Rent Houses

Chester Cheshire

Approximate Population: 77,040

A considerable amount of land in Chester is owned by the Duke of Westminster who owns an estate – Eaton Hall – near the village of Eccleston. He also has vast London properties in Mayfair.   Indeed, the clock tower which houses Big Ben was copied on the Duke’s estate home of Eaton Hall and can be seen from the road from Aldford to Chester today.

Grosvenor is the Duke’s family name, which explains such features in the City such as the Grosvenor Bridge, the Grosvenor Hotel, and Grosvenor Park. Much of Chester’s architecture dates from the Victorian era, many of the buildings being modelled on the Jacobean half-timbered style and designed by John Douglas, who was employed by the Duke as his principal architect. He had a trademark of twisted chimney stacks, many of which can be seen on the buildings in the city centre.

Douglas designed amongst other buildings the Grosvenor Hotel and the City Baths.   In 1911, Douglas’ protégé and city architect James Strong designed the then active fire station on the west side of Northgate Street.   Another feature of all buildings belonging to the estate of Westminster is the ‘Grey Diamonds’ – a weaving pattern of grey bricks in the red brickwork laid out in a diamond formation.

Rent Houses Chester Cheshire

Related posts

• Chester (0)

Rent Houses Bristol Bristol

Approximate Population: 416,400

Bristol City Council consists of 70 councillors representing 35 wards.   They are elected in thirds with two councillors per ward, each serving a four-year term.   Wards never have both councillors up for election at the same time, so effectively two-thirds of the wards are up each election.  The Council has long been dominated by the Labour Party, but recently the Liberal Democrats have grown strong in the city and as the largest party took minority control of the Council at the 2005 election.

They are no longer in control following Labour and the Conservatives vetoing the Liberal Democrats’ preferred candidate, Steve Comer, in 2007. As a result, Labour rule the council under a minority administration, and the council leader is Helen Holland.   The Lord Mayor is Lib Dem Councillor Chris Davis.

Bristol constituencies in the House of Commons cross the borders with neighbouring authorities, and the city is divided into Bristol West, East, South and North-west and Kingswood.   Northavon also covers some of the suburbs, but none of the administrative county.  

At the next General Election, the boundaries will be changed to coincide with the county boundary.   Kingswood will no longer cover any of the county, and a new Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency will include the suburbs in South Gloucestershire.   There are four Labour and one Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament.

Rent Houses Bristol Bristol

Related posts

• Bristol (0)

Rent Houses Barnsley South Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 218,063

The first historical reference occurs in 1086 in the Domesday Book, in which it is called ‘Berneslai’ with a total population of around 200.   The exact origins of the name Barnsley is still subject to debate, but Barnsley Council claims that its origins lie in the Saxon word Berne, for barn or storehouse, and Lay, for field.

The town lay in the parish of Silkstone and developed little until in the 1150s it was given to the monastery of St John, Pontefract.   The monks decided to build a new town where three roads met: the Sheffield to Wakefield, Rotherham to Huddersfield and Cheshire to Doncaster routes.   The Domesday village became known as “Old Barnsley”, and a town grew up on the new site.

The monks erected a chapel-of-ease dedicated to Saint Mary, which survived intact until 1820, and established a market.   In 1249, a Royal Charter was granted to Barnsley permitting it to hold a weekly market on Wednesdays and annual four-day fair at Michaelmas.   By the 1290s, three annual fairs were held.   The town became the main centre for the Staincross wapentake, but in the mid-sixteenth century still had only 600 inhabitants.

Rent Houses Barnsley South Yorkshire

Related posts

• No related posts.

Rent Houses

St. Helens Merseyside

Approximate Population: 102,629

St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England.   It is the largest settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens with a population of just over 100,000 of an urban area with a total population of 176,843 at the time of the 2001 Census.

Historically a part of Lancashire, the area grew during the 18th and 19th century as a significant centre for coal mining, and glassmaking.  Both prior and during this time it was also home to a cotton and linen industry (notably sail making) that did not last through the mid 19th century as well as salt, lime and alkali pits, copper smelting, and brewing.

The town and borough is notable for being the site of the first fully man made canal opened in autumn 1757, and also the first competition for steam locomotives, in Rainhill Trials.

Today, St Helens is very much a commercial town. The main industries have since left, become outdated, or have been outsourced leaving the float and patterned rolled glass producer Pilkingtons, a world leader in their industry, as the town’s one remaining large industrial employer. Previously the town had been home to Beechams (now part of GlaxoSmithKline), Ravenhead glass (bought out by the Belgian nationalised Durobor), United Glass Bottles (U.G.B.), Triplex (owned by Pilkington, farmed out to India), Daglish Foundry (closed and demolished 1939), and Greenall’s (now located in nearby Warrington).

Rent Houses St. Helens Merseyside

Related posts

• St. Helens (0)

Rent Houses

Lisburn Northern Ireland

Approximate Population: 71,465

* Lisburn railway station was opened on 12 August 1839.  The railway remains a popular means of transport between Lisburn and Belfast, with the express trains taking 8-10 minutes to reach Belfast’s Great Victoria Street. The train also links the city directly with Portadown, Lurgan, Moira and Bangor. Connections to Dublin require a change at either Portadown or Belfast Central.

* The city is served by a variety of bus routes to Belfast city centre via the Lisburn Road (523/4/5) and also the Falls Road (530/1/2). There are also routes passing through the city heading for Banbridge or Newry (service 38) and Craigavon (service 51). There are few buses that access Belfast using the M1 motorway, adding to the popularity of the train.

* The city has a vast network of local buses, serving the local housing developments and amenities.

* A new ‘Bus Centre’ opened on 30 June 2008 at the corner of Smithfield Street and the Hillsborough Road. The new structure replaces the simple shelters at Smithfield Square, 200 yards to the east.

Rent Houses Lisburn Northern Ireland

Related posts

• No related posts.

Rent Houses Aylesbury Buckinghamshire

Approximate Population: 56,392

Aylesbury is the county town of Buckinghamshire in south east England. In the 2001 census the Aylesbury Urban Area, which includes Bierton, Fairford Leys, Stoke Mandeville and Watermead, had a population of 69,021, which included 56,392 for the Aylesbury civil parish.

The town name is of Old English origin. Excavations in the town centre in 1985 found an Iron Age hillfort dating from around 650BC. The town is sited on an outcrop of Portlandian limestone which accounts for its prominent position in the surrounding landscape, which is largely clay. Aylesbury was a major market town in Anglo-Saxon times, famous in addition as the burial place of Saint Osyth, whose shrine attracted pilgrims. The Early English parish church of St. Mary (with many later additions) may be built over the remains of a Saxon crypt. At the Conquest, the king took the manor of Aylesbury for himself, and it is listed as a royal manor in the Domesday Book, 1086.

In 1450 a religious institution called the Guild of St Mary was founded in Aylesbury by John Kemp, Archbishop of York. Known popularly as the Guild of Our Lady it became a meeting place for local dignitaries and a hotbed of political intrigue. The Guild was influential in the final outcome of the Wars of the Roses. Its premises at the Chantry in Church Street, Aylesbury, are still there, though today the site is occupied mainly by almshouses.

Aylesbury was declared the county town of Buckinghamshire in 1529 by King Henry VIII: Aylesbury Manor was among the many properties belonging to Thomas Boleyn the father of Anne Boleyn and it is rumoured that the change was made by the king in order to curry favour with the holders of the manor. (Previously the county town of Buckinghamshire was Buckingham).

Rent Houses Aylesbury Buckinghamshire

Related posts

• No related posts.

Rent Houses Bath Somerset

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.

Rent Houses Bath Somerset

Related posts

• Bath (0)

Rent Houses

Oldham Greater Manchester

Approximate Population: 103,544

Much of Oldham’s history is concerned with textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution; it has been said that “if ever the Industrial Revolution placed a town firmly and squarely on the map of the world, that town is Oldham.”  Oldham’s soils were too thin and poor to sustain crop growing, and so for decades prior to industrialisation the area was used for grazing sheep, which provided the raw material for a local woollen weaving trade.

By 1756, Oldham emerged as centre of the hatting industry in England. The rough felt used in the production process is the origin of the term “Owdham Roughyed” a nickname for people from Oldham.  It was not until the last quarter of the 18th century that Oldham changed from being a cottage industry township producing woollen garments via domestic manual labour, to a sprawling industrial metropolis of textile factories.

The climate, geology, and topography of Oldham were unrelenting constraints upon the social and economic activities of the human inhabitants.  Located 700 feet (213 m) above sea level with no major river or visible natural resources, Oldham had poor geographic attributes compared with other settlements for investors and their engineers.   As a result, Oldham played no part in the initial period of the Industrial Revolution, although it did later become seen as obvious territory to industrialise because of its convenient position between the labour forces of Manchester and southwest Yorkshire.

Rent Houses

Oldham Greater Manchester

Related posts

• Oldham (0)
• Wigan (0)
• Wigan (0)
• Stockport (0)
• Stockport (0)

Rent Houses Grimsby Lincolnshire

Approximate Population: 87,574

Grimsby (or archaically Great Grimsby) is a seaport on the Humber Estuary in Lincolnshire, England. It has been the administrative centre of the unitary authority area of North East Lincolnshire since 1996. According to legend, Grimsby was first founded by Grim, a Danish fisherman. ‘By’ means ‘village’ in Old Norse and ‘city’ or ‘town’ in the modern Danish language. The town was previously titled “Great Grimsby” to distinguish it from Little Grimsby, a village about 14 miles (22 km) to the south, near Louth. People from Grimsby are called Grimbarians.

The town itself has a population of around 87,589. It is physically linked to the adjoining town of Cleethorpes, and 11,000 of its inhabitants live in the village of Scartho which was absorbed into Grimsby before laws on the Green Belt were put in place. All three areas come under the jurisdiction of the same council, North East Lincolnshire. It is close to the main terminus of the A180, which ends in Cleethorpes. 22 January is Great Grimsby Day.

Grimsby was founded by the Danes in the 9th century AD, although there is some evidence of a small town of Roman workers sited in the area some seven centuries earlier. Located on The Haven, which flowed into the Humber, Grimsby would have provided an ideal location for ships to shelter from approaching storms. It was also well situated for the rich fishing grounds in the North Sea.

In the early 19th century, the town grew rapidly. The Great Grimsby Haven Company was formed by Act of Parliament in May 1796 (the Grimsby Haven Act) for the purpose of “widening, deepening, enlarging, altering and improving the Haven of the Town and Port of Great Grimsby”. Grimsby’s port boomed, importing iron, timber, wheat, hemp and flax. New docks were necessary to cope with the expansion. The Grimsby Docks Act of 1845 allowed the necessary building works.

Rent Houses Grimsby Lincolnshire

Related posts

• No related posts.

Rent Houses Stevenage Hertfordshire

Approximate Population: 79,400

Stevenage is a town and district in Hertfordshire, England. It is to the east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1(M), and is between Letchworth Garden City to the north, and Welwyn Garden City to the south.

Its population was 1,430 in 1801, 4,049 in 1901 and 79,724 in 2001. The largest increase occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, after Stevenage was designated a new town under the New Towns Act of 1946.

Stevenage may derive from Old English meaning ‘(place at) the strong oak’. The name was recorded as Stithenæce, c.1060 and Stigenace in 1086 in the Domesday Book.

The present site of Stevenage lies near a Roman road that ran from Verulamium to Baldock. Some Romano-British remains were discovered during the building of the New Town, and a hoard of 2,000 silver Roman coins was discovered in 1986 during new house building in the Chells Manor part of Stevenage. The most substantial evidence of activity from Roman times are the Six Hills, six tumuli by the side of the old Great North Road – presumably the burial places of a local family.

A little to the east of the Roman sites the first Saxon camp was made in a clearing in the woods. This is where the church, manor house and the first village were later built. Similar settlements sprang up in the nearby areas of Chells, Broadwater and Shephall.

In the Domesday Book, its Lord of the Manor was the Abbot of Westminster. The settlement had moved down to the Great North Road and in 1281 it was granted a Royal Charter to hold a weekly market and annual fair (still held in the High Street).

Rent Houses Stevenage Hertfordshire

Related posts

• No related posts.