Local Plumbers Barnsley South Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 218,063

The first historical reference occurs in 1086 in the Domesday Book, in which it is called ‘Berneslai’ with a total population of around 200.   The exact origins of the name Barnsley is still subject to debate, but Barnsley Council claims that its origins lie in the Saxon word Berne, for barn or storehouse, and Lay, for field.

The town lay in the parish of Silkstone and developed little until in the 1150s it was given to the monastery of St John, Pontefract.   The monks decided to build a new town where three roads met: the Sheffield to Wakefield, Rotherham to Huddersfield and Cheshire to Doncaster routes.   The Domesday village became known as “Old Barnsley”, and a town grew up on the new site.

The monks erected a chapel-of-ease dedicated to Saint Mary, which survived intact until 1820, and established a market.   In 1249, a Royal Charter was granted to Barnsley permitting it to hold a weekly market on Wednesdays and annual four-day fair at Michaelmas.   By the 1290s, three annual fairs were held.   The town became the main centre for the Staincross wapentake, but in the mid-sixteenth century still had only 600 inhabitants.

Local Plumbers Barnsley South Yorkshire

Local Plumbers Brent

Approximate Population: 263,464

The London Borough of Brent is a London borough in North-West London, UK and forms part of Outer London.

It borders Harrow to the northwest, Barnet to the northeast, Camden to the east and Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster to the south.   Most of the eastern border is formed by the Roman road Watling Street, now the modern A5.   According to the 2001 census, the Borough of Brent has the country’s highest percentage of people born outside of the UK (46.53%).   Brent has a extremely high and formally the highest Indian population.

Brent is a dangerous place in the South, which is Harlesden and Stonebridge (East Stonebridge), but on the other side, Brent is an safe place in the North, West and South-West.   East and South Brent is a gang area.   All the Crimes, Guns, Drugs, Robbery and Gangs in Brent are in Harlesden and Stonebridge.

Local Plumbers Brent Greater London

Local Plumbers

Norwich Norfolk

Approximate Population: 132,200

Norwich was the eighth most prosperous shopping destination in the UK in 2006.  Norwich has an ancient market place, established by the Normans between 1071 and 1074, which is today the largest six-days-a-week open-air market in England.   The market has recently been downsized and undergone redevelopment, and the new market stalls have proved controversial: with 20% less floorspace than the original stalls, higher rental and other charges, and inadequate rainwater handling, they have been unpopular with many stallholders and customers alike.

Indeed, the local Norwich Evening News characterises Norwich Market as an ongoing conflict between the market traders and Norwich City Council, which operates the market.

The Mall Norwich (Castle Mall until 2007), a shopping mall designed by local practice Lambert, Scott & Innes and opened in 1993, presents an ingenious solution to the problem of sensitively accommodating new retail space in a historic city-centre environment - the building is largely concealed underground and built into the side of a hill, with a public park created on its roof in the area south of the Castle.

Local Plumbers Norwich Norfolk

Local Plumbers Salford Greater Manchester

Approximate Population: 72,750

With increased competition from the towns of Bolton and Oldham, Salford’s cotton spinning industries faltered, and so its economy turned increasingly to other textiles and to the finishing trades, including rexine and silk dyeing, and fulling and bleaching, at a string of works in Salford.  For centuries in Salford, textiles and related trades were the main source of employment.

Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels spent time in Salford, studying the plight of the British working class.   In The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Engels described Salford as “really one large working-class quarter …[a] very unhealthy, dirty and dilapidated district which, while other industries were almost always textile related is situated opposite the ‘Old Church’ of Manchester”.

Salford developed several civic institutions; in 1806, Chapel Street became the first street in the world to be lit by gas (supplied by Phillips and Lee’s cotton mill).  In 1850, under the terms of the Museums Act 1845, the municipal borough council established the The Royal Museum & Public Library, said to have been the first unconditional free public library in England, preceding the Public Libraries Act 1850.

The effect on Salford of the Industrial Revolution has been described as “phenomenal”.  The area expanded from a small market town into a major industrial metropolis; factories replaced cottage industries, and the population of rose from 12,000 in 1812 to 70,244 within 30 years.   By the end of the 19th century it had increased to 220,000.  Large-scale building of low quality Victorian terraced housing did not stop overcrowding, which itself lead to chronic social deprivation.  The density of housing was as high as 80 homes per acre.

Local Plumbers Salford Greater Manchester

Local Plumbers

Dundee Scotland

Approximate Population: 141,930

Natives of Dundee are called Dundonians and are often recognisable by their distinctive dialect of Scots as well as their accent, which most noticeably substitutes the monophthong /e/ in place of the diphthong /ai/.   A significant proportion of the population are on a lower than average income or receive social security benefits.   More than half of the city’s council wards are among Scotland’s most deprived and fewer than half of the homes in Dundee are owner-occupied, a slight majority being owned by housing associations and the council, although it does rank higher than Glasgow.

Dundee’s population increased substantially with the urbanisation of the Industrial Revolution as did other British cities.   The most significant influx occurred in the mid-1800s with the arrival of Irish workers fleeing from the Potato Famine and attracted by industrialisation.   Today Dundee has 5,000 Northern Irish born residents in its boundary mostly due to universities and there is a large Northern Irish club which is based at Dundee Union.  The city also attracted immigrants from Italy, fleeing poverty and famine, and Poland, seeking refuge from the anti-Jewish pogroms in the 19th century, and later, World War II in the 20th.

Today, Dundee has a sizeable ethnic minority population, and has the third highest Asian population (~3,500) in Scotland after Glasgow and Edinburgh.  Dundee has attracted large numbers of Eastern Europeans and is predicted to expand further due to Bulgarian immigrants.  Abertay University and Dundee University draw a large number of students from abroad (mostly Irish and EU but with an increasing number from countries in the Far East), and students account for 14.2% of the population, the highest proportion of the four largest Scottish cities.  Dundee is also one of only four local authorities in Scotland to recycle more than 20% of its waste.

Local Plumbers Dundee Scotland