h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Beat those Southern Dorks!

Is this a person or a town or a team name, or what?

Well, it's a place. In Shropshire, ie Waz country.

It's got the second most famous wonky church steeple in Britain. (First place goes to Chesterfield, just down the road from me )

Other than that, I know ner-thing about it. In particular, quite why it's called upon to go and beat Southern Dorks - though that definitely sounds like something all right-minded people would approve of.

Perhaps Her Ladyship will come along and explain...

All three .

Well, Mortimer's a well known name round there, if not Cleobury. A small town known for its twisted church steeple http://www.art-shopper.com/featuredartists/paintings/maggieh/Book/CleoburyL.jpg which has a rugby team that just lost (46-3 ooops, but they were underdogs) at Twickenham (_the_ place to play rugby, so I'm told).

simulposting again. Full story http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/articles/2006/04/09/cleobury_mortimer_v_dorking_feature.shtml. Just small town does good stuff.

Off to google Chesterfield. It's not just the steeple at Cleobury though, all the walls lean too - not that I've been there to check.

I concede the steeple. This is just ridiculous - http://www.chesterfieldparishchurch.org.uk/spire.php.

Due to green wood, black death, and lack of cross bracing. Tsk. One should never under-do cross braces.

A643673
Guide Entry on Chesterfield's spire - for some reason Not for Review. Unfinished, perhaps?

The legends as to how it got twisted are wonderful, that entry misses the one about it being due to the devil sneezing because of the amount of incense in the church at midnight mass.

I sympathise with him. For sneezing that is. Off to see if Cleobury has any interesting explanations...

You have so many interesting things in the UK. Here, if there was a twisted steeple, we'd tear that puppy down and build a straight one.

Sorry your team lost, Waz.

Layers of history . Something I was aware of in Africa (thanks to a rather special teacher) was that there was just as much history there, I just didn't know the stories or the places. Here, it's all very obvious. We have Saxon clearing shaped fields just up the road, a Norman church in the next village and a Roman road to drive along going to work. Oh, and Vikings too. They trekked past here going from the River Dee to a silvermint in Shrewsbury. One of them dropped a couple of silver ingots (v careless) which are now in Whitchurch's tourist info centre.

Which reminds me - there's a Roman hand mirror there too. Which, when I worked for the local council, I had the job of trying to get an insurance value for just after it was found . Good phone calls those were.

Cleobury's steeple is disappointingly lacking in legends or perhaps just not up to speed in www-land.

I did find the building was stabilised by none other than 'local hero' Thomas Telford however. I wonder how. It probably has great iron bolts from one wall to the other. Or perhaps an iron band round the whole building.

I'm willing to bet that whatever he did would be forbidden by English Heritage today.

Chesterfield spire twisted up in surprise when it saw a virgin walk into church to be married- it'll untwist when it sees another one .

Which would put a dent in the Church's finances, I'm sure. I wonder if they can insure against that.