A-Huntingdonshire we will go

Some will be familiar to the adventurous.

Burnhope Seat, old County Durham’s loftiest, rises to 2,451ft close to the Cumbria border between Teesdale and Weardale.

Mickle Fell is 2,585ft, the highest point in “old” Yorkshire but administratively – lest anyone seek planning permission for a multi-storey car park there – now in County Durham, too.

Elsewhere, of course, tower peaks like Whernside and Scafell, while Cornwall’s highest is called Brown Willy. This may not be entirely relevant.

Then there’s Huntingdonshire’s highest, which ascends to all of 263ft – on the level, or at least pretty near – and may be the reason that folk believed the earth was flat. It should not be confused with Lincolnshire’s apex, which is a cabbage patch.

Rather wonderfully, Huntingdonshire’s is called Boring Field.

Though we have wholly been unable to discover why – or find a photograph, though the stone marking the spot where Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire meet is nearby (see below) – here are ten other stupendously mind-numbing facts about the former county of Huntingdonshire:

■ The life-affirming John Major was MP for Huntingdon.

■ The former Huntingdonshire not only has the lowest highest place of any English county but, several feet below sea level at Holme Fen near Ramsey, the lowest lowest place, too.

■ Bandy, a game similar to ice hockey and now recognised by the IOC, was invented in Bury Fen, Huntingdonshire, whose team was undefeated for 100 years. Sweden now has 600 bandy teams.

■ They’re very proud of Oliver Cromwell, Huntingdonshire lad, too.

Huntingdonshire Day is on April 25, Cromwell’s birthday.

■ All that stuff about meeting the man with seven wives is about St Ives in Huntingdonshire, not Cornwall.

■ Smaller places in Huntingdonshire include Catworth, Eaton Socon, Great Gidding, Stow Longa and Molesworth (which may or may not have any connection with Nigel Molesworth, he of St Custard’s.)

■ Between Huntingdon and Godmanchester is Port Holme, Britain’s biggest meadow. It’s flat, too.

■ The “famous” Huntingdon Sturgeon, hauled from the Great Ouse near Port Holme, was much argued over between the men of Huntingdon and Godmanchester.

Pity it turned out to be a donkey’s carcass.

■ In 1965, the county became part of Cambridgeshire. Though there was an outcry, a subsequent Mori poll found that most people would rather stay that way. There’s now Huntingdonshire district instead.

■ John Bellingham, who in 1812 murdered Spencer Perceval – the only British prime minister to have been assassinated – was from St Neots in Huntingdonshire. A plea of insanity proved unsuccessful.

Shildon town mayor Gareth Howe, perchance encountered on Friday evening, is a St Neots lad, too. Sadly, the admirable Coun Howe has no idea how Boring Field came by its edge-of-the-seat name but can reveal that the house in which Oliver Cromwell lived is now a Bupa hospital. “A bit ironic,” says Gareth, “but it’s lovely.” That’s 11. Oh, and Shildon council’s longest serving member is Gary Huntingdon.

Is that a dozen, then?

MICKLE Fell is actually a subpeak of Cross Fell – England’s highest point outside the Lake District – though it’s still claimed by Cumbria.

That even the high-achieving Mr Hinkes may find it hard going is underlined by a piece in last weekend’s Sunday Times by the Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage.

Armitage set off without a penny in his pockets to walk the Pennine Way, living off the proceeds of 19 readings along the route. Cross Fell was simultaneously his high point and his nadir.

“I stumbled around on the fogbound summit for what seemed like hours, elated as the Dalek-like cairns emerged through the mist, terrified as they retreated behind me. I could hardly see my boots. It is a terrible, awful place.”

THE lady of this house, incidentally, swears that under “civil engineers” in Yellow Pages used to be the sub-heading “See boring”. It’s no urban legend, she insists, she looked herself – “and besides, we could have told them that from our experiences at university.”

SMALL talk, last week’s column chewed on jelly babies.

One paragraph lifted from Wikipedia claimed that “screaming jelly babies” was a well-known school science experiment. Might Mr Robert Bacon, we wondered, be able to offer enlightenment?

Robert, a contemporary at Bishop Auckland Grammar School but long in Wolviston, near Billingham, rises happily to the challenge but sensibly declines to join the baby boomers.

Basically, says Robert, it involves heating four potassium chlorate tablets in a test tube to 356C and then inserting the sweetie. “I believe the screaming noises arise from the vigorous reaction and high velocity of the escaping gases.”

Probably they were more cautious at Bishop Grammar, certainly he doesn’t recall the fifth form physics equivalent of Moses and the bulrushes.

“I do remember an experiment at school where we were shown what happened when a small piece of metallic sodium is placed in a bowl of water. The metal floats and buzzes around the surface producing a small flame from the hydrogen released in the reaction.”

Someone came back at lunchtime to see what happened if you placed a large piece of sodium in the bowl.

“After the resulting explosion and fire,” says Robert, “I believe the culprit was expelled.”

PAUL Dobson, coincidentally another Bishop Grammar boy, admits to eating large quantities of jelly babies during Sunderland football matches. “When I was younger, I used to bite them into separate pieces then reassemble them so that I’d have them in the colours of the away team and could bite into them at the appropriate moment, a bit like a sugary Voodoo doll, to put the keeper off his game.” How much younger? “Oh,” says Paul, “months.”

ASHLEY Sutherland wonders if we’ve seen the National Trust “names” website – national trustnames.org.uk/surnames.aspx – on which the postcode distribution of surnames is shown on a map of Britain.

Ashley’s from Sunderland where, he says, there are an awful lot of members of the Tatters clan. The Durham and Wearside phone book lists 13 but only one Steptoe, and that’s in Consett. Nor, surprisingly, are there many Wraggs to go with the Tatters; just three.

Lynn Briggs points out that the Gotobeds are all in Cambridge while the Crappers congregate in Sheffield. Darlington has always had its fair share of Nutters.

The Darlington postcode area, says Ashley, has a greater proportion of Tinklers than anywhere else in the country, the highest density man-for-man in the Trimdons where they include John Tinkler – 42 yesterday – who made more than 200 appearances for Hartlepool United and, we’re assured, plays a mean game of five-a-side to this day.

SHORTLY before the column’s tucked up, Gareth Howe rings to suggest that Boring Field is so called because once it was underwater and holes were drilled to let it drain away. Post-diluvian, or otherwise, other suggestions welcomed.

Finally, here’s a photograph from John Rusby in Bishop Auckland taken as he was putting the bin out at 6.30 one morning. “I heard that these were a bit thin on the ground these days,” he says. Up aloft, they’re everywhere.

More excitement next week.