Jewels of the North
Great Britain

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By Pat Hunter
 

Hello! I’m Pat Hunter, and I live in Fleetwood, a fishing town and holiday resort near Blackpool in Lancashire, Northwest England. I’m now retired, but in my time I served in the Royal Air Force, worked for a local newspaper, and owned various candy shops. I enjoy gardening, good books and music, and computing.

I also study and write about Ancient Mediterranean History. My latest novel is "Our Master, Caesar". It is available as a Kindle eBook - details are on my web site www.romanwriter.plus.com .

My good friend Pat Mestern persuaded me to write these four articles about my part of the world. I hope you find them interesting - and if you would like to write to me, I'll be delighted to hear from you.

For over thirty years, Britain’s most popular soap opera has been "Coronation Street", set in a fictional district of Manchester. The characters live in tiny terraced houses without gardens in a cobbled road reminiscent of last century, when Cotton was King and areas like these were home to thousands of mill-workers. Although "Coronation Street" is an entertaining show, because of it some of its fans in the South of England believe that the North is still full of dark, satanic mills!

Nothing could be further from the truth. The few mills that remain were long since converted to museums and craft centres, and the cotton-barges that once sailed Lancashire's canals replaced by pleasure-craft.

I’ll cover the main attractions in forthcoming articles, but will end this one by telling you something about the North of England in general.

The Romans ruled Britain as far as Central Scotland for four centuries. Places in the North with names containing "Chester" or "Caster" indicate that they were once Roman cities - e.g. Manchester, Chester, Doncaster, and Ribchester. When the Romans withdrew, barbarian tribes invaded from Europe. England (or Angleland) is named after one of these tribes, but those that had the greatest influence were the Vikings and Saxons. In the 11^th century, William the Conqueror led the Norman invasion. The 12^th and 13^th centuries saw the Wars of the Roses between the House of York, whose symbol was a white rose, and that of Lancaster, whose emblem was a red rose, and as time went on, these families both provided English kings. Today, the old rivalary between Yorkshire and Lancashire is mercifully confined to sport!

A range of mountains called The Pennines, nicknamed "The Backbone of England", runs from the Scottish border and effectively splits the country in half - Yorkshire to the east, Lancashire to the west. Strictly speaking, Manchester and Liverpool are now huge metropolitan areas in their own right, but the people of surrounding towns still consider themselves to be Lancastrian. Much of the English Lake District used to be part of Lancashire too, until the "powers that be" decided that it should become a new county called Cumbria. However, Lancashire and Yorkshire have lots to interest visitors - historical cities, country towns, rivers, golden beaches, moorland, lowland, lakes and forests.

Next time, I'll tell you about the Fylde, the area of Lancashire that's as flat as Holland and has windmills as well, and especially about Europe's premier holiday resort - breezy BLACKPOOL.