Timber Suppliers Lambeth Greater London

Approximate Population: 267,785

Lambeth appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Lanchei. It was held partly by Lambeth Church and partly by Count Robert of Mortain. Its domesday assets were: 2½ hides; 1 church, 10 ploughs, 22 acres (89,000 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 3 hogs, 19 burgesses in London paid £1 16s 0d. It rendered £15.

The ancient settlement of Lambeth Marsh was immediately opposite the Palace of Westminster.   The Archbishop of Canterbury has had his official residence at Lambeth Palace since the 15th century.   The village was home to boatmen serving the City of London and Westminster.

The riverside village had an extensive parish, which stretched for six miles (10 km) south, including the manors of Kennington and Vauxhall. It formed part of Surrey until the creation of the County of London in 1889.  The parish, and the subsequent Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth (1900–1965), included the later settlements at Brixton and Norwood.

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Timber Suppliers Croydon Greater London

Approximate Population: 316,283

Croydon is a large town and major commercial centre in South London, and the principal settlement of the London Borough of Croydon.   It is 9.5 miles (15.3 km) south of Charing Cross, and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It is located on the natural transport corridor between London and England’s south coast, just to the north of a gap in the North Downs.

Historically a part of Surrey, at the time of the Norman conquest of England Croydon had a church, a mill and around 365 inhabitants (as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086).   Croydon expanded during the Middle Ages as a market town and a centre for charcoal production, leather tanning and brewing.   The Surrey Iron Railway from Croydon to Wandsworth opened in 1803 and was the world’s first horse-drawn railway, which later developed into an important means of transport – facilitating Croydon’s growth as a commuter town for the City of London and beyond.

In the early 20th century Croydon was an important industrial area, known for metal working, car manufacture and its airport.   In the mid 20th century these sectors were replaced with retailing and service economy, brought about as a result of a massive redevelopment of office blocks and the Whitgift shopping centre. Croydon was amalgamated into Greater London in 1965. Road traffic is now diverted away from a largely pedestrianised town centre, but its main railway station, East Croydon, is still a major hub within the national railway transport system.   The town is expected to have its urban planning changed as part of Croydon Vision 2020.

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Timber Suppliers Dover Kent

Approximate Population: 28,156

Dover’s main communications artery, the A2 road replicates two former routes, connecting the town with Canterbury.   The Roman road was followed for centuries until, in the late 18th century, it became a turnpike. Stagecoaches were operating: one description stated that the journey took all day to reach London, from 4am to being “in time for supper”.

The other main roads, travelling west and east, are the A20 to Folkestone and thence to London and the A258 through Deal to Sandwich.

The railway reached Dover from two directions: the South Eastern Railway’s main line connected with Folkestone in 1844, and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway opened its line from Canterbury in 1861. A tram system operated in the town from 1897 to 1936.

Dover has two long distance footpaths: the Saxon Shore Way and the North Downs Way. Two National Cycle Network routes begin their journey at the town.

There are nine secondary level schools, 16 primary schools and two schools for special education.

Several of the state secondary schools now specialise: Astor College for the Arts; Dover Grammar School for Girls is a specialist Humanities College; Dover Grammar School for Boys, a Business and Enterprise College; St Edmund’s Catholic College for the Performing Arts; and Archers Court, Maths and Computing College.

The Duke of Yorks Royal Military School, England’s only military boarding school for children of service personnel (co-ed ages 11-18), is also located in Dover, next to the military base.  Dover College, a public school was founded in 1871 by a group of local business men.

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Halifax West Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 82,056

Halifax was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1848 under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and with the passing of the Local Government Act 1888 became a County Borough in 1889.   Since 1974, Halifax has been the administrative centre of the Metropolitan District of Calderdale, part of the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire.

North Halifax is noted for its local support of the far-right British National Party; the suburb of Mixenden became the first area in West Yorkshire to popularly vote in a BNP councillor, with Illingworth soon to follow.

Topographically, Halifax is located in the south-eastern corner of the moorland region called the South Pennines. Halifax is situated about 4 miles (6.4 km) from the M62 motorway close to Bradford, Huddersfield and Rochdale.   The Tees-Exe line passes through the A641 road, which links nearby Brighouse with Bradford and Huddersfield, The town lies 65 miles (105 km) from Kingston upon Hull and Liverpool, and about 200 miles (320 km) from the cities of London, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin and Cardiff as the crow flies. The major waterway is the River Calder.

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East Kilbride Scotland

Approximate Population: 73,796

East Kilbride grew from a small village of around 900 inhabitants in 1930 to become eventually a large burgh.   Behind this growth lay the rapid industrialisation of the nineteenth century which left much of the working population throughout Scotland’s central belt from Glasgow to Edinburgh living in the housing stock built at the end of that century but accommodating far more people.

The Great War postponed any better housing as did the Treaty of Versailles and the period of post war settlement it created. In turn this was followed by the Great Depression.   After the Second World War, Glasgow, already suffering from chronic shortages of housing, had to deal with bomb damage from the war.

From this unlikely backdrop a new dawn emerged which would bring East Kilbride to its unlikely success.   In 1946 the Greater Glasgow Regional Plan allocated sites where overspill satellite “new towns” could be constructed to help alleviate the housing shortage.  Glasgow would also undertake the development of its peripheral housing estates.   East Kilbride was the first of five new towns in Scotland to be designated, in 1947, followed by Glenrothes (1948), Cumbernauld (1956), Livingston (1962) and Irvine (1964).

The town has been subdivided into residential precincts, each with its own local shops, primary schools and community facilities. The housing precincts surround the town centre, which is bound by a ringroad. Industrial estates are concentrated at sites to the north, west and south, on the outskirts of the town.

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Timber Suppliers Worthing West Sussex

Approximate Population: 99,600

Worthing is a large seaside town and a local government borough in West Sussex, England. Around 100,000 people live within the borough itself and 183,000 in the urban area. Situated in the centre of an 80 km (50-mile) wide bay on the Sussex coast, between Beachy Head and Selsey Bill, the borough of Worthing also lies at the foot of the South Downs, a proposed national park.

The area around Worthing has been populated for at least 6,000 years and contains Britain’s greatest concentration of Stone Age flint mines, which are some of the earliest mines in Europe. Lying within the borough, the Iron Age hill fort of Cissbury Ring is one of Britain’s largest. Worthing means “(place of) Worth/Worō’s people”, from the Old English personal name Worth/Worō (the name means “valiant one, one who is noble”), and -ingas “people of” (reduced to -ing in the modern name).

For many centuries Worthing was a small mackerel fishing hamlet until in the late eighteenth century it developed into an elegant Georgian seaside resort and attracted the well-known and wealthy of the day. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the area was one of Britain’s chief market gardening centres.

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Sutton Coldfield West Midlands

Approximate Population: 105,452

At the turn of the 18th century, Sutton Coldfield was introduced to industry. The manufacture of blades, gun barrels, spades and spade handles as well as the grinding of knives, bayonets and axes, further helped the town prosper. Mills were set up along the pools in Sutton Park and on the banks of Ebrook. A cotton spinning machine was tested at Powells Pool Mill (demolished in 1936) by John Wyatt with the help of Lewis Paul.

These mills were not the first in Sutton Coldfield, as there had been windmills at Maney Hill and Langley Hall, but these were the first mills constructed for industrial purposes in the town.   It has been claimed that the first all-steel garden fork was produced in the town.   Pools that had been drained during the 17th century for rich meadow land were recreated in the 18th century, as well as new pools such as Blackroot Pool and Longmoor Pool.

Sutton Coldfield’s economy witnessed a boom in that the residents were now experiencing new luxuries, such as seafood.   Products for sale in the town were 10% more expensive than in the neighbouring villages.   In 1791, following the Priestley Riots in Birmingham, William Hutton, whose home had been attacked by protesters, travelled to Sutton Coldfield to stay for the summer. Rioting was supposedly due to spread to Sutton Coldfield.   It was believed that John Horsfall’s home at Penns, in the south of Sutton, was a target for the protesters and so cavalry arrived to protect it.   No rioting took place. Despite this, Hutton was forced to move to Tamworth when local residents objected to his arrival, fearing his presence would encourage the rioters to come to the town.

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Timber Suppliers Lewisham Greater London

Approximate Population: 248,922

It is most likely to have been founded by a pagan Jute, Leof, who settled (by burning his boat) near St Mary’s Church (Ladywell) where the ground was drier, in the 6th century. As to the etymology of the name, Daniel Lysons (1796) wrote:

“In the most ancient Saxon records this place is called Levesham, that is, the house among the meadows; leswe, læs, læse, or læsew, in the Saxon, signifies a meadow, and ham, a dwelling. It is now written, as well in parochial and other records as in common usage, Lewisham.”

‘Leofshema’ was an important settlement at the confluence of the rivers Quaggy (from Farnborough) and Ravensbourne (Caesar’s Well, Keston), so the village expanded north into the wetter area as drainage techniques improved.   In the mid-seventeenth century the then vicar of Lewisham, Abraham Colfe, built a grammar school, primary school and six almshouses for the inhabitants. The Earl of Dartmouth became the (hereditary) Viscount Lewisham in 1711.

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Timber Suppliers St. Davids Wales

Approximate Population: 1,797

St David’s (Welsh: Tyddewi) is the smallest city in the United Kingdom, with a population of under 2,000 people.   It lies on the River Alun, on Saint David’s peninsula in Pembrokeshire, Wales.   St David’s is the de facto ecclesiastical capital of Wales and the final resting place of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales.

St David’s is home to football team, St. David’s City F.C. and rugby union team St. Davids RFC.  St David’s hosted the National Eisteddfod in 2002.

Henry Hicks (born 1837-died 1899), a Welsh physician, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS), President of the Geological Society and Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).   He studied the Precambrian rocks of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire and Pembrokeshire, the Devonian rocks of Devon and Somerset, and cave deposits in Denbighshire.   He was born on the 29th of May 1837 at St Davids, followed in the footsteps of his father Thomas Hicks and studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital, and then practised in St Davids from 1862 until 1871.   The musician David Gray was a pupil at St Davids School.

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