Dangerous load?

12 October 2011

Scaffolding!  Is it just me and Jan who are nervous when driving behind a flatbed truck with load of scaffolding poles and planks on them.  I have never seen any of them secured to the bed of the truck.  They seem to rely on their weight to keep them in place.  I'm not so sure it is 100% reliable.  Anyway, coming back for shopping today we got stuck behind one and kept well clear of it just in case.  We are not willing to take the chance.

The real name for Dorktown is Nuneaton.  There's a lot of silly things said about the place.  Like the man who said that he knew where the town was because its where the train stops between Birmingham and Leicester.  Oliver Cromwell looked over the wall of St Marys Abbey and saw a nun eating an apple and said, "Nun eat on.  For tomorrow thou shat die; you and all your sisters."  Another one is the story of a knight bursting in on the nuns while they were having dinner and is supposed to have said, "Nuns, eat on."  Some people have over active imaginations!  Good job really otherwise we would have no novels to read. 

The real story of the town's name goes right back to just after the Norman invasion.  There are a number of streams and rivers running very close to the town centre so in early days it was called by its Saxon name of Eaton,  'watertown' or 'place by the water' or one of half a dozen other translations or meanings.  The church of St Nicholas was the parish church at the time.  The abbey of St Mary was founded sometime later and was eventually given to a French monastery but it came to be the biggest land owner in the area and held a large number of nuns.  Eventually the name of Eaton was linked with the nuns and the town became known as Nunnseaton.  The second 'n' and the 's' were soon dropped and the name of Nuneaton was born.   

 However, for a very long time a lot of the local farmers used to say they were 'going to Eaton for the market'; this was apparently common right into the early 20th Century.

This brings me to something else the town has lost - it's live stock market.  It was located beside the bus station where there is now an old telephone exchange and a multi-story car park and part of the small shopping mall, once known as the Heron Way because of the large white heron that hung on the wall above the doors (it's still in the council yard if someone wants it), but is now known as the Abbey Gate shopping Centre.  There used to be a large hotel on the corner there too, the Newdigate Hotel, but that went at the same time as market I think. 

On Bond Gate there used to be statue, a rather 'rude' statue that had a man displaying all his ... err ... kit so we say!  OK it wasn't the best piece of art around but someone decided that they rather like a certain part of his kit and broken it off ... I have no idea what they used it ;-)))   Anyway, I asked about it and was told that it was also still in the council yard, or was but it's now just a pile of broken concrete.  What do we have instead?  Well, there's the public bum-washer in the Market Place ...

There's the so-called dandelion fountain on the island behind the Ritz, which we were assured was the only one of its kind in the world.  Sorry, no pics of it.  Then photos started to appear in the local rag of other feature of the same design.  Then I watched Clint Eastwards The Gauntlet and blow me if there wasn't on in that too!

Abbey Green has this which is meant to celebrate the multi-faith aspect of the town ...

And don't forget the town hussy ...

But perhaps the biggest waste of dosh it the one in Bed'th on the junction of the Rye Piece Ringway and Bulkington Road (sorry, no image yet).  Ribbon weaving was once of great importance within the two towns so to 'celebrate' (and I say this in its vey loosest sense), this the paid for a pile of round, multi-coloured concrete slabs that are meant to portray rolls of woven ribbon.  Ye gods ... there art and there art spelt with a capital F(art).