Surrey Places (3) : Milford

Milford is a village in the South West of Surrey near to Godalming. Milford remained a small hamlet during the medieval period but like many places across the country the arrival of transport links (in Milford's case the railway line between London and Portsmouth in the mid-19th century) helped Milford grow.

Milford was a hamlet of nearby Witley but Milford became a parish in it's own right in 1844. Milford railway station however, is in Witley!

Model Week : A tale of two layouts

There is a nationwide shortage of N gauge track at the moment, especially PECO Setrack points (apparently due to PECO being the victim of a cyber attack last year), however i was able to scrape together enough new track to make a start on my new N gauge layout Shard End. It will depict a small branch line terminus in the early 1970s. It is very early days on the layout as i still need a few more points. It is great to have some of my N gauge fleet return after a long time in storage.

Meanwhile, on the other layout Birches Green there was an unfortunate failure. Ruby seems to have become afflicted by the same motor problems as her two sister locomotives Percy and Maria and has been put into immediate storage. Tango has returned to take Ruby's place.

Strolling around Sutton Coldfield

We are supposed to keep in our local areas, though what a "local area" is has not been defined very clearly. Sutton Coldfield is only a few minutes away so i guess that counts as local area? In any case, I had a walk around the town centre today. I wanted to take some photographs of the two churches that are more at less at either end of the main shopping street. I also visited a church in nearby Boldmere on the way back. A different kind of temple in Sutton, which i also took some photographs of, was the superb Art Deco cinema. Nowadays it is called the Empire, though in my youth when i saw films like Star Wars for the first time it was the Odeon. You can see my photos here.

Churches (92) : St Nicholas & St Peter ad Vincula, Curdworth

The parish church of St Nicholas & St Peter ad Vincula in the Warwickshire village of Curdworth has Norman origins and parts of the surviving church date from the 1170s. The church was established in 1165 and may have been built on the site of an earlier church, a carved Saxon font was discovered in the 19th century during refurbishment work.

The nave and chancel are Norman. The church was extended in the 14th century and a Perpendicular tower added in 1460. The tower was intended to also have a spire though this was never built.

Surrey Places (2) : Ash

The village of Ash lies on the Surrey-Hampshire border and is close to Aldershot (and is included in the Aldershot urban area) and Farnborough. Ash has Saxon roots, it was known as Esche in the 7th century, in Norman times known as Assche. In the 12th century the parish church of St Peter's was built on the site of an earlier Saxon church.

Ash was granted to Chertsey Abbey by Azor, a nobleman and one of the guards of Edward the Confessor, at the time of the Norman Conquest. It remained the property of the abbey until being granted to Henry VIII in 1537. It was later granted to Winchester College.

Ash is served by Ash railway station with Ash Vale and North Camp also close by. The Basingstoke Canal runs through the parish.