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Dan1981

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2 hours ago, Athy said:

It does sound better. When I taught in London, some of my pupils lived in "Temple Fortune" - a name made up, as I recall, by estate agents to attract people who were upwardly mobile, but who didn't want "Cricklewood" in their addresses.

Temple Fortune is not part of  Cricklewood, it lies between the A41 and A1 just  North of Golders Green it is  part of Hampstead Garden Suburb, a very exclusive area.

 

"This was part of the manor of Blechenham in Saxon times. The first part of its present name refers to ownership of the land hereabouts by the Knights Templar from 1243. The second part of the name may be a corruption of ‘fore-ton’, a farmstead that lay before somewhere – probably Hendon as one travelled from London."

 

https://hidden-london.com/gazetteer/temple-fortune/

 

It was part of my stomping ground before I left London in the early 70's

 

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9 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Temple Fortune is not part of  Cricklewood, it lies between the A41 and A1 just  North of Golders Green it is  part of Hampstead Garden Suburb, a very exclusive area.

 

"This was part of the manor of Blechenham in Saxon times. The first part of its present name refers to ownership of the land hereabouts by the Knights Templar from 1243. The second part of the name may be a corruption of ‘fore-ton’, a farmstead that lay before somewhere – probably Hendon as one travelled from London."

 

https://hidden-london.com/gazetteer/temple-fortune/

 

It was part of my stomping ground before I left London in the early 70's

 

I've never been there so I'll believe you. I'm going on what I was told at the time.

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54 minutes ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

I did wonder once why there are so many towns in Germany called Umleitung

My Father as a young airman in 1940 (17 yrs) was returning to camp by train.  He was to change at Cheltenham, but fell asleep, until he felt the rattle of couplings as his train started to pull out of a station in the blackout.

Peering into the darkness from his carriage window he made out the slow progress of a platform sign "Cheltenham" as it passed by.  Leaping to his feet and getting tangled up in everybody else's legs he got the carriage door open and threw out his kit bag ..... he closely followed.

Rolling to a halt and dusting himself down he limped back up the platform to retrieve his canvas bag where it had come to rest under the sign on the wall that helpfully declared "Gentlemen".

 

He didn't improve with age.  I clearly recall Sunday drives out in the late 60s that ended with him pouring over his AA Road Atlas while despairing about how many villages there were around here called "Loose Chippings"  

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1 hour ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

I did wonder once why there are so many towns in Germany called Umleitung.

Their ubiquity must rival that of those resoundingly-named stations, Kein Ausgang and Herrendamen.

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Many years ago I lived in Germany and on a visit back to the UK  I was stopped by the police and when asked for my address I gave it as 

1 Einbahn Strasse

Umleitung

 

Copper duly noted it down and I was left to go on my way, I wonder how long it took before he realised?

 

 

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2 hours ago, Athy said:

I've never been there so I'll believe you. I'm going on what I was told at the time.

I think the reference might have been to Fortune Green, which is between Cricklewood and West Hampstead (and very close to where I am now!).  The estate agents have had various attempts to rebrand Kilburn as South West Hampstead, but it hasn't really caught on. West Hampstead and South Hampstead definitely exist ...

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On 07/10/2020 at 22:28, PeterScott said:

spacer.pngThe red ring has worn away

 

The real problem with this sign is its ridiculous accuracy .

 

You must travel at  at max speed of 6.43kph ( 3.9954 mph) and not 6.44 ( 4.00163 mph). The idea of being able, on a boat, to measure your speed to an accuracy of 10cm (4 inches)  per hour is ludicrous.

Edited by StephenA
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4 hours ago, StephenA said:

 

The real problem with this sign is its ridiculous accuracy .

 

You must travel at  at max speed of 6.43kph ( 3.9954 mph) and not 6.44 ( 4.00163 mph). The idea of being able, on a boat, to measure your speed to an accuracy of 10cm (4 inches)  per hour is ludicrous.

This reminds me of a book on plumbing I found in my local public library in the early 1970's shortly after the UK's conversion to metric, where they had simply converted all the imperial units to metric without  applying  common sense. It referred to a [nominal 40 gallon] cold water tank with an approximate capacity of 181.844 litres, and [psi] pressures of so many 453.7 grams per 6.45 square centimetres without also stating the orginal imperial units, although in the latter case they did retain the original imperial numbers.

 

One of the worst [best?] examples I came across  was the first metric catalogue produced by a US electronics company which, in its tables of design data, gave the metric value of Pi as 79.79. 

 

 

When I went on a camping holiday in North Wales for the first time, I wondered what the Llwybr Cyhoeddus was that all the public footpath signs were pointing to.

Edited by Ronaldo47
Typos, clarification
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10 hours ago, Athy said:

It does sound better. When I taught in London, some of my pupils lived in "Temple Fortune" - a name made up, as I recall, by estate agents to attract people who were upwardly mobile, but who didn't want "Cricklewood" in their addresses.

 

Some friends of mine started married life in South London, living first in St. Ockwell, and later moving to St. Reatham.

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10 hours ago, StephenA said:

15167474_10157930929915195_5324442738319648034_o.jpg.d79aa35feb46229321cfb54ec2eb041f.jpg

 

 

To be fair this is a logical sign from the US given the way a given street can be on more than one numbered highway (a state and county highway here, I think).

For example (to bring this back to canals!) on the Grand Union/Oxford between Napton and Braunston a sign for boats travelling towards Braunston would say Grand Union (South) and Oxford Canal (North).

Edited by Scholar Gypsy
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8 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

This reminds me of a book on plumbing I found in my local public library in the early 1970's shortly after the UK's conversion to metric, where they had simply converted all the imperial units to metric without  applying  common sense. It referred to a [nominal 40 gallon] cold water tank with an approximate capacity of 181.844 litres, and [psi] pressures of so many 453.7 grams per 6.45 square centimetres without also stating the orginal imperial units, although in the latter case they did retain the original imperial numbers.

I had similar issues as a child trying to follow instructions to build a crystal radio receiver - amongst the non-sense was to wind a certain number of turns of insulated wire around a ferrite rod "approximately 152.3 mm long by 9.524 mm diameter". I assume Practical Wireless (or whatever) had simple accepted verbatim "thou shalt use metric units.

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14 hours ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

I think the reference might have been to Fortune Green, which is between Cricklewood and West Hampstead (and very close to where I am now!).  The estate agents have had various attempts to rebrand Kilburn as South West Hampstead, but it hasn't really caught on. West Hampstead and South Hampstead definitely exist ...

You may well be correct, thanks for the information.

I do remember estate agents' references to a house being in "Hampstead, N.W.6". For Northern readers, desirable Hampstead is in N.W.3; N.W. 6 contains more down-to-earth West Hampstead and even-further-down "County" Kilburn.

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2 hours ago, Athy said:

You may well be correct, thanks for the information.

I do remember estate agents' references to a house being in "Hampstead, N.W.6". For Northern readers, desirable Hampstead is in N.W.3; N.W. 6 contains more down-to-earth West Hampstead and even-further-down "County" Kilburn.

When I was a teenager in south London in 1960's, we lived in what everyone called Dulwich despite the fact that the Post Office insisted that our London Area was SE22 which they called East Dulwich, a very different area altogether and despite the fact that we were just within the Dulwich estate jurisdiction regarding property and planning. We all believed that we should have been SE23!

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5 hours ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

To be fair this is a logical sign from the US given the way a given street can be on more than one numbered highway (a state and county highway here, I think).

For example (to bring this back to canals!) on the Grand Union/Oxford between Napton and Braunston a sign for boats travelling towards Braunston would say Grand Union (South) and Oxford Canal (North).

Yes - its the main road through Wiscasset which basically runs East-West - so it carries Route 1 north and Route 27 south.

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19 hours ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

I think the reference might have been to Fortune Green, which is between Cricklewood and West Hampstead (and very close to where I am now!).  The estate agents have had various attempts to rebrand Kilburn as South West Hampstead, but it hasn't really caught on. West Hampstead and South Hampstead definitely exist ...

As a student I lived in "West Chelsea" for a while ...

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