 Colchester Archaeological Trust discovered the remains of a Roman Circus (chariot race track) underneath the Garrison in Colchester, a unique find in Britain.

The £22.7m eight-mile A120 Colchester Eastern Bypass opened in June 1982. Colchester and the surrounding area is currently undergoing significant regeneration. Colchester Town Watch was founded in 2001 to provide a ceremonial guard for the Mayor of Colchester and for civic events such as the Oyster Feast. The historic re-enactors wear a livery based on late Elizabethan dress. Colchester Town Watch is accompanied by the musicians of the Colchester Town Waits – a musical tradition dating back to the 14th century.

Rent Houses Colchester Essex

Rent Houses York North Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 193,300

York is a walled city, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England.   The city is noted for its rich heritage and it has played an important role throughout much of its almost 2,000 year existence.

The city was founded as Eboracum in AD 71 by the Romans and was made the capital of Britannia Inferior.  During the Roman period influential historical figures, such as Constantine the Great, became associated with the city.   The entire Roman Empire was governed from York for two years by Septimius Severus.

After the Angles moved in, the city was renamed Eoferwic, and served as the capital of the Kingdom of Northumbria.  The Vikings captured the city in 866, renaming it Jórvík, the capital of a wider kingdom of the same name covering much of Northern England. Around the year 1000, the city became known as York.

Richard II wished to make York the capital of England, but before he could effect this he was deposed.  After the Wars of the Roses, York housed the Council of the North and was regarded as the capital of the North.   It was only after The Restoration that the political importance of the city began to decline.  The Province of York is one of the two English ecclesiastical provinces, alongside that of Canterbury.

From 1996, the term City of York describes a unitary authority area which includes rural areas beyond the old city boundaries.   The urban area has a population of 137,505, while the entire unitary authority has 193,300 (2007 est.) people.

Rent Houses York North Yorkshire

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Lichfield Staffordshire

Approximate Population: 31,000

At Wall, 3 miles to the south of the present city, there was a Romano-British village called Letocetum (from the Celtic for “grey wood”), from which the first half of the name Lichfield is derived.   It was based on a Roman fort next to Watling Street which was used in the first centuries AD, until about AD 160-170, when the fort’s mansio was destroyed by fire at the same time the forum in Wroxeter was also destroyed by fire.

This suggests a revolt of the local British. Legend has it that a thousand Christians were martyred in Lichfield around AD 300, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and that the name ‘Lichfield’ actually means ‘field of the dead’.   There is however, no evidence to support this legend.

The history of Lichfield in the following centuries is obscure. The Historia Britonum lists the city as one of the 28 cities of Britain around AD 833.   In the Welsh poem The Lament of Cynddylan, Caer Luytcoed (cf modern Welsh Caerlwytgoed — Lichfield) or Lichfield is said to have been taken by the sword by pagan opponents, most likely the Mercians to the east.

Rent Houses Lichfield Staffordshire

Rent Houses Manchester Greater Manchester

Approximate Population: 458,100

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. Manchester was granted city status in 1853. It has a population of 458,100, and lies at the centre of the wider Greater Manchester Urban Area, which has a population of 2,240,230, the United Kingdom’s third largest conurbation. Manchester has the second most populous Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) in the UK and the fourteenth most populated in Europe.

The name Manchester originates from the Ancient Roman name Mamucium, the name of the Roman fort and settlement, generally thought to be a Latinisation of an original Celtic name (possibly meaning “breast-like hill” from mamm- = “breast”), plus Old English ceaster = “town”, which is derived from Latin castra = “camp”. An alternative theory suggests that the origin is British Celtic mamma = “mother”, where the “mother” was a river-goddess of the River Medlock which flows below the fort. Mam means “female breast” in Irish Gaelic and “mother” in Welsh. Manchester is also the 10th most common place name in the United States.

Manchester has recently been regarded by the international press, British public, and government ministers as being the second city of the United Kingdom. A 2007 poll by the BBC placed it ahead of Birmingham and Liverpool in the category of second city of England, but also ahead in the category of third city. Neither categories are officially sanctioned, and criteria for determining what ’second city’ means are ill-defined.

Manchester is not the second largest city in size or population, but it is argued that cultural and historical criteria are more important. The BBC reports that redevelopment of recent years has heightened claims that Manchester is the second city of the UK. This title however, which is unofficial in the UK, has traditionally been held by Birmingham since the early 20th century.

Rent Houses Manchester Greater Manchester

Rent Houses Guildford Surrey

Approximate Population: 66,773

Guildford is the county town of Surrey, England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region.   It is situated some 43 km (27 miles) southwest of London on the A3 trunk road linking the capital to Portsmouth.

The town has Saxon roots, and likely owes its location to the existence of a gap in the North Downs where the River Wey is forded by the Harrow Way. The town grew enough in importance by 978 to be the Royal Mint.   With the building of the Wey Navigation and Basingstoke Canal Guildford was in the centre of a network of waterways that aided its prosperity.

The Guildford pub bombing in 1974 killed five people including four off-duty soldiers from the local barracks.  The subsequently arrested suspects became known as the Guildford Four.

The stretch of the A3 extending from beneath the A31 (Hog’s Back) to Potter’s Lane is known as the Guildford Bypass and is busy at peak times since the A3 trunk road links Guildford to Portsmouth, London and the M25. The M3 and M4 motorways are within short distance. The A31 (known locally as the ‘Hog’s Back’ as it looks like the ridge of a hog’s back from aerial view) extends from Guildford to Farnham and is built on the old site of a Roman Road and made up part of the Pilgrim’s Way which extended from Winchester to Canterbury. Today, there is no direct route from Winchester to Canterbury and the A31 links Guildford to mid-Dorset (east of Dorchester). Guildford has a notorious one-way system in the town centre. There are other numerous minor A-Roads linking Guildford to various other places including Horsham, Woking, Godalming, Reading, Aldershot, Bracknell and Dorking.

Rent Houses Guildford Surrey

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Milton Keynes Buckinghamshire

Approximate Population: 184,506

The flood plains of the Great Ouse and of its tributaries (the Ouzel and some brooks) have been protected as linear parks that run right through Milton Keynes.  The Grand Union Canal is another green route (and demonstrates the level geography of the town – there is just one minor lock in its entire 10 mile route through from Fenny Stratford to the “Iron Trunk” Aqueduct over the Ouse at Wolverton.

The Milton Keynes redway system of cycleways and footpaths uses these and other routes.   The Park system was designed by landscape architect Peter Youngman, who also developed landscape precepts for the whole town: groups of grid squares were to be planted with different selections of trees and shrubs in order to give them distinct identities.   However the landscaping of parks and of the grid roads was evolved under the leadership of Neil Higson, who from 1977 took over as Chief Landscape Architect and made the original grand but not entirely practical landscape plan more subtle.

A policy of creating “settings, strings, beads” for landscape features was introduced: ’settings’ for historic villages and landscape features, ’strings’ of landscape to make the linear parks hang together and ‘beads’ of public space where residents might linger.   Higson also made the landscaping of the Grid Roads, one of the glories of Milton Keynes, more subtle, with ‘windows’ cut into the roadside planting so that motorists travelling through had a sense of the major town they were in; early critics had said of Milton Keynes ‘there is no there there’, as the town could not be seen by the motorist just passing through.   Now that the trees and shrubs have matured, the skill and lavish scale of the Grid Road planting makes a dramatic and welcome change from the monotony of many British towns.

Rent Houses

Milton Keynes Buckinghamshire

Rent Houses Waterlooville Hampshire

Approximate Population: 10,000

Waterlooville is a town in Hampshire, England approx 8 miles north of Portsmouth.

The town has a population itself of about 10,000 and is surrounded by Purbrook, Blendworth, Cowplain, Lovedean, Clanfield, Catherington, Crookhorn, Denmead, Hambledon, Horndean and Widley. It forms part of the South Hampshire conurbation. The old A3 London to Portsmouth road still goes through the town.

The town is twinned with Maurepas, Yvelines in France and Henstedt-Ulzburg in Germany.

Legend has it that it was named after the pub that stood at the centre of town, then known as Waitland End. The Heroes of Waterloo was named because on its opening day a long column of weary soldiers, who had just disembarked at Portsmouth returning home from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, decided to stop there and celebrate their victory. According to local legend, many of them settled there; at any rate the public house was renamed in their honour and the area around the pub became known as Waterlooville.

The main shopping precinct is served by First in Hampshire & Dorset bus routes 40/X40, 41, 45 and 45A, and Stagecoach services 37 and 39. The A3 Bus Corridor priority route (being constructed between 2003-2007) serves the town. As of 2006, the shopping precinct is closed to all road traffic other than buses.

The nearest train station is located in Bedhampton[2] and is on the main train route between London and Portsmouth. South West trains provide a direct bus link to Petersfield railway station via Horndean, enabling quick access to fast London-bound trains.

The town’s senior non-league football side is Havant & Waterlooville F.C. Havant & Waterlooville F.C. was drawn against Liverpool FC in the FA Cup in the 2007/08 season. Liverpool won the match 5-2, after Havant & Waterlooville had taken the lead with a goal from Richard Pacquette in the 8th minute. With Havant & Waterlooville F.C. twice leading Liverpool, the match was promoted by the English FA as a fine example of what the FA Challenge Cup is all about. Waterlooville also has a swimming pool which is home to Havant & Waterlooville Swimming Club.

Rent Houses Waterlooville Hampshire