Nine Places with a Railway ?Connection? in Common - Advent Quiz 6 December

[whole diary]

[eightonedee]

No 1 4062 Malmesbury Abbey

Sorry Tony - not one of the nine I am looking for.

[stuving]

Aha - so no. 2 is 7808 Cookham Manor. The clue alludes to Stanley Spencer, who is probably Cookham's most famous resident, and is known mainly for his religious paintings and work as an officail war artist (in a shipyard) and other wartime pictures.

[TonyN]

1 7802 Bradley Manor

[eightonedee]

Well done Stuving & TonyN - hopefully a pattern is now emerging that will result in the rest being solved........

[stuving]

The obvious set of nine is the preserved (in some manner or another) Manors. However, lining them up with the clues on a one for one basis is not so obvious. But ...

Four have been used for equestrian activities of some kind, Foxcote (Polo), Ditcheat (Paul Nicholls's training stables), Hinton (owned by an owner), and Dinmore which was owned by Martin Dawes (he of Carphone Warehouse) until going on sale last year. But then the current house at Lydham was the stables until 30 years ago.

Odney is very close to - in some respects in - Cookham. But it has a choice other names, Lullebrook or possibly Lillebrook, if they are not other manors altogether. And then the loco was renamed Norton Manor.

So some of the bits will fit in several holes, in pushed a little bit.

[eightonedee]

Stuving (almost) smashes it!

To put anyone else out of their misery, the remaining "non-equestrian" one I intended to refer to was Hinton Manor. There are two country houses of this name in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) territory (one near Faringdon, another near Marlborough) ..and yet another near Waterlooville in Hampshire. I cannot find which of the first two the GWR intended to honour, but as the last was in Southern territory I assume it was not that one.

[stuving]

Stuving (almost) smashes it!

To put anyone else out of their misery, the remaining "non-equestrian" one I intended to refer to was Hinton Manor. There are two country houses of this name in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) territory (one near Faringdon, another near Marlborough) ..and yet another near Waterlooville in Hampshire. I cannot find which of the first two the GWR intended to honour, but as the last was in Southern territory I assume it was not that one.

I was thinking of the Hinton Manor in Hinton Parva, which is near Lambourn and thus near neither Faringdon nor Marlborough. The relevant data I found was:

Hinton Manor, formerly the home of racehorse owner Michael Talbot-Ponsonby and his family ... Michael Talbot Ponsonby was a racehorse owner and a keen huntsman, hunting with both the Warwickshire and the Heythrop until 1995.

Parishes are notoriously numerous, with the same name cropping up many times over in different places. Manors are worse, with several per parish in some parts of the country.