Great Torrington
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Great Torrington
Great Torrington (often abbreviated to Torrington, though the villages of Little Torrington and Black Torrington are situated in the same region) is a market town in Devon, England. Parts of it are sited on high ground with steep drops down to the River Torridge below, with the lower-lying parts of the town prone to occasional flooding. Torrington is in the centre of Tarka Country, a landscape captured by Henry Williamson in his novel ''Tarka the Otter'' in 1927. Great Torrington has one of the most active volunteering communities in the United Kingdom. In July 2019, Great Torrington was reported to be the healthiest place to live in Britain. Researchers from the University of Liverpool found that the area had low levels of pollution, good access to green space and health services, along with few retail outlets. History There were Iron Age and medieval castles and forts in Torrington, located on the Castle Hill. Great Torrington had strategic significance in the English ...
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Great Torrington Town Hall
Great Torrington Town Hall is a municipal building in the High Street, Great Torrington, Devon, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Great Torrington Town Council, is a Grade II listed building. History The first municipal building in the town was a guildhall which was completed in the 16th century. A soldier from Lancashire, Henry Boose, was found guilty of mutiny and executed outside the guildhall on the orders of the Royalist commander, Lord Goring, in July 1645 during the English Civil War. After St Michael's Parish Church was blown up by parliamentary forces in the aftermath of their victory at the Battle of Torrington in February 1646, the chaplain to the parliamentary forces, Hugh Peters, preached from the balcony of the guildhall to the people of the town. Most of the borough records were destroyed in a serious fire in the guildhall in July 1724. After a foundation stone had been laid by the town recorder and local land-owner, John Rolle Walter, the ag ...
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Roundhead
Roundheads were the supporters of the Parliament of England during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Also known as Parliamentarians, they fought against King Charles I of England and his supporters, known as the Cavaliers or Royalists, who claimed rule by absolute monarchy and the principle of the divine right of kings. The goal of the Roundheads was to give to Parliament the supreme control over executive administration of the country/kingdom. Beliefs Most Roundheads sought constitutional monarchy in place of the absolute monarchy sought by Charles; however, at the end of the English Civil War in 1649, public antipathy towards the king was high enough to allow republican leaders such as Oliver Cromwell to abolish the monarchy completely and establish the Commonwealth of England. The Roundhead commander-in-chief of the first Civil War, Thomas Fairfax, remained a supporter of constitutional monarchy, as did many other Roundhead leaders such as Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of ...
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London And South Western Railway
The London and South Western Railway (LSWR, sometimes written L&SWR) was a railway company in England from 1838 to 1922. Originating as the London and Southampton Railway, its network extended to Dorchester and Weymouth, to Salisbury, Exeter and Plymouth, and to Padstow, Ilfracombe and Bude. It developed a network of routes in Hampshire, Surrey and Berkshire, including Portsmouth and Reading. The LSWR became famous for its express passenger trains to Bournemouth and Weymouth, and to Devon and Cornwall. Nearer London it developed a dense suburban network and was pioneering in the introduction of a widespread suburban electrified passenger network. It was the prime mover of the development of Southampton Docks, which became an important ocean terminal as well as a harbour for cross channel services and for Isle of Wight ferries. Although the LSWR's area of influence was not the home of large-scale heavy industry, the transport goods and mineral traffic was a major activity, a ...
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Bideford Railway Station
The first Bideford railway station was opened on 2 November 1855 as the terminus of the Bideford Extension Railway from Barnstaple. This was taken over by the London and South Western Railway about ten years later. This station was resited in 1872 when the line was extended to Torrington. Regular passenger trains from Barnstaple were withdrawn on Saturday 2 October 1965 although special trains occasionally used the station until the line was finally closed to freight in 1982. After closure a railway preservation society was formed to reopen the station and a short part of the line. Over 220 yards of track were laid from the station and some rolling stock and a small diesel locomotive are on site. An occasional train service is operated from April to September and the replica signal box, interactive interpretation centre and cafe are also open during this period. The site is on the Tarka Trail so is accessible even if the centre is closed. See Bideford Railway Heritage Centre ...
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Barnstaple Railway Station
Barnstaple railway station is the northern terminus of the Tarka Line and serves the town of Barnstaple, Devon. It is from at milepost 211.25 from . It is managed by Great Western Railway, which also operates the train service. It opened in 1854 but from 1874 until 1970 it was known as Barnstaple Junction railway station as it was the junction between lines to , , and Exeter. History The Taw Vale Railway & Dock opened a railway to carry goods traffic between a quay at Fremington Pill and Barnstaple in August 1848. William Thorne, who worked the horse-drawn trains, built a warehouse at the terminus in Barnstaple which was by the Sticklepath turnpike gate and the bridge across the River Taw. On 1 August 1854 the North Devon Railway (as the Taw Vale was now known) opened a gauge line from where it linked with the Exeter and Crediton Railway. The traffic on the original line between Barnstaple and Fremington had ceased in 1851 and this line was now rebuilt to the North De ...
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Neoclassical Architecture
Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing styles of architecture in most of Europe for the previous two centuries, Renaissance architecture and Baroque architecture, already represented partial revivals of the Classical architecture of ancient Rome and (much less) ancient Greek architecture, but the Neoclassical movement aimed to strip away the excesses of Late Baroque and return to a purer and more authentic classical style, adapted to modern purposes. The development of archaeology and published accurate records of surviving classical buildings was crucial in the emergence of Neoclassical architecture. In many countries, there was an initial wave essentially drawing on Roman architecture, followed, from about the start of the 19th century, by a second wave of Greek Revival architec ...
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Celebration (party)
A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature food and beverages, and often conversation, music, dancing, or other forms of entertainment. Some parties are held in honor of a specific person, day, or event, such as a birthday party, a Super Bowl party, or a St. Patrick’s Day party. Parties of this kind are often called celebrations. A party is not necessarily a private occasion. Public parties are sometimes held in restaurants, pubs, beer gardens, nightclubs, or bars, and people attending such parties may be charged an admission fee by the host. Large parties in public streets may celebrate events such as Mardi Gras or the signing of a peace treaty ending a long war. Types Balls Banquets Birthday party A birthday party is a celebration of the anniversary of the birth of the ...
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Festival
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern. Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanking to the gods, goddesses or saints: they are called patronal festivals. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced e ...
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Historical Reenactment
Historical reenactment (or re-enactment) is an educational entertainment, educational or entertainment activity in which mainly amateur hobbyists and history enthusiasts dress in historic uniforms or costumes and follow a plan to recreate aspects of a historical event or period. This may be as narrow as a specific moment from a battle, such as the reenactment of Pickett's Charge presented during the Great Reunion of 1913, or as broad as an entire period, such as Regency reenactment. While historical reenactors are generally amateurs, some participants are members of armed forces or historians. The participants, called reenactors, often do research on the equipment, uniform, and other gear they will carry or use. Reenactors buy the apparel or items they need from specialty stores or make items themselves. Historical reenactments cover a wide span of history, from the Roman empire to the major world wars and the Korean War of the 20th century. History Activities related to "ree ...
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Costume
Costume is the distinctive style of dress or cosmetic of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, profession, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch. In short costume is a cultural visual of the people. The term also was traditionally used to describe typical appropriate clothing for certain activities, such as riding costume, swimming costume, dance costume, and evening costume. Appropriate and acceptable costume is subject to changes in fashion and local cultural norms. This general usage has gradually been replaced by the terms "dress", "attire", "robes" or "wear" and usage of "costume" has become more limited to unusual or out-of-date clothing and to attire intended to evoke a change in identity, such as theatrical, Halloween, and mascot costumes. Before the advent of ready-to-wear apparel, clothing was made by hand. When made for commercial sale it was made, as late as the beginning of the 20th century, by "costumiers", often women who ran businesses that ...
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West Country
The West Country (occasionally Westcountry) is a loosely defined area of South West England, usually taken to include all, some, or parts of the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Bristol, and, less commonly, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. "Which counties make up the West Country?", ''YouGov.co.uk'', 23 October 2019
Retrieved 22 June 2021
The West Country has a distinctive regional English dialect and accent, and is also home to the .


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