Saturday 23 February 2013

Penistone in the Pennines



Card no 405 – Daughter-who-loves-food
Penistone in the Pennines, Yorkshire.
Country Card Sent From: England
Place Card Sender Lives: Sheffield
Date Received: 18th February 2013
Distance Travelled:  77 miles
Time Taken:  6 days



Penistone is a compound word formed from the Welsh Celtic roots penn, meaning "end" or "head" or "hill" (similar to Penn in the West Midlands) and is meaning "below"; with the suffix ton, meaning "enclosure" or "estate" (a cognate of the Old English root tun, meaning "farm" or "village"). Records of the name as Penstun (1143) and Penstone (n.d.) prove the second element is Old English tūn (instead of Old English stān, meaning "stone", as might be suggested). Thus the name Penistone means "The town below the hill".

Penistone is a small market town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, in South Yorkshire, England, with a population of 10,101 at the 2001 census.  It lies 8 miles (13 km) west of the town of Barnsley and 17 miles (27 km) north-east of Glossop, in the foothills of the Pennines. Historically within the West Riding of Yorkshire, Penistone town centre stands at an elevation of 750 feet (230 m) above sea level. Rising steeply to the highest point in the surrounding area at Hartcliffe Tower at 364, (1194ft) ,metres above sea level, with stunning views over the Woodhead bypass and the Dark Peak.

The surrounding immediate countryside is predominantly rural and lends itself to farming on rich well watered soil on mainly gentle slopes rising to the rugged/bleak moorland , otherwise known as the Dark Peak, just to the west of Penistone town centre. Dry stone walls small hamlets and farms surrounded by fields and livestock are synonymous with the area. Famous for its rugged breed of sheep, the Whitefaced Woodland, Penistone continues to thrive as an independent upland market town.

3 comments:

  1. I can't believe the postal service is so bad it took six days to arrive, unbelievable! I know I posted it the day after it was written so that's one day, but still. Sometimes I despair of Royal Mail.

    I haven't actually worked out exactly where it''s taken from yet, but I do know you can't see our house as it's hidden in a dip, although it's somewhere the other side of the railway roughly in the middle of the card.

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    Replies
    1. You can get one to Helsinki - AND BACK - in that time! You obviously need to post your next card via Finland...
      P.S. How about some cards from your travels if you ever get out of the hotel /áirport. You get to some interesting places.

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    2. Well I can't guarantee being able to buy stamps while I'm away (finding somewhere that sells them might take more time than I have free during office hours) but I'm sure I should be able to pick up some interesting postcards in airports and railway stations that Bryony can then write on.

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