House Share Paisley Scotland

Approximate Population: 74,000

The Piazza Shopping Centre, based in the heart of Paisley, has forged many links within the community and is the town’s busiest centre.   Featuring household names such as Somerfield, Subway, New Look, The Carphone Warehouse, The Piazza is also home to one of the Top 50 Post Office branches in the UK – one of two Scottish flagship stores, it was made a Crown Post Office in 2007.   The Piazza has also recently launched a Student Card, providing a range of discounts for the thousands of students that pass through Paisley every year.

The Paisley Centre is a three floored centre including a department store, an indoor market and over 50 shopping units including Marks and Spencer, Boots, Superdrug, Vodafone, Thorntons, The Body Shop and T-Mobile as well as many local outlets including Baru.

In recent years, however, the quality and variety of shopping has declined, with many of Paisley’s inhabitants choosing to shop at the Braehead Shopping Centre opened in 1998 and lying within Renfrewshire’s boundaries. The Silverburn Centre in the Pollok area of Glasgow also attracts much of Paisley’s custom. Through this competition and high tax rates for local businesses, many stores have been forced to close their doors.

Despite a poor perception, however, many retailers are still thriving in Paisley’s shopping centres, and adding colour to the town is the variety of busy continental and farmers’ markets which often take place in the town.

House Share Paisley Scotland

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House Share Basildon Essex

Approximate Population: 99,876

The first historical reference to Basildon is in records from 1086.   It is mentioned in the Domesday Book as ‘Belesduna’.  The name ‘Basildon’ means ‘Beorhtel’s hill’ and is derived from the Anglo-Saxon personal name ‘Beorhtel’ and the Anglo-Saxon word ‘dun’, meaning hill.   In historical documents, this name had various forms over the centuries, including Berdlesdon, Batlesdon and Belesduna.

By the beginning of the 1900s, Basildon had evolved with much of the land having been sold in small plots during a period of land speculation and development taking placed haphazardly with building by plotowners ranging from shelters created from recycled materials to brick-built homes and with amenities such as water, gas, electricity and hard-surfaced roads lacking.

In the 1940s, Billericay and Essex County Councils, who were concerned about the lack of amenities on the area and how it had evolved, petitioned the Government to create a New Town, and on January 4 1949, Lewis Silkin, Minister of Town and Country Planning, officially designated Basildon as a ‘New Town’.   Basildon Development Corporation was formed in February 1949 to transform the designated area into a modern new town.   The New Town incorporated Laindon and Pitsea and was laid out around small neighbourhoods with the first house being completed in June 1951.  The first tenants moved into homes on 18 June 1951, in numbers 59, 61, and 63 Redgrave Road in Vange.

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Durham Durham County

Approximate Population: 42,939

The name “Durham” comes from the Old English “dun”, meaning hill, and the Old Norse “holme”, which translates to island.  The Lord Bishop of Durham takes a Latin variation of the city’s name in his apostolic signature, which is signed “N. Dunelm.”

Some attribute the city’s name to the legend of the Dun Cow and the milkmaid who in legend guided the monks of Lindisfarne carrying the body of Saint Cuthbert to the site of the present city in 995 AD.  Dun Cow Lane is said to be one of the first streets in Durham, being directly to the east of Durham Cathedral and taking its name from a depiction of the city’s founding etched in masonry on the south side of the cathedral.

The city has been known by a number of names throughout history. The original Nordic Dun Holm was changed to Duresme by the Normans and was known in Latin as Dunelm. The modern form Durham came into use later in the city’s history. The north eastern historian, Robert Surtees chronicled the name changes in his History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham but states that it is an “impossibility” to tell when the city’s modern name came into being.

House Share Durham Durham County

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House Share Newry Northern Ireland

Approximate Population: 27,430

* The Newry Canal opened in 1742, and was the first major commercial canal in the British Isles. It ran for 18 miles to Lough Neagh.   In 1777, Newry was ranked the fourth largest port in Ireland.   Some surviving 18th and 19th century warehouses still line the canal, and now many houses, shops and restaurants.
* MacNeill’s Egyptian Arch is a railway bridge located near Newry. It was selected for the design of the British One Pound coin to represent Northern Ireland for 2006.
* Newry is served by an Ulsterbus bus station, located in the city centre, that offers local, regional and cross-border services.
* A Northern Ireland Railways station, just off the Camlough road, offers cross border services on the Dublin-Belfast line. Planning permission for the construction of a new station, to the east of the current station, was granted in May 2006.
* Newry is on the main M1/A1 route from Dublin to Belfast.   The road is of high-grade dual carriageway/motorway standard on the Southern side, and single-carriageway/dual-carriageway/motorway on the Northern side. The remainder of the A1 on the Northern side is expected to be upgraded to dual-carriageway standard in 2012.

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Cheltenham Gloucestershire

Approximate Population: 110,013

The oldest school in Cheltenham is Pate’s Grammar School (founded in 1574).  Cheltenham College (founded in 1841) was the first of the major public schools of the Victorian period.  The school was the setting in 1968 for the classic Lindsay Anderson film if…..  It also hosts the annual Cheltenham Cricket Festival, first staged in 1872, and the oldest cricket festival in the world.  The most famous school in the town, according to the The Good Schools Guide, is Cheltenham Ladies’ College (founded in 1853).

Dean Close School was founded in 1886 in memory of the Reverend Francis Close (1797-1882), a former rector of Cheltenham and the founder of Cheltenham’s great tradition of education.  The town also includes several campuses of the University of Gloucestershire, one other public and six other state schools, plus institutions of further education.

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Cheltenham Gloucestershire

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House Share Truro Cornwall

Approximate Population: 20,920

During the Civil War in the 17th century, Truro raised a sizable force to fight for the King and a royalist mint was set up in the town.   However, defeat to the Parliamentary troops came in 1646 and the mint was moved to Exeter. Further disheartenment came later in the century when Falmouth was awarded its own charter giving it rights to its harbour, starting a long rivalry between the two towns.   The dispute was eventually settled in 1709 with control of the River Fal being divided between Truro and Falmouth.

Truro prospered greatly during the 18th and 19th centuries.   Industry flourished thanks to improved mining methods and higher prices for tin, and the town soon became the place to be for wealthy mine owners.   Elegant Georgian and Victorian townhouses were built—such as those seen today on Lemon Street, named after the mining magnate and local MP Sir William Lemon—and Truro became the centre for high society in the county, being mentioned as “the London of Cornwall”.

Throughout these prosperous times Truro remained a social centre and many notable people hailed from it.   One of the most noteworthy residents was Richard Lander, an explorer who discovered the source of the River Niger in Africa and was awarded the first gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society.   Others include Humphry Davy, educated in Truro and inventor of the miner’s safety lamp, and Samuel Foote, an actor and playwright from Boscawen Street.

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House Share Ipswich Suffolk

Approximate Population: 128,000

Ipswich has undergone an extensive gentrification programme in recent years, principally centred around the waterfront. Though this has turned a deindustrialized dock area into an emerging residential and commercial centre, it is being completed at the expense of much of the town’s industrial and maritime heritage and in spite of efforts made by a local civic group, The Ipswich Society.

Much of this development is residential and is marketed at high net-worth individuals in the DINKY demographic. As such, some have considered it incompatible with Ipswich’s existing socio-economic mix. It could therefore be considered to be aimed at encouraging economic migration to the town, particularly as a commutable satellite town of London.

The Tolly Cobbold brewery, built in the 19th century and rebuilt 1894–1896, is one of the finest Victorian breweries in the United Kingdom. There was a Cobbold brewery in the town from 1746 until 2002 when Ridley’s Breweries took Tolly Cobbold over.  Felix Thornley Cobbold presented Christchurch Mansion to the town in 1896.  Former stables, reflected in the glass panels of the Willis Building.

The town centre contains the glass-clad building owned by Willis Limited, properly called the Willis Building but still often called the “Willis-Faber building” by locals, as the company Willis Corroon themselves used to be called Willis Faber. Designed by Norman Foster, the building dates from 1974. It became the youngest Grade I listed building in Britain in 1991 and at the time one of only two buildings to be listed and be under 30 years of age.

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Hull Humberside

Approximate Population: 257,000

Kingston upon Hull, almost invariably referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.  It is located 25 miles (40 km) from the North Sea on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary.  Hull has a resident population of 257,000 (2007 est.).   Renamed Kings town upon Hull by King Edward I in 1299, the town and city of Hull has served as market town,[3] military supply port, trading hub, fishing and whaling centre, and industrial metropolis.  Hull was an early theatre of battle in the English Civil Wars, and was the backdrop to events leading to the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

The city was unique in the United Kingdom in having a municipally owned telephone system from 1902, sporting cream, not red, telephone boxes. After suffering heavy damage during the Second World War, Hull weathered a period of post-industrial decline, during which the city gained unfavourable results on measures of social deprivation, education and policing.   However, the city has embarked on a programme of regeneration and renewal and a range of sporting and cultural activities is available.

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Reading Berkshire

Approximate Population: 143,096

Reading  is a town in England, located at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, midway between London and Swindon off the M4 motorway.   It is one of the contenders for the title of the largest town in England, and is the largest settlement in the Home Counties in terms of population.   For ceremonial purposes it is in the county of Berkshire and has served as the county town since 1867.   It is also home to one of England’s biggest music festivals.

Reading was an important national centre in the medieval period, as the site of an important monastery with strong royal connections, but suffered economic damage during the 17th century from which it took a long time to recover.

Today it is again an important commercial centre, with strong links to information technology and insurance.   It is also a university town, with two universities and a large student population.   Citizens of Reading are known as Redingensians.

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Sheffield South Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 530,300

As World War II loomed the steel factories of Sheffield were set to work making weapons and ammunition for the war.   As a result, once war was declared, the city became a target for bombing raids, the heaviest of which occurred over the nights of 12 December and 15 December 1940 (now known as the Sheffield Blitz).  More than 660 lives were lost and numerous buildings were destroyed.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many of the slums were demolished and replaced with housing schemes such as the Park Hill flats.   Large parts of the city centre were also cleared to make way for a new system of roads.  Increased automation and competition from abroad resulted in the closure of many steel mills.   The 1980s saw the worst of this run-down of Sheffield’s industries (along with those of many other areas in the UK).   The 1984/5 miners’ strike affected the coal mining areas to the east and north east of Sheffield, though it is unlikely to have had a major impact upon Sheffield’s economy.   The building of the Meadowhall shopping centre on the site of a former steelworks in 1990 was a mixed blessing, creating much needed jobs but speeding the decline of the city centre.   Attempts to regenerate the city were kick-started when the city hosted the 1991 World Student Games, WSG, which saw the construction of new sporting facilities such as the Sheffield Arena, Don Valley Stadium and the Ponds Forge complex.

The city is now changing rapidly as new projects aim to regenerate some of the more run-down parts of the city. One such project, the Heart of the City Project, has seen a number of public works in the city centre: the Peace Gardens were renovated in 1998, the Millennium Galleries opened in April 2001, the Winter Gardens were opened on 22 May 2003, and a public space to link these two areas, the Millennium Square, was opened in May 2006. Further developments included the remodelling of Sheaf Square in front of the recently refurbished railway station. The new square contains The Cutting Edge a sculpture designed by Si Applied Ltd made of Sheffield steel.

House Share Sheffield South Yorkshire

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