Bristol to be first cycling city?

[Tom Crispin]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 03:14:44 -0500, Geoff Lane <[email protected]>
wrote:

>WRT what makes a cycling city, I have a feeling from Danny's comment about
>population size that it's the scope of the project. So I'm watching what
>happens in Bristol with interest.

London didn't fit the criteria of being an English city and was
excluded from the bidding process.

 

[JNugent]

Geoff Lane wrote:

> Martin <[email protected]> wrote:

>>> Citys haven't required cathedrals for some time. Both Wolverhampton and
>>> Preston are citys. Blackburn, which does have a cathedral, isn't.

>> The town of Rochester in Kent has a cathedral. ;-)

> But Rochester is a city (http://www.city-of-rochester.org.uk/) and I
> suspect that Blackburn is too from Googling "blackburn city".

> I have access to the on-line Oxford Reference, so I looked up the
> "official" definition of "city". Here's what came back from the Concise
> Oxford English Dictionary:

> "a large town, in particular ( Brit. ) a town created a city by charter and
> typically containing a cathedral. ~ N. Amer. a municipal centre
> incorporated by the state or province."

> The definition of a city used to be "a town that has a cathedral", and so
> was somewhere a Bishop had his seat. I'm not sure when this changed, but
> all that now seems required is a charter.

When Liverpool was granted its city charter (by Queen Victoria in 1880),
it didn't have a cathedral. While it now has two, neither of them
existed in 1880, which means that the requirement for a city to have a
cathedral has not been current for 130 years or more.

 

[Mark McNeill]

Response to JNugent
> The term "City Hall" (which at first glance appears more logical for the
> town halls of England's big cities) has a distinctly un-British sound
> about it.
>
> The only "City Hall" in England of which I am aware is not the seat of
> government of a proper city, but of an urban agglomeration (effectively
> a metropolitan county) which contains two cities but is not one itself.

City Hall in London, of course. I suspect that most City Halls in the
UK are concert venues.


Greater London is a ceremonial county, as is Bristol: perhaps we should
be speaking of Bristol as the first cycling county!


--
Mark, UK
"For business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity."

 

[Geoff Lane]

Tom Crispin <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

>>WRT what makes a cycling city, I have a feeling from Danny's comment
>>about population size that it's the scope of the project. So I'm
>>watching what happens in Bristol with interest.
>
> London didn't fit the criteria of being an English city and was
> excluded from the bidding process.

I suspect the criteria might have included the absence of interference from
the likes of TfL.

 

[Geoff Lane]

JNugent <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> When Liverpool was granted its city charter (by Queen Victoria in 1880),
> it didn't have a cathedral. While it now has two, neither of them
> existed in 1880, which means that the requirement for a city to have a
> cathedral has not been current for 130 years or more.

Liverpool's charter was granted (AFAICT) in recognistion of the appointment
of John Charles Ryle as the first Bishop of Liverpool in that year. He was
installed in Saint Peter’s Church, which became a "Pro-Cathedral" in
consequence. Even though work on the present Anglican Cathedral wasn't
started until 1904, Liverpool did have a cathedral (at least in name) at
the time it became a city and it was the making of a Bishop (and hence the
establishment of a cathedral) that determined the change of status.

 

[Ekul Namsob]

Geoff Lane <[email protected]> wrote:

> Martin <[email protected]> wrote in news:6CW6k.5748$Nn.5740
> @newsfe09.ams2:
>
> >> Citys haven't required cathedrals for some time. Both Wolverhampton and
> >> Preston are citys. Blackburn, which does have a cathedral, isn't.
> >
> > The town of Rochester in Kent has a cathedral. ;-)
>
> But Rochester is a city (http://www.city-of-rochester.org.uk/) and I
> suspect that Blackburn is too from Googling "blackburn city".

From my position here, just a few miles from Blackburn, it most
definitely is not a city. I'm fairly sure that the Borough Council
agree. Some of the town's citizens have become a little jealous, and
perhaps over-zealous, ever since neighbouring Preston became a city.

It's true, by the way, about the holes. Some of them are a foot or more
deep.

Cheers,
Luke


--
Red Rose Ramblings, the diary of an Essex boy in
exile in Lancashire <http://www.shrimper.org.uk>

 

[Martin]

Geoff Lane wrote:
> Martin <[email protected]> wrote in news:6CW6k.5748$Nn.5740
> @newsfe09.ams2:
>
>>> Citys haven't required cathedrals for some time. Both Wolverhampton and
>>> Preston are citys. Blackburn, which does have a cathedral, isn't.
>> The town of Rochester in Kent has a cathedral. ;-)
>
> But Rochester is a city (http://www.city-of-rochester.org.uk/) and I
> suspect that Blackburn is too from Googling "blackburn city".

Rochester is an interesting case because it lost it's city status about
10 years ago when the Medway towns became a unitary authority. AIUI it
will be difficult for Rochester to apply to become a city again.

http://www.medway.gov.uk/orc20030304r-5.pdf?file=10698

 

[Geoff Lane]

Martin <[email protected]> wrote in news:esb7k.18786$zs1.9984
@newsfe28.ams2:

> Rochester is an interesting case because it lost it's city status about
> 10 years ago when the Medway towns became a unitary authority. AIUI it
> will be difficult for Rochester to apply to become a city again.

I wonder if it's the same sort of thing for Blackburn. Some of the
references I found refer to "Blackburn Town and City" which seem to come
back to one or more historical volumes. A couple of other references cite
"Blackburn city" as the centre of administration of the Blackburn with
Darwen unitary authority.

So it seems the rules for what is a city changed "about ten years ago" or
earlier, so probably in the second half of the twentieth century.

(Not that this has much to do with the difference between "cycling towns"
and "cycling cities"!)