Link: http://knol.google.com/k/bruce-everiss/harburyvillagebuzzcouk/2l81m4yln1pbt/34#
With the success of Artforums.co.uk I decided to create another forum, but this time for a community that already exists, the community I live in. Harbury and the nearby villages in Warwickshire, England.
Many villages already have successful forums so the precedent is there. Harbury already has an excellent Parish Council website which is entirely complimentary with Villagebuzz. The two sites each do different things and together bring a lot to the community and provide the outsider with a great insight.
Harbury has a population of over 2,500 and there are some similar sized villages nearby such as Kineton and Bishop's Itchington. So all together the potential catchment is probably about 20,000 people. More than enough to support an active forum.
The forum is divided into areas designed to represent the interests of the community. Welcome is for new menbers joining the community and Village Chat is potentially the most popular area as people discuss local issues. General chat is there to suck up all the off topic stuff and keep the other areas on topic and Local News is precisely that. Pubs are focal points of our communities so they have their own area along with restaurants whilst Local Businesses is there for people to advertise what they do and as an index for locals. Upcoming events is very important because there is a lot going on and Clubs and Associations gives an idea just how thriving the community is with a huge array of activities. Jobs are important as is Schools and Education. Accomodation is a valuable resource for visitors and Free Advertising is a very useful feature. Religion is there because it still has some resonance with the community whilst Useful Links is a storehouse of knowledge about the area.
The problem with forums is that to start them you have a chicken and egg situation. Nobody is going to post until the forum is active, but the forum won't be active until people post. To try and get round this I have seeded the forum with hundreds of posts on every subject possible. In doing the research for this I have learned an enormous amount and the resultant body of information is by far the biggest source of facts and information about the area available on the internet.
This is a fascinating area. It has a history going back thousands of years. Aston Martin cars are built in Gaydon, Jaguar Land Rover have major facilities there and it is the home of the Heritage Motor Museum. An amazing concentration of motor car related facilities. Codemasters is here, in Stoneythorpe, and we have an excellent art museum at Compton Verney. The DSDA at Kineton is the biggest arms depot in Europe.
A number of threads have proved popular:
Tombstoning at Bishop's Bowls is about young people jumping off cliffs into old flooded quarries. I posted links to some youtube videos and the story was picked up by the local and regional print and broadcast media.
DSDA Kineton, it took a lot of work to dig out any information about this highly secret place. So now this is the biggest online collated source of information about the it and as such is creating traffic from search engines.
House prices coming down is about the hot topic of the moment, but with added local relevancy.
Saint Wulfstan is about the patron saint of vegetarians who was born locally 1,000 years ago.
And Did you know these 12 things about Harbury? is a great challenge for local people and a handy look at some interesting facts about the area.
Some of the villages near Harbury:
Bishop's Itchington, Lighthorne, Gaydon, Kineton, Depper's Bridge, Ladbroke, Ufton, Offchurch, Napton on the Hill, Bascote, Long Itchington, Chesterton, Ashorne, Moreton Morrell, Stockton, Knightcote, Radford Semele, Bishops Tachbrook, Northend.
Friday, 1 August 2008
Harbury on Knol
Link: http://knol.google.com/k/bruce-everiss/harbury/2l81m4yln1pbt/2#
Harbury is an ancient, prehistoric village sitting on a hill which rises 100 feet (30 metres) above the surrounding countryside near the Fosse Way Roman road in Warwickshire. It is named after Hereburgh, a female tribal chieftan of about 500BC, but the immediate area was populated from 1,000 years earlier due to it's strategic position. The locality has a large number of old quarries that were used to extract lyas limestone used in the manufacture of cement. These are now used for recreational purposes or for landfill. When they were worked large numbers of Jurassic fossils were found including ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs remains which are now in the Warwickshire museum and the Natural History Museum in London.
In Roman times a town of 27 ha size was built straddling the Fosse Way near Harbury. Today the remains lie below fields and only small, explaratory, excavations have been attempted.
After the Norman conquest of England in 1066 the village of Harbury was given to Henry de Ferrers, an ancestor of Princess Diana.
The legends of Robin Hood may well be based on Robert Fitz Odo, a nobleman turned robber, who was living in Harbury in 1203.
A very well known poet from the mid 1700s, Richard Jago, was vicar of Harbury, living here for 8 years.
Harbury was known as Hungry Harbury for over 100 years in the 18th and 19th century because it was so poor. Residents of nearby villages sent charitable donations of food to keep the residents here fed in the winter.
In the late 1700s/early 1800s Harbury's 13th century church (All Saints) tower was leaning over so they built the large buttresses you see today to try and keep it up. This didn't work so they removed the stone top of the tower, planning to replace it with a stone steeple. You can still see the plan today in the bell ringing room at the church. However due to shortage of funds, in 1811-1815, they built a short brick top to the tower which was stepped in to keep it small.
The Chiltern Railway runs through Harbury in the deepest railway cutting in Europe (at over 100 feet) made purely by manual labour and opened in 1847. Some of the waste from this work is now an SSSI (site of special scientific interest) that is one of the top butterfly habitats in the UK.
Harbury has a current population of over 2,500 who are served by five vibrant village pubs, The Shakespeare, The Crown, The Dog Inn, The Old New Inn and The Gamecockand and by one club. There is a popular rugby club and the village hosts a large number of community events throughout the year as well as having a wide range of societies for hobby activities. The annual Harbury beer festival is well established and rightly popular.
Local employers include Codemasters, the video games company, and Aston Martin, the sports car manufacturer.
Harbury man Philip Bushill-Matthews is leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament and teenager, Jordan King, is a karting ace, following in the footsteps of Lewis Hamilton, his father Justin is the CEO of Sainsbury's. Harbury singing duo Danansooz recorded an album "At Last".
Links:
Harbury community forum and information.
Local Government. Parish Council website.
Hereburgh Morris, traditional dancing.
Harbury is an ancient, prehistoric village sitting on a hill which rises 100 feet (30 metres) above the surrounding countryside near the Fosse Way Roman road in Warwickshire. It is named after Hereburgh, a female tribal chieftan of about 500BC, but the immediate area was populated from 1,000 years earlier due to it's strategic position. The locality has a large number of old quarries that were used to extract lyas limestone used in the manufacture of cement. These are now used for recreational purposes or for landfill. When they were worked large numbers of Jurassic fossils were found including ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs remains which are now in the Warwickshire museum and the Natural History Museum in London.
In Roman times a town of 27 ha size was built straddling the Fosse Way near Harbury. Today the remains lie below fields and only small, explaratory, excavations have been attempted.
After the Norman conquest of England in 1066 the village of Harbury was given to Henry de Ferrers, an ancestor of Princess Diana.
The legends of Robin Hood may well be based on Robert Fitz Odo, a nobleman turned robber, who was living in Harbury in 1203.
A very well known poet from the mid 1700s, Richard Jago, was vicar of Harbury, living here for 8 years.
Harbury was known as Hungry Harbury for over 100 years in the 18th and 19th century because it was so poor. Residents of nearby villages sent charitable donations of food to keep the residents here fed in the winter.
In the late 1700s/early 1800s Harbury's 13th century church (All Saints) tower was leaning over so they built the large buttresses you see today to try and keep it up. This didn't work so they removed the stone top of the tower, planning to replace it with a stone steeple. You can still see the plan today in the bell ringing room at the church. However due to shortage of funds, in 1811-1815, they built a short brick top to the tower which was stepped in to keep it small.
The Chiltern Railway runs through Harbury in the deepest railway cutting in Europe (at over 100 feet) made purely by manual labour and opened in 1847. Some of the waste from this work is now an SSSI (site of special scientific interest) that is one of the top butterfly habitats in the UK.
Harbury has a current population of over 2,500 who are served by five vibrant village pubs, The Shakespeare, The Crown, The Dog Inn, The Old New Inn and The Gamecockand and by one club. There is a popular rugby club and the village hosts a large number of community events throughout the year as well as having a wide range of societies for hobby activities. The annual Harbury beer festival is well established and rightly popular.
Local employers include Codemasters, the video games company, and Aston Martin, the sports car manufacturer.
Harbury man Philip Bushill-Matthews is leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament and teenager, Jordan King, is a karting ace, following in the footsteps of Lewis Hamilton, his father Justin is the CEO of Sainsbury's. Harbury singing duo Danansooz recorded an album "At Last".
Links:
Harbury community forum and information.
Local Government. Parish Council website.
Hereburgh Morris, traditional dancing.
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