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Malvern Hills

The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit affords a panorama of the Severn Valley, the hills of Herefordshire and the Welsh mountains, parts of thirteen counties, the Bristol Channel, and the cathedrals of Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford.

They are known for their spring water – initially from holy wells, and later the spa town of Great Malvern, which led to the production of the modern bottled drinking water.

The Malvern Hills have been designated as a biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest, and by Natural England as National Character Area 103 and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Management of the area is the responsibility of the Malvern Hills Trust.

Toponymy
The name Malvern is probably derived from the ancient British moel-bryn, meaning "bare-hill", the nearest modern equivalent being the Welsh moelfryn (bald hill). It has been known as Malferna (11th century), Malverne (12th century), and Much Malvern (16th and 17th centuries).

Jabez Allies, a 19th-century antiquarian from Worcestershire speculated that 'vern' was derived from the British words 'sarn' or 'varn' meaning pavement or seat of judgement.

Geography
The Malvern Hills are part of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with scenic views over both Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The Hills run north–south for about 13 km, in between Great Malvern and the village of Colwall, and overlook the River Severn valley to the east, with the Cotswolds beyond. The highest point of the hills is the Worcestershire Beacon at 425 m above sea level (OS Grid reference SO768452). The hills are famous for their natural mineral springs and wells, which were responsible for the development of Great Malvern as a spa in the early 19th century. Malvern water was bottled commercially on a large scale and sold worldwide.

There are three passes over the hills, the Wyche cutting, the A438 road north of Raggedstone Hill and the A449 road just north of the Herefordshire Beacon, the site of the British Camp, an Iron Age hillfort at the top of the hill, subsequently extended by a medieval castle. The extensive earthworks remain clearly visible today and determine the shape of the hill.

Geology
The Malvern Hills are formed of some of the most ancient rocks in England, mostly igneous and metamorphic rocks from the late Precambrian, known as the Uriconian, which are around 680 million years old. The Malvern Line or Malvern Lineament is the name applied to a north–south aligned lineament which runs through the Malvern Hills and extends southwards towards Bristol and northwards past Kidderminster. It consists of a series of faults and folds which have the effect of bringing old Malvernian rocks to the surface. Being largely hard igneous rocks, they have resisted erosion better than those of the surrounding countryside and result in a striking line of hills of which the Malvern Hills are the most impressive. This line is considered to mark the edge of two terranes – two once separate fragments of the Earth's crust now joined as one – the Wrekin Terrane to the west and the Charnwood Terrane to the east.

The main face of Gullet Quarry shows a cross-section through the Precambrian rock and exhibits many rock types including diorite, granite, gneiss, schist, pegmatite and dolerite. The evidence of the complex history of earth movements which formed the Hills can be seen by multiple joints, fractures, faults and shears, which make identifying changes in rock types difficult. Mineral deposits such as haematite, calcite and epidote can be seen within these features.

There is a tiny, man-made cave near the ridge of the hills called Clutter's Cave (or Giant's Cave or Hermit's Cave or Waum's Cave, after Walm's Well which is located on the boundary of News Wood below). The cave has been excavated into pillow lavas. Some of the rounded 'pillow' shapes are still visible around the entrance to the cave.

Malvern water
The quality of Malvern water is attributable to its source. The rocks of the Malvern Hills are amongst the oldest and hardest found in England; the geology is responsible for the quality of Malvern's spring water. The hills consist of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock, the oldest of which are about 670 million years old. The rocks are characterised by low porosity and high secondary permeability via fissures. Malvern water is rainwater and snow meltwater that percolates through fissures created by the pressures of tectonic movements about 300 million years ago when advancing sedimentary layers of Silurian shale and limestone were pushed into and under older Precambrian rock. When the fissures are saturated, a water table forms and the water emerges as springs around the fault lines between the strata. Depending on rainfall, the flow can vary from as little as 36 L per minute to over 350 L per minute. The water permeates through the rock which, because of its hardness, leaves little or no mineral traces in the water, while at the same time the very fine cracks act as a filter for other impurities. Rainfall on the Malvern Hills is thought to be sufficient to account for all the water that runs out of the springs, reflected for example in some spring flows six to eight weeks after heavy rainfall, and in reduced flows after a dry period.

Ecology
The Malvern Hills have been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) by Natural England and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty by the Countryside Agency (now Natural England).

Features of the Malvern Hills AONB include wide areas of acid grassland and heath on the summit and mixed broadleaved woodland and Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland on the lower hills and valleys. There are three areas of Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland in the Malvern Hills SSSI: Hollybush Roughs between the boundary of Castlemorton Common and the Midsummer Hill fort, Park Wood in West Malvern and an area near Holy Well above Malvern Wells.

Key AONB species include dormouse, barbastelle, skylark, high brown fritillary butterfly, great crested newt, adder and black poplar.

History
Flint axes, arrowheads, and flakes found in the area are attributed to early Bronze Age settlers, and the 'Shire Ditch', a late Bronze Age boundary earthwork possibly dating from around 1000 BC, was constructed along part of the crest of the hills near the site of later settlements. The Wyche Cutting, a mountain pass through the hills was in use in prehistoric times as part of the salt route from Droitwich to South Wales. A 19th-century discovery of over two hundred metal money bars suggests that the area had been inhabited by the La Tène people around 250 BC. Ancient folklore has it that the British chieftain Caractacus made his last stand against the Romans at the British Camp, a site of extensive Iron Age earthworks on a summit of the Malvern Hills close to where Malvern was to be later established. The story remains disputed, however, as Roman historian Tacitus implies a site closer to the river Severn. There is therefore no evidence that Roman presence ended the prehistoric settlement at British Camp. However, excavations at nearby Midsummer Hillfort, Bredon Hill and Croft Ambrey all show evidence of violent destruction around the year 48 AD. This may suggest that the British Camp was abandoned or destroyed around the same time.

During the medieval period, the hills and surrounding area were part of a royal forest known as Malvern Chase. Riots by commoners and legal challenges from land owners ensued when King Charles I attempted to disafforest the Chase in 1630. Ultimately, only one third was disafforested, and commissioners were appointed to ensure any further encroachments did not leave the common lands as the most meagre in quality. This system lasted until the 1800s.

In 1884, the Malvern Hills Conservators were established through an Act of Parliament to preserve the natural aspect of the hills and protect them from encroachments. However, by this time large-scale quarrying had already begun. Quarry works were set in motion in the 1870s at Tank Quarry and at Little Malvern by Pyx Granite Company. The Hills Conservators lobbied parliament to pass an Act limiting the exploitation, and although a second Act was passed in 1924 its provisions were largely ineffective. Quarrying continued until 1966. The landscape itself was irrevocably changed; but there is some debate whether this has enriched or damaged the ecology of the Hills. Certainly the quarrying has changed the Hills forever, including creating habitats for frogs, toads, newts and other small animals. The new cliffs provide nesting sites for certain birds. The quarries, especially North Quarry and Tank Quarry, have over the years been the sites of several accidents requiring the Emergency Services. In 1989, the cafe on Worcestershire Beacon burned down. As the Malvern Hills Acts state that no building should be erected on the Conservators' land or on land under their jurisdiction, the Conservators put a bill through Parliament to get the power to build a new one but the House of Lords opposed it. When the cafe was burned down, the Conservators had plans to replace the building but were advised that they risked prosecution for rebuilding as the original cafe building was an encroachment on common land. The Malvern Hills Bill was in preparation to modernise some of the clauses in previous acts a clause was inserted to gain authority to rebuild the cafe. Five members of the House of Lords Select Committee visited the Malvern Hills and decided that there were enough facilities in the immediate area and that St Ann's Well cafe should be enough provision on the hills, so the application to rebuild was turned down. In 2000, a £1.3 million project to reintroduce grazing animals to the Malvern Hills and restore part of its historic network of water spouts was given significant backing of National Lottery funds. The Malverns Heritage Project aimed to reintroduce grazing animals as a natural means of scrub management and restore several water features. The project was spearheaded by the Malvern Hills AONB Service, in partnership with Worcestershire County Council, Herefordshire Council, Malvern Hills Conservators, Malvern Spa Association, English Nature, Countryside Agency, National Trust and English Heritage. Members of the public were concerned that by erecting temporary fences on the Malvern Hills the Conservators would be straying from their core duty of keeping the Malvern Hills unenclosed as open spaces for the recreation and enjoyment of the public. Although the conservation officer said any enclosures would be small and temporary there were worries that leisure activities that could be affected and that "the feeling of freedom associated with 'just being' on the Malvern Hills" could be lost.

In 2001, the Malvern Hills were officially closed to the public for the first time in history. Walkers were told to avoid the area as part of the effort to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease. As a result of the closure the economy of the Malvern Hills faced serious damage. In 2002 the Malvern Hills were named the most popular free tourist attraction in the West Midlands in a survey commissioned by the Countryside Agency to take the temperature of rural tourism in the wake of the crisis.

In 2006, Worcestershire County Council was awarded £770,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund for restoration work and preservation of the area by fitting cattle grids to roads across the Hills and encouraging local landowners to allow sheep to wander across their land. As part of the Malvern Heritage Project nine water features within the AONB were also renovated.

Governance
The Malvern Hills Trust is the working name for the Malvern Hills Conservators and manages most parts of the Hills and the surrounding Commons, some other parcels of land and many roadside verges. They were established in 1884 and are governed by five Acts of Parliament, the Malvern Hills Acts 1884, 1909, 1924, 1930 and 1995. They are a voluntary body of twenty-nine members. Eleven are directly elected under the Local Elections (Principal areas) Rules by the residents of the wards who contribute to the Conservators' funds through a levy in their Council Tax, seventeen are appointed by local authorities and one by the Church Commissioners. The total area under their jurisdiction is over 1200 ha.

The Malvern Hills were designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in 1959. The designation covers 105 km2 and includes parts of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. The Malvern Hills Conservators played a key role in ensuring that the area of the AONB is larger than that originally proposed.

The AONB Partnership work together to conserve and enhance the Malvern Hills AONB. The Partnership has a formal structure including representatives from private and public enterprises, officers from local authorities, the Countryside Agency and the Malvern Hills Conservators.

Sport, leisure, and tourism
The Malvern Hills are home to a wide range of outdoor sports and leisure activities, including walking, mountain biking, horse riding, orienteering, hang-gliding, paragliding, model aircraft flying, fishing, climbing and diving.

The Worcestershire Way is a waymarked long-distance trail located within the county of Worcestershire. It runs 50 km from Bewdley to Great Malvern. It is an important recreation resource in the AONB.

The Geopark Way is a 109 mi long-distance trail which runs from Bridgnorth to Gloucester and passes through the Abberley and Malvern Hills Geopark. The route was devised to highlight geology, landscape and associated heritage. The Malvern Hills Geocentre is located halfway along the Geopark Way, at the Wyche. This official visitor centre gives more information on interactive iPads about the geology, nature and history of the Geopark and the Malvern hills and Malvern in particular, as well as large wall maps of the area.

Abberley and Malvern Hills Geopark
The Abberley and Malvern Hills Geopark was launched in 2004. It falls within the counties of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire and Worcestershire and covers 1250 sqmi. The geological and geomorphological significance of the area has been recognised for many years with 13 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and 179 Local Geological Sites (LGS) present.

Transport
The A449 road runs through the centre of Malvern, connecting it to Worcester and Ledbury. The M5 motorway to the east of Malvern is accessible at junctions 7 and 8. The M50 (also known as the Ross Spur) to the south can be accessed at junction 1 on the A38 road between Tewkesbury and Malvern.

The AONB has four railway stations inside or very close to its boundary: Malvern Link, Great Malvern, Colwall and Ledbury. These railway stations lie on the Cotswolds & Malverns Line which operates between Oxford via Worcester Shrub Hill and Worcester Foregate Street to Hereford. Direct trains to the area are available from Birmingham Snow Hill or Birmingham New Street and London Paddington.

Several local bus services connect Malvern with the surrounding area. Long-distance direct bus services connect Malvern with other cities in the country, including the National Express route 321 through eleven counties from Aberdare, South Wales, via Birmingham and other major cities to Bradford, West Yorkshire, and route 444 from Worcester to London (Victoria).

Music
English composer Edward Elgar, who was from the area, often walked, cycled, and reportedly flew kites on these hills. He wrote a cantata in 1898 entitled Caractacus, which alludes to the popular legend of his last stand at British Camp. In 1934, during the composer's final illness, he told a friend: "If ever after I'm dead you hear someone whistling this tune [from his Cello Concerto] on the Malvern Hills, don't be alarmed, it's only me."

Composers Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney used to take long walks together through the nearby Cotswold Hills and the natural beauty of the area, including the magnificent views of the Malverns, was a profound inspiration for their music. Howells dedicated his first major work, the Piano Quartet in A minor (1916), to "the hill at Chosen (Churchdown) and Ivor Gurney who knew it".

The Swedish singer Jenny Lind spent the last years of her life living at Wynd's Point near the British Camp. She is buried in Great Malvern cemetery.

Literature
The Malvern Hills were the inspiration and setting for the famous 14th-century poem The Visions of Piers Plowman (1362) by William Langland, who was possibly educated at the priory of Great Malvern. The earliest poetical allusion to the Malvern Hills occurs in the poem: "And on a Maye mornynge on Malverne hylles".

The poet W. H. Auden taught for three years at The Downs School, Colwall, in the Malvern Hills. He spent three years at the school in the 1930s and wrote some of his finest early love poems there, including: "This Lunar Beauty"; "Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love" ('Lullaby'); "My Love, Fish in the Unruffled Lakes"; and "Out on the Lawn I Lie in Bed". He also wrote a long poem about the hills and their views, called simply The Malverns.

J.R.R. Tolkien found inspiration in the Malvern landscape which he had viewed from his childhood home in Birmingham and his brother Hilary's home near Evesham. He was introduced to the area by C. S. Lewis, who had brought him here to meet George Sayer, the Head of English at Malvern College. Sayer had been a student of Lewis, and became his biographer, and together with them Tolkien would walk the Malvern Hills. Recordings of Tolkien reading excerpts from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were made in Malvern in 1952, at the home of George Sayer. The recordings were later issued on long-playing gramophone records. In the liner notes for J.R.R. Tolkien Reads and Sings his The Hobbit & The Fellowship of the Ring, George Sayer wrote that Tolkien would relive the book as they walked and compared parts of the Malvern Hills to the White Mountains of Gondor.

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning spent her childhood at Hope End, a 500-acre (2.0 km2) estate near the Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Her time at Hope End would inspire her in later life to write Aurora Leigh.

In Early British Trackways Alfred Watkins theorised that a ley line passed along the Malvern Hills through several wells including St Ann's Well, Holy Well, Walms Well and St. Pewtress Well. Interest in Watkin's theories subsided in the 1930s but saw a revival in the late 1960s. In The Ley Hunter's Companion (1979) Paul Devereux theorised that a 10-mile alignment he called the "Malvern Ley" passed through St Ann's Well, the Wyche Cutting, a section of the Shire Ditch, Midsummer Hill, Whiteleaved Oak, Redmarley D'Abitot and Pauntley. In City of Revelation (1973) British author John Michell theorised that Whiteleaved Oak is the centre of a circular alignment he called the "Circle of Perpetual Choirs" and is equidistant from Glastonbury, Stonehenge, Goring-on-Thames and Llantwit Major. The theory was investigated by the British Society of Dowsers and used as background material by Phil Rickman in his novel The Remains of an Altar (2006). "Malvern Hills" is the third short story in Japanese-English author Kazuo Ishiguro's collection Nocturnes (2009).

The legend of the Shadow of the Ragged Stone, a shadow appearing to arise from the hilltop under particular meteorological conditions said to bring ill-fortune to those on whom it falls, features in many literary sources. It is the subject of the novel "The Shadow of the Ragged Stone" by Charles F. Grindrod, which tells the story of a monk who in punishment for breaking his vow of chastity was compelled to crawl up the hill every day on his hands and knees, and died cursing the hill and all on whom its shadow should fall.

Art
Paintings of the Malvern Hills include Henry Harris Lines's The British Camp and Herefordshire Beacon (1872), now in the Worcester City Museums.

David Prentice, founder member of Birmingham's Ikon Gallery, has been painting the Malvern Hills since 1986.

Paul Nash made paintings of the hills from 'Madams' in Gloucestershire and from the 'Rising Sun' hotel on Cleeve Hill near Cheltenham.

Dame Laura Knight painted in a studio near Wynds Point below British Camp.

Television
The opening scene in Elgar, a drama documentary made in 1962 by the British director Ken Russell, depicts a young Elgar riding a white pony over the Malvern Hills. Made for BBC Television's long-running Monitor programme, it dramatised the life of the composer Edward Elgar. The film significantly raised the public profile of the composer.

The Tank Quarry on North Hill and West of England Quarry on the Worcestershire Beacon were used as locations in the Doctor Who serial The Krotons, starring Patrick Troughton. The serial was broadcast in four weekly parts from 28 December 1968 to 18 January 1969.

The Malvern Hills are the backdrop for Penda's Fen, a 1974 British television play written by David Rudkin and directed by Alan Clarke for the BBC's Play for Today series. It tells the story of Stephen, a pastor's son who has visions of angels, Edward Elgar, and King Penda, the last pagan ruler of England. The final scene of the play, where the protagonist has an apparitional experience of King Penda and the "mother and father of England", is set on the Malvern Hills.

Architecture
A famous historic Virginia Landmark, Malvern Hill was a house built in the 17th century by an English settler, Thomas Cocke, later the site of an American Civil War battle. Cocke named his home after Malvern Hills in England.

The hills

A list of the hills in their order from north to south is shown below: A good panorama of the length of the hills can be seen from the M5 motorway, particularly between Junction 7 at Worcester (south) and Junction 9 at Tewkesbury.

Vistas
Between 1999 and 2000, the Heart of England Tourist Board carried out a survey of visitors to the Malvern hills on behalf of the Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Partnership (AONB). Those questioned indicated that the thing they liked most about the hills was "the scenery and views".

"[The Malvern Hills form] an island of high ground surrounded by lower lying land, most noticeably to the east. As a result, the [h]ills are clearly visible and easily recognisable from a considerable distance away [and] constitute an iconic feature in the local and regional landscape."

The AONB commissioned study to "identify and assess a selection of key views to and from the Malvern Hills" it was carried out in 2009 by Cooper Partnership Ltd, a firm of Chartered Landscape Architects. This information was gathered not only so that the best vistas could be made known to a wider public, but also as an intelligence gathering so that proposed changes to the landscape both in and outside the Malvern Hills area of outstanding beauty (such as the building of wind turbines) could be assessed against the impact those developments would have on the Malvern Hills area of outstanding beauty. The Cooper Partnership identified 50 key views from vantage points on the Malvern hills, and from the surrounding area. These were:

title: Malvern Hills


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Huntingdon and Peterborough

Huntingdon and Peterborough was a short-lived administrative and geographical county in East Anglia in the United Kingdom. It existed from 1965 to 1974, when it became part of Cambridgeshire.

Formation
The Local Government Act 1888 created four small neighbouring administrative counties in the east of England: Cambridgeshire, Isle of Ely, Huntingdonshire, and the Soke of Peterborough. Following the Second World War, a Local Government Boundary Commission was formed to review county-level administration in England and Wales. The commission was of the opinion that counties needed to have a population of between 200,000 and one million in order to provide effective services. Accordingly, they recommended the amalgamation of all four counties into a single entity. The commission's recommendations were not carried out, however.

The reform of local government was returned to in 1958, with the appointment of a Local Government Commission for England. The four counties were included in the East Midlands General Review Area, and the LGCE made its draft proposals in 1960. The commission identified particular problems in the administration of the Soke of Peterborough, where 80% of the population of the county lay within the City of Peterborough, which was itself seeking county borough status. The LGCE concluded that the Soke was too small to continue as a separate county, and needed to become part of a larger authority. Accordingly, the draft proposals were to combine the Isle of Ely, Huntingdonshire and the Soke of Peterborough with Cambridgeshire (less the City of Cambridge).

There was considerable opposition to the draft proposals, and the LGCE instead opted in its final report in 1961 to create two counties: Huntingdon and Peterborough, and Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely. The Huntingdon and Peterborough Order was made on 14 February 1964, and placed before the House of Commons on 9 March 1964. The amalgamation was welcomed by David Renton, the member of parliament (MP) for Huntingdonshire, who felt that "The new county will have very good communications and a great community of interest. It will be a compact and convenient local government unit." The order was approved by 143 votes to 83.

The new county was formed on 1 April 1965 from the areas of the administrative counties of Huntingdonshire and Soke of Peterborough (with minor boundary changes) and Thorney Rural District from the Isle of Ely. As well as becoming an administrative county, Huntingdon and Peterborough also became a county for other statutory purposes. Accordingly, the Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdonshire became Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdon and Peterborough, with Peterborough ceasing to be part of the geographical county of Northamptonshire. A high sheriff was also appointed to the new county, and a single commission of peace and court of quarter sessions established.

The county's population, as recorded at the ten-yearly census, was 202,622 in 1971.

Emergency services
On the creation of the county, an order under the Police Act 1964 came into force creating the Mid-Anglia Constabulary by merging the Cambridge City Police, Cambridgeshire County Constabulary, Isle of Ely Constabulary, Huntingdonshire Constabulary, and the Peterborough Combined Police Force (created in 1947 from the Liberty of Peterborough Constabulary and the Peterborough City Police). On further local government reform in 1974, the present Cambridgeshire Constabulary was formed with the same boundaries.

The Huntingdon and Peterborough Fire Brigade was formed on the same date by the merger of Huntingdonshire Fire Brigade and the Soke of Peterborough Fire Brigade. Since 1974 this has formed part of Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service.

Districts
The county was divided into thirteen local government districts: three municipal boroughs, three urban districts and seven rural districts. Each of these existed as subdivisions of the predecessor counties.

† Formerly in Huntingdonshire ‡ Formerly in Soke of Peterborough ¶ Formerly in Isle of Ely

Source: Vision of Britain

Coat of arms
Huntingdon and Peterborough County Council was granted armorial bearings by the College of Arms on 3 April 1965. The blazon was as follows:

''Barry argent and azure on a fess embattled vert a cornucopia between two garbs or; and for a crest issuant from a mural crown or a demi lion gules gorged with a collar flory counterflory and supporting a staff or, flying therefrom a banner vert charged with two keys in saltire or; mantled azure, doubled argent. And for supporters on the dexter side a pikeman of the New Model Army supporting with the exterior hand a pike, and on the sinister side a mitred abbot in processional vestments for St Peter's Day supporting with the exterior hand a crosier and sudarium all proper. Badge: Two keys in saltire surmounted by a buglehorn or the strings azure interlaced with the keys.''

The arms and crest were a combination of the arms previously used by Huntingdonshire and Soke of Peterborough County Councils. To these were added supporters: a pikeman of the New Model Army for the Cromwellian associations of Huntingdonshire, and a mitred abbot for the origins of the Soke as territory administered by Peterborough Abbey.

The Latin motto adopted by the council – Cor Unum, or One Heart – was formerly that of the Soke.

Abolition
The county had only a nine-year existence. In 1974 the Local Government Act 1972 completely reformed administrative structures throughout England and Wales excluding Greater London. A system of metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, each divided into districts, was introduced. Huntingdon and Peterborough was merged with neighbouring Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely to form the new enlarged non-metropolitan county (and lieutenancy) of Cambridgeshire, first proposed in 1947. Peterborough and Huntingdon became two of the county's six districts; in 1984, following a resolution of the council, the latter district was renamed Huntingdonshire.

Legacy
There is now a Hunts & Peterborough County Rugby Union that takes all the teams from each area and has representative teams for Youth rugby.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Huntingdon and Peterborough


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Corydon

Corydon may refer to:

Literature

 * Corydon (character), a stock name for a shepherd in pastorals
 * Corydon (book), an early 20th-century book by André Gide

People

 * Bent Corydon (born 1942), American author and journalist
 * Bjarne Corydon (born 1973), Danish former politician and Finance Minister
 * Corydon Beckwith (1823–1890), American jurist and lawyer
 * Corydon Bell (1894–1980), American author of children's books
 * Corydon Partlow Brown (1848–1891), Canadian politician
 * Corydon M. Wassell (1884–1958), U.S. Navy physician and recipient of the Navy Cross

Places in the United States

 * Corydon, Indiana, a town
 * Corydon Historic District
 * Corydon, Iowa, a city
 * Corydon, Kentucky, a home rule-class city
 * Corydon Township (disambiguation)

Other uses

 * Corydon Avenue, a segment of Winnipeg Route 95 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
 * Corydon (bird), a genus of broadbill containing a single species, the dusky broadbill
 * Battle of Corydon, in the American Civil War

title: Corydon


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Goofy Gophers

The Goofy Gophers are animated cartoon characters in Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. The gophers are small and brown with tan bellies and buck teeth. They both have British accents. Unnamed in the theatrical cartoons, they were given the names Mac and Tosh in the 1960s TV show The Bugs Bunny Show. The names are a pun on the surname "Macintosh". They are characterized by an abnormally high level of politeness.

Creation
The Goofy Gophers were created by Warners animator Bob Clampett for the 1947 short film The Goofy Gophers. Norman McCabe had previously used a pair of gophers in his 1942 short Gopher Goofy, but they bear little resemblance to Clampett's characters. Clampett left the studio before the short was finished, but would end up being completed by Arthur Davis. The cartoon features the gophers' repeated incursions into a vegetable garden guarded by an unnamed dog whom they relentlessly, though politely, torment. Voice actor Mel Blanc plays Mac and Stan Freberg plays Tosh. Both speak with high-pitched British accents like those used in upper-class stereotypes around at the time.

The pair's dialogue is peppered with such overpoliteness as "Indubitably!", "You first, my dear," and "But, no, no, no. It must be you who goes first!" The two often also tend to quote Shakespeare and use humorously long words; for example, in Lumber Jerks, instead of "We have to get our tree back", they say "We must take vital steps to reclaim our property." Clampett later stated that the gophers' mannerisms were derived from character actors Franklin Pangborn and Edward Everett Horton.

Development
Arthur Davis would direct one other Goofy Gophers short, 1948's Two Gophers from Texas. The unnamed dog from the first cartoon returns as their nemesis in this cartoon, this time aiming to eat like an animal in the wild as he pursues the gophers with a gopher cookbook in hand.

Davis planned to direct a third short with the gophers before his unit was disbanded in late 1949. Robert McKimson however, would complete the cartoon as A Ham in a Role. In this short, the dog efforts to become a Shakespearean actor are foiled by the rambunctious rodents.

The Gophers lay dormant for two years until Friz Freleng made a series of four shorts beginning with 1951's A Bone for a Bone, another dog-versus-gophers short. This was followed by I Gopher You in 1954, featuring the Gophers in their first cartoon without the dog, attempting to retrieve their vegetables from a food processing plant; Pests for Guests in 1955, which has the gophers counter-antagonize the helpless Elmer Fudd when he buys a chest of drawers that they found appropriate for nut storage; and Lumber Jerks later that year, where the Gophers visit a saw mill in an attempt to retrieve their stolen tree home.

After Freleng finished with the characters, they would star in two more cartoons, once again directed by McKimson. These two cartoons, Gopher Broke in 1958 and Tease for Two in 1965, pit the Gophers against the Barnyard Dawg and Daffy Duck, respectively. Both gophers were voiced by Mel Blanc in the latter short instead of one by Blanc and the other by Freberg.

Later appearances
The Goofy Gophers were largely forgotten by Warner Bros. in the years since the animation studio closed in 1969. However, in recent years, they have made a few cameos in various Warner Bros. projects. Two characters resembling the gophers appeared in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, peeking from the brick wall into the factory where Judge Doom was defeated. They are seen briefly in the 1996 movie Space Jam. They're prominently featured in episodes of the animated series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries ("I Gopher You") and Duck Dodgers ("K-9 Kaddy" and "Old McDodgers"), which in the latter, they are reinvented as green-furred, six-limbed Martian gophers.

The Goofy Gophers made a cameo appearance in Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas as Daffy's employers.

The Goofy Gophers were revived in The Looney Tunes Show voiced by Rob Paulsen and Jess Harnell. In this show, Mac and Tosh run an antique store. The gophers appeared in the 2015 DTV movie Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run. They also appear in the Looney Tunes comic currently published by DC Comics.

The Goofy Gophers appeared in the New Looney Tunes season 3 episode "Fool's Gold".

The Goofy Gophers made a cameo in the Looney Tunes Cartoons short "Happy Birthday, Bugs Bunny!".

The Goofy Gophers appeared in Bugs Bunny Builders in the episode "Rock On".

Filmography

 * The Goofy Gophers (1947, Bob Clampett & Arthur Davis)
 * Two Gophers from Texas (1948, Davis)
 * A Ham in a Role (1949, Davis & Robert McKimson)
 * A Bone for a Bone (1951, Freleng)
 * I Gopher You (1954, Freleng)
 * Pests for Guests (1955, Freleng)
 * Lumber Jerks (1955, Freleng)
 * Gopher Broke (1958, McKimson)
 * Tease for Two (1965, McKimson)

title: Goofy Gophers


text:
Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), or simply Alliance, is a liberal and centrist political party in Northern Ireland. Following the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, it was the third-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding seventeen seats, and broke through by placing third in first preference votes in the 2019 European Parliament election and polling third-highest regionally at the 2019 UK general election. The party won one of the three Northern Ireland seats in the European Parliament, and one seat, North Down, in the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Founded in 1970 from the New Ulster Movement, the Alliance Party originally represented moderate and non-sectarian unionism. However, over time, particularly in the 1990s, it moved towards neutrality on the Union, and came to represent wider liberal and non-sectarian concerns. It supports the Good Friday Agreement but maintains a desire for the reform of the political system towards a non-sectarian future and, in the Northern Ireland Assembly, it is designated as neither Unionist nor Irish nationalist, but "Other" or "United Community".

The Alliance Party won its first seat in the UK House of Commons in the 2010 general election, unseating the former East Belfast MP Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Naomi Long was the first MP from the Alliance Party since Stratton Mills, who joined the party from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in 1973. However, the DUP regained the seat at the 2015 general election, following an electoral pact with the UUP. In the 2019 general election, Alliance regained its presence in the House of Commons when Stephen Farry won the North Down seat vacated by the independent unionist, Sylvia Hermon. Earlier that year, the party's leader, Naomi Long, won the party's first seat in the European Parliament in the last European election before Brexit. Under Long's leadership, the Alliance Party exceeded expectations in the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election and gained numerous seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The Alliance Party is a member of the Liberal International and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, and is aligned with the Liberal Democrats in Great Britain.

Early growth and the 1974 Northern Ireland Executive
The party was formed in April 1970 as an alternative to the established parties. In the context of a rapidly worsening political crisis, it aimed not only to present an alternative to what they perceived as sectarian parties and expressly aimed to act as a bridge between the Protestant and Catholic sections of the community and heal the divisions in Northern Ireland society. The Party's founding principles were expressly in favour of Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, although, in contrast to other unionist parties, that was expressed in socio-economic rather than ethnic terms.

On 5 February 1973, prior to the 1973 Northern Ireland border poll, the party's chairman, Jim Hendron, stated that: "Support for the position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom is a fundamental principle of the Alliance Party, not only for economic reasons but also because we firmly believe that a peaceful solution to our present tragic problems is only possible within a United Kingdom context. Either a Sinn Fein all-Ireland republic or a Vanguard-style Ulster republic would lead to disaster for all our people."

The party's prominence increased in 1972 when three members of the Northern Ireland House of Commons defected to Alliance. The MPs were drawn from across Northern Ireland's political divide and included Bertie McConnell, an independent Unionist, the Ulster Unionist Phelim O'Neill and Tom Gormley who sat as an independent Nationalist. In 1973, Lord Dunleath joined the party in the House of Lords. Stratton Mills, who had been elected as an Ulster Unionist/Conservative MP at Westminster for North Belfast also joined that year, becoming the party's sole MP between 1973–74 and did not have another MP until 2010. Its first electoral challenge was the District Council elections of May 1973 when they managed to win 13.6% of the votes cast.

In the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, which followed the Sunningdale Agreement, the party polled 9.2% and won eight seats. After the elections, Alliance entered the power sharing Northern Ireland Executive. Oliver Napier became Legal Minister and Head of the Office of Law Reform and Bob Cooper took the junior role of Minister for Manpower Services.

In its manifesto for the elections to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975, the Alliance Party stated "Alliance supports the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. We know that this belief is shared by the overwhelming majority of our people and that provocative debate about it has been the primary cause of all our most fundamental troubles. The link is in the best economic and social interests of all the people of Northern Ireland, and we will maintain that only the people of Northern Ireland have the right to decide any change by voting in a referendum."

Alliance's vote increased significantly in the 1977 local elections, when it obtained 14.4% of the vote and had 74 Councillors elected. In 1979, Party Leader Oliver Napier came closer than Alliance had previously come to electing a Westminster MP, polling just 928 votes short of Peter Robinson's winning total in East Belfast, albeit placing third in a three-way marginal.

Stabilisation and decline
Alliance was seriously damaged by the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, which deeply polarised Northern Ireland politics, and led to the emergence of Sinn Féin as a serious political force. The party supported the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, and despite claims that this would fatally damage its soft unionist support, Alliance rebounded to pick up 10.0% of the vote in Northern Ireland in the 1987 United Kingdom general election.

Its new leader, John Alderdice, polled 32.0% of the vote in East Belfast, while Alliance came within 15,000 votes of both the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin across Northern Ireland. In 1996 Alderdice accepted a peerage, becoming the Alliance Party's only representation in Parliament. Lord Alderdice took the Liberal Democrat whip on wider UK and European issues but remained free from the whip's control on issues impacting Northern Ireland.

In 1988, in Alliance's keynote post-Anglo Irish Agreement document, Governing with Consent, Alderdice called for a devolved power-sharing government. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Alliance's vote stabilised at between 7% and 10%. After the IRA and loyalist ceasefires in 1994, Alliance became the first non-nationalist party to enter into talks with Sinn Féin, as an active participant in the Northern Ireland peace process negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement, which it strongly supported. Alliance polled poorly in the 1996 elections for the Northern Ireland Forum, and the 1998 election for the Northern Ireland Assembly winning around 6.5% of the vote each time. This did enable the party to win six seats in the Assembly, although this was somewhat of a let-down given that it had been expected to do much better.

1998–2004
John Alderdice resigned as party leader in 1998 to take up the post of the Assembly's Presiding Officer. He was replaced by Seán Neeson, who himself resigned as party leader in September 2001. Neeson was replaced by David Ford, a member of the Assembly for South Antrim.

It was predicted that Alliance would suffer electorally as a new centrist challenger established itself in Northern Irish politics, the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. Another problem for the APNI was that the rules of the Assembly require major votes (such as the election of the First Minister and deputy First Minister) to have the support of both a majority of unionist and nationalist MLAs, thus diminishing the importance of parties such as Alliance which are not aligned to either of these two blocs.

In the 2003 Assembly elections, Alliance held all their seats, while the Women's Coalition lost both of theirs. Alliance's vote fell to just 3.7%. In the European Parliament Elections in 2004, Alliance gave strong support to Independent candidate John Gilliland who polled 6.6% of the vote, the highest for a non-communal candidate in a European election since 1979. In the early years of the peace process, the centre ground was relentlessly squeezed in Northern Ireland politics. The support for Gilliland's candidature, which was also supported by parties such as the Workers' Party and Northern Ireland Conservatives, reflected a desire to reunite the fragmented and weakened non-communal bloc in Northern Ireland politics.

2004–2016
In the 5 May 2005 United Kingdom general election, they contested 12 seats and polled 3.9% of the vote. In the simultaneous elections to Northern Ireland's local authorities, they polled 5.0% of first preference votes and had 30 Councillors elected, a gain of two seats relative to the previous elections.

The 2006–2007 period saw some signs of an Alliance upturn, topping the poll and gaining a seat in a by-election for Coleraine Borough Council.

In the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, Alliance put in a strong media campaign and polled 5.2%, up from 3.6% in the previous election and gaining a seat in Belfast South following the successful candidature of Anna Lo, the first ethnic Chinese public representative in a national assembly anywhere in Western Europe. In an election cycle where many pundits had predicted that the Alliance Party would struggle to hold on to the six seats it won in the 2003 election, the party pulled off a credible performance which included Deputy Leader Naomi Long doubling her share of the vote in Belfast East.

In 2008, during the deadlock between Sinn Féin and the DUP over the devolution of policing, the two parties came to an agreement that the Minister of Justice would not come from either party. The Alliance Party was the obvious choice but party leader David Ford said "it's a very definite and a very emphatic no". Ford further stated, "this executive is incompetent, it's time they got on with doing the job that they were set up to do". Following further negotiations, Ford assumed office on 12 April 2010.

At the 2009 European elections, Alliance candidate Ian Parsley achieved the party's best European election vote share in 30 years with 5.5% of the vote.

In the 2010 general election, the party won its first seat in Westminster, with Naomi Long taking the seat of sitting First Minister Peter Robinson. The 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly Election resulted in eight Assembly members being returned with a gain in Belfast East. It overtook the UUP on Belfast City Council.

In a poll conducted in November 2012, Alliance (on 11.6%) overtook the UUP (11.4%) for the first time.

During the 2016 elections to the Assembly, in spite of initially confident predications from David Ford that Alliance would see a surplus of up to 11 seats, the party's share of the popular vote stagnated somewhat, from 7.7% in 2011 to 7.0%. Ultimately, its 8 MLAs from their original respective constituencies were returned to Stormont for the fifth Assembly term. Ford later resigned as Alliance Party leader on 6 October 2016, on his 15th anniversary as leader of the party.

2016–2019: Opposing Brexit
On 26 October 2016, Naomi Long officially became the new leader of the Alliance Party. In the snap 2017 Assembly election, Alliance increased its vote share to 9.1% and retained all eight of their MLA seats in a reduced Assembly. For the 2017 general election, the party advocated a confirmatory referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement and remaining in the European Single Market. In April 2018, the party joined the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party as an associate member.

Alliance increased its vote share by 5 percentage points in the 2019 local elections and broke out of its traditional Greater Belfast heartlands by taking seats on Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council and Derry City & Strabane District Council where the party had not previously been represented. During the election campaign, the party had urged a break from "orange and green politics" and was vocal in its opposition to Brexit using the slogan "Demand Better".

In the 2019 European election, Naomi Long became the Alliance Party's first ever MEP, receiving the second of three seats allocated to Northern Ireland and securing the best ever result for Alliance with 18.5% of first-preference votes.

The party greatly increased its vote share at the 2019 general election, from 7.9% to 16.8% of Northern Ireland, over-taking the SDLP and UUP to come third overall. The party re-gained a seat in the House of Commons (North Down, previously held by the retiring independent Sylvia Hermon), and was second in another four constituencies.

2020–present: COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent elections
Long became Stormont's justice minister in January 2020, holding the position throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2022, Long told the Alliance Party conference in Belfast that the DUP and Sinn Féin were "addicted to crisis and conflict", and hoped that her party could bring an end to the "binary system" at Stormont.

The Alliance Party fought the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election on a platform of reforming the Stormont institutions, health transformation, integrated education, a Green New Deal and tackling paramilitarism. Alliance would go on to win the third highest number of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, 4.5% more of the vote than they did in the 2017 election and also gaining nine seats. In all, the 2022 election saw the party win 17 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, more than double the number of seats than what they previously had after the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election.

The 2023 Northern Ireland local elections were, in Long's own words, "a mixed bag", but the party still gained 14 seats overall, increasing its councillor total to 67.

Ideology and policies
Over the past 40 years (and particularly since the mid-1990s), Alliance's political philosophy has veered away from non-sectarian unionism towards a more liberal, neutral position on the question of either a united Ireland or continued union with Great Britain. Alliance supports the Good Friday Agreement as a basis that can be used to manage the conflict whilst working to ultimately create a non-sectarian political system for Northern Ireland. It believes that the consociational power-sharing structure established by the agreement may not be capable of providing long-term stability, citing various reservations such as the entrenchment of pre-existing divisions as well as the inability to adapt to demographic changes. Its 2022 manifesto stated "Alliance supports the Good Friday Agreement, and endorses its underlying principles, its structures, and its interlocking relationships. However, we have always supported reform of the structures of government and, in light of recent developments, the case for reform is stronger than ever."

The Alliance Party was founded by moderate Unionists in the New Ulster Movement in April 1970 in response to the emergence of the Troubles. As Alliance viewed the situation, the major problem of Northern Ireland was the division between Protestants and Catholics. It contended that the turmoil had its origins in that division and not in the partition of Ireland. The party's founding members resolved to change the "traditional mould" of sectarian politics in Northern Ireland, by launching a party deliberately set out to win support from both sections of the population. The party's founding principles were an attempt to address the "fundamental fears" of Protestants being coerced into a united Ireland, and of Catholics being condemned to second-class citizenship within Northern Ireland.

The distinguishing feature of Alliance is its belief in the legitimacy of a distinctive Northern Irish community, one that has more in common than what divides it, with most inhabitants speaking a common language, sharing some form of Christianity, and not separated by distinguishable racial or physical characteristics. Alliance does not view unionism and nationalism as distinct communities, but as "political positions". Furthermore, Alliance sees identity as an individual matter, one that is fluid and open to change over time. In a 2014 document, the Alliance stated:

"We acknowledge that people identify with and belong to religious, ethnic, cultural and regional communities. These however are not permanent or stable but are open and fluid. People...can belong to many groups, have a complex identity, and have loyalties to different structures and levels of government."

Because of this stance, Alliance is at times referred to as representing a "third tradition" or "third force" within Northern Irish politics that is outside of Nationalism and Unionism.

As Alliance have moved to an ideologically liberal perspective, and Northern Ireland society has become more diverse, support for diversity has become a key Alliance platform, with Anna Lo MLA elected as the first ethnically East Asian parliamentarian in Northern Ireland and the party promoting a number of openly gay spokespeople. In July 2005, Seamus Close, then an MLA and Lisburn councillor for the party and its former deputy leader, proposed that the Lisburn Council deny gay couples access to the council's designated wedding facility if they were seeking a civil partnership under the Civil Partnership Act 2004. The council adopted his recommendation, although it was later reversed on legal advice. His position ran against Alliance policy, which had been strongly supportive of the introduction of civil partnership laws, and he was publicly criticised by other senior party members. The then party chair and future MLA, Lisburn councillor Trevor Lunn, who had also opposed the use of the wedding facility for civil partnerships, resigned as chair later that year, stating that "I always thought the Alliance Party was a broad enough church that we could support some difference of opinion. But it appears that in terms of equality issues, that we just can't." The party's liberal ideology has also pushed the party towards a general favourable position on abortion, immigration and LGBT rights. The party also supports an integrated education system where Catholics and Protestants are educated together, improving healthcare in Northern Ireland, and legislating a Green New Deal.

Electoral performance and the regionalisation of Alliance's vote
One trend over time with Alliance's vote is that in contrast to 1973, when Alliance support was dispersed across Northern Ireland, Alliance has increasingly polled best in the Greater Belfast hinterland. For example, the 1977 elections, while representing an overall increase for Alliance, masked a sharp decline in vote share in many Western councils. In the 12 councils covering the former counties of Londonderry, Tyrone, Armagh and Fermanagh their vote only rose in Omagh, it remained static in Magherafelt and fell in the other ten councils (these being Fermanagh, Dungannon, Cookstown, Strabane, Londonderry, Limavady, Coleraine, Newry & Mourne, Armagh and Craigavon.) Overall in these 12 councils the number of Alliance councillors fell from 18 in 1973 to ten in 1977. In contrast, in the rest of the region Alliance increased their number of councillors from 45 to 60.

The party won eight council seats across Belfast in 1985. Although that has now recovered to six (from three in 2001), the six are entirely from South and East Belfast. Both seats in the Falls Road area of West Belfast were lost after the death and resignation of their councillors there in 1987 while their seat in North Belfast was lost in 1993, regained four years later and lost again in 2001. In the neighbouring areas of Dunmurry Cross (Twinbrook/Dunmurry) and Macedon (Rathcoole) Alliance lost their councillors in 1989 and 1994 respectively; on the other hand, the party won three out of seven seats in Victoria in 2011, the first time since 1977 that the party had won three council seats in the same electoral area.

By 2005, the party had councillors in only half of Northern Ireland's 18 constituencies. However, this rose to 13 in 2011 after gains in Coleraine, Craigavon, Down and elsewhere. Having had around 30 councillors for a decade, the party won 44 seats in 2011. In the 2010 elections, the Alliance gained the Westminster seat of Belfast East, and gained a 22.6% swing there; in 2011 it re-emphasised that result, winning two out of the six MLA seats available.

In 2014, the party gained one seat in the Belfast Council area, this coming in North Belfast when Nuala McAllister ousted Sinn Féin. Outside of the capital the party's vote held up, and with the exception of Patrick Brown winning in Rowallane, there were no outstanding results.

In the 2015 Westminster elections, the party directed their resources at retaining the East Belfast seat Naomi Long had gained from the DUP in 2010. The party lost the seat to the DUP by 2,500 votes, after a Unionist pact, whilst the Alliance vote increased by 6% across the constituency.

The 2019 Northern Ireland local elections saw a substantial increase in the Alliance vote and resulted in 53 councillors being elected, with the only council not having any Alliance representation being in Mid Ulster. The balance of power in the capital of Belfast, is held by the party after an increase to 10 seats and becoming the 3rd party, at Belfast City Hall.

Several Alliance members have held the position of Lord Mayor of Belfast, including Long and (from 2021 to 2022), Kate Nicholl.

Alliance Youth
Alliance Youth is the youth and student movement of the Alliance Party. Alliance members who are under 25 years old automatically become members of Alliance Youth if they choose to share their details at registration. Alliance Youth is also responsible for overseeing Alliance Societies at Northern Ireland universities. Young Liberals Northern Ireland does not organise in any of Northern Ireland's Universities, encouraging members to become active within Alliance Youth societies.

Activity
Alliance Youth actively campaign on issues affecting young people, and aim to shape policy of the main party in these areas. Previous campaigns have focused on racism, child poverty, and human trafficking, as well as specific domestic issues facing young people, such as mental health care, tuition fees, sustainable transport, LGBT rights and homelessness.

Alliance Youth is also particularly active in the recruitment and support of young candidates and elected representatives.

Executive
The current executive is as follows:

title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland