Monday 30 January 2012

Aldercar And Langley Mill

From the front cover of our magazine
Whilst I'm in a 'lets pick on our parish council' mood, I thought I'd get around to publishing this post that has just been hanging around waiting for a rainy day:

A while back Asda gave our council some money - £7,000 is the figure I've got, but could have been amended - which they duly spent on a mock 'canal lock-gate' and new 'Welcome' signs to our village. Only our alleged quality council ended up misspelling at least two of them. Langley Mill is not spelt ...
A   L   D   E   R   C   A   R ...
As far as I'm aware - without counting minor roads etc - there are three main ways into [okay, out of] Langley Mill, and only one of them goes through Aldercar.

I have absolutely nothing against Aldercar, I have friends who live there. But when I arrive in Langley Mill, I like to know I'm here. I don't need a sign that says 'Welcome to Aldercar & Langley Mill'.

I'm sure that some of the - grumpier - Aldercar residents feel the same, they would prefer their own signs accordingly. I know that the border between the two places is somewhat fuzzy - seeing as every green space needs a house building on it - but we don't want lumping together, even if the parish council does.

To be continued - now that I've, ahem, got the bit between my teeth ...

4 comments:

  1. Maybe they (who must be obeyed!) thought that two signs at £7000 a piece might be a tad tooooo expensive, so being of great wisdom (not), they decided to combine two locations onto one sign?
    (I actually don't know a thing about parish councils and their workings, but I thought I would throw in my penn'th worth anyway!) :)

    By the way, Julie, why do you need a sign to tell you where you are?
    Are they directions for Grumpy on 'is way 'ome from t'Pub? He,he,hic,he!
    Jest.
    Cheers....B

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    Replies
    1. Hi Bernard, Asda donated a certain amount of money, but I'm not sure how much the new signs actually cost. There was nothing wrong with the old ones that told you where you were.

      I think it's us already having an identity crisis that makes us a bit antsy about our villages names. We're in Derbyshire but have a Nottingham address, not totally unheard of but enough of an irritation to make the top of my head itch.

      Then, ahem, there's the actual real annoyance ... if they were going to put both names on the three new 'Welcome' signs, Langley Mill should come first ... there, [ouch] I've said it, sorry Aldercarites.

      Grumpy - drinking - in a pub, no :-)

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    2. Regarding the new Parish signs, if you log onto the new Parish Council website and click onto the 'History' panel on the left hand side then click 'Langley Mill', at the bottom of the page which is kindly published by the Heanor & District Local History Society, the final 2 paragraphs clearly explain that Langley Mill was an Industrial Village and Aldercar a Hamlet.

      Surely the 'Village' takes precedence over a 'Hamlet', that was the reason for the Langley Mill & Aldercar Co-operative Society being so named, it's name still set in stone on the building it occupied on Cromford Road to this day (if a little weather beaten).

      ALI (Gladstone St.)

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    3. Yeah, I wrote my own version in reply to Bernard, then realised that my comments were getting longer than the actual blog posts, which are already too long. I cut that bit and saved it in my drafts instead, but now I'll paste it below :-)
      .......

      I'll now relate my own version of a potted history of why Aldercar is allegedly more important than Langley Mill.

      Ahem, Langley Mill in days of yore was an industrial village par excellence, it grew up beside the Erewash river and the Nottingham, Cromford and Erawash canals. There were also several nearby train stations [Langley Mill since reopened] Therefore an ideal place for industry to develop.

      Of course the big nobs, aka factory owners and management couldn't live in the terraced houses that were built for the peasants, so they lived in the nearby HAMLET of Aldercar.

      Thus Aldercar is obviously more important than Langley Mill, because Langley Mill has only ever housed peasants.

      And that's the truth ...

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Be nice, I'm very sensitive.