Talk:Northamptonshire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject UK geography, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to places in the UK. If you wish to contribute you can visit the project page where there are resources & guidelines, to do lists and discussions.	United Kingdom Portal
This article has been rated "start" on the Wikipedia Version 1.0 quality scale.
On the project page you can find detailed guides on how to write about counties and settlements, as well as where to find statistics, references and other useful things. Additionally, the following have been identified as specific improvements this article needs: Cite sources using Wikipedia:Footnotes Include a brief synopsis of History of Northamptonshire in the main article Turn lists into prose, especially the list of towns Geography: include geology, ecology, climate, etc Tidy up Places of Interest (lots of white space to the right atm) -- consider moving to List of places in Northamptonshire Include an image or two from the images list Find the county's coat of arms and include a description Build up the external links Create some of the hundreds of red links on List of places in Northamptonshire Populate Category:Natives of Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire was the UK Collaboration of the Fortnight for the fortnight starting on February 13, 2005. For details on improvements made to the article, see Past Collaborations and History

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject England, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles on England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project member page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the importance scale.

Removed Stanford Hall as it's in Leicestershire!--JBellis 17:42, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether this is the right place to mention it (apologies if not), but the article reads "Corby is said to be the largest town in England without a railway station." Corby's population (2002 est.) is 53,741. The town of Gosport on the south coast has a population of 77,092 (2002 est.) and also does not have a railway station. Whilst I cannot confirm that Gosport is the largest such town (although the claim is made locally), Corby is certainly not the largest and this sentence should probably be removed from this article. Hope this is helpful. Regards, S Latham.

Indeed, this is often stated without any actual proof. I've removed this from both Northamptonshire and Corby. Tom- 15:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this was the case in the 1980's and was used as a basis for re-instating a service between Kettering and Corby. The service was little used and eventually withdrawn. I suppose it depends on where you draw the boundaries of the town, and how far away the nearest station must be before the town is defined as "not having a station". It was quoted in our local paper (Kettering Evening Telegraph) last Thursday, but no figures were given.

I've found a few snippets which may be of interest:

• All 3 of Leigh, Gosport and Corby have all been claimed to be the largest in this Parliamentary session (normally by their local MPs who are looking for funding for a transport project) to be the largest. More...
• From the House of Commons, 15 March 2005:"I can answer part of my hon. Friend's query about whether there are people in a worse position by comparing Leigh, with its population of 43,000, with Corby, which has a population of some 50,000 and does not have a railway station." More...
• From the House of Commons, 28 June 2005: Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con) "Is the Secretary of State aware that calls for the reopening of the Kettering to Corby railway line to regular passenger traffic enjoy popular support in north Northamptonshire? However, in the Government's Milton Keynes and south midlands sub-regional spatial strategy, published in March, plans for the reopening of that line were described as a possible future priority, but not a current priority. Given that Corby is the largest town in western Europe without access to a regular rail passenger service, can the Secretary of State advise the House when plans for the reopening of Corby station will be announced?" More...

-=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 18:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)