Garden Maintenance York North Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 193,300

York is a walled city, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England.   The city is noted for its rich heritage and it has played an important role throughout much of its almost 2,000 year existence.

The city was founded as Eboracum in AD 71 by the Romans and was made the capital of Britannia Inferior.  During the Roman period influential historical figures, such as Constantine the Great, became associated with the city.   The entire Roman Empire was governed from York for two years by Septimius Severus.

After the Angles moved in, the city was renamed Eoferwic, and served as the capital of the Kingdom of Northumbria.  The Vikings captured the city in 866, renaming it Jórvík, the capital of a wider kingdom of the same name covering much of Northern England. Around the year 1000, the city became known as York.

Richard II wished to make York the capital of England, but before he could effect this he was deposed.  After the Wars of the Roses, York housed the Council of the North and was regarded as the capital of the North.   It was only after The Restoration that the political importance of the city began to decline.  The Province of York is one of the two English ecclesiastical provinces, alongside that of Canterbury.

From 1996, the term City of York describes a unitary authority area which includes rural areas beyond the old city boundaries.   The urban area has a population of 137,505, while the entire unitary authority has 193,300 (2007 est.) people.

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Slough Berkshire

Approximate Population: 119,070

1918 saw a large area of agricultural land to the west of Slough developed as an army motor repair depot, used to store and repair huge numbers of motor vehicles coming back from First World War in Flanders.   In April 1920 the Government sold the site and its contents to the Slough Trading Co. Ltd. Repair of ex-army vehicles continued until 1925 when the Slough Trading Company Act was passed allowing the company (renamed Slough Estates Ltd) to establish the world’s first Industrial Estate.  Spectacular growth and employment ensued, with Slough attracting workers from many parts of the UK and abroad.

After the Second World War, several further large housing developments arose to take large numbers of people migrating from war-damaged London.

In the 21st century Slough has seen major redevelopment in the town centre. Old buildings are being replaced with brand new offices and shopping complexes.   Tesco have replaced an existing superstore with a larger Tesco Extra.   The Heart of Slough Project is a highly ambitious, multi-million pound plan for the redevelopment of Slough’s Town Centre. The aim is to create a leading European and national focus, and cultural quarter for creative media, information and communications industries.   It will create a mixed-use complex, multi-functional buildings, visual landmarks and a public space in the Thames Valley.   Recommendations for the £400 million project have been approved, with work possibly starting in 2008 for completion in 2011.   Most recent news, gives an estimate for work to commence in 2009 for completion in 2018.

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Sutton Coldfield West Midlands

Approximate Population: 105,452

At the turn of the 18th century, Sutton Coldfield was introduced to industry. The manufacture of blades, gun barrels, spades and spade handles as well as the grinding of knives, bayonets and axes, further helped the town prosper. Mills were set up along the pools in Sutton Park and on the banks of Ebrook. A cotton spinning machine was tested at Powells Pool Mill (demolished in 1936) by John Wyatt with the help of Lewis Paul.

These mills were not the first in Sutton Coldfield, as there had been windmills at Maney Hill and Langley Hall, but these were the first mills constructed for industrial purposes in the town.   It has been claimed that the first all-steel garden fork was produced in the town.   Pools that had been drained during the 17th century for rich meadow land were recreated in the 18th century, as well as new pools such as Blackroot Pool and Longmoor Pool.

Sutton Coldfield’s economy witnessed a boom in that the residents were now experiencing new luxuries, such as seafood.   Products for sale in the town were 10% more expensive than in the neighbouring villages.   In 1791, following the Priestley Riots in Birmingham, William Hutton, whose home had been attacked by protesters, travelled to Sutton Coldfield to stay for the summer. Rioting was supposedly due to spread to Sutton Coldfield.   It was believed that John Horsfall’s home at Penns, in the south of Sutton, was a target for the protesters and so cavalry arrived to protect it.   No rioting took place. Despite this, Hutton was forced to move to Tamworth when local residents objected to his arrival, fearing his presence would encourage the rioters to come to the town.

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Sutton Coldfield West Midlands

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Southampton Hampshire

Approximate Population: 228,600

There are 120,305 jobs in Southampton, and 3,570 people claiming job seeker’s allowance, approximately 2.4 per cent of the city’s population, as of March 2007.  This compares with an average of 2.5 per cent for England as a whole.

As of June 2006, 74.7 per cent of the city’s population are classed as economically active.

Just over a quarter of the jobs available in the city are in the health and education sector.   A further 19 per cent are property and other business and the third largest sector is wholesale and retail, which accounts for 16.2 percent.  Between 1995 and 2004, the number of jobs in Southampton has increased by 18.5 per cent.

As of January 2007, the average annual salary in the city was £22,267.   This was £1,700 lower than the national average and £3,800 less than the average for the South East.

Southampton has always been a maritime centre, and the docks have long been a major employer in the city.   In particular, it is a port for cruise ships; its heyday was the first half of the 20th century, and in particular the inter-war years, when it handled almost half the passenger traffic of the UK. Today it remains home to luxury cruise ships, as well as being the largest freight port on the Channel coast and fourth largest UK port by tonnage, with several container terminals.

Unlike some other ports, such as Liverpool, London, and Bristol, where industry and docks have largely moved out of the city centres leaving room for redevelopment, Southampton retains much of its inner-city industry. Part of the docks has been redeveloped, however, as the Ocean Village development, a local marina and entertainment complex.   Southampton is home to the headquarters of both the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Marine Accident Investigation Branch of the Department for Transport.

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Glasgow Scotland

Approximate Population: 580,690

Glasgow has long been famed for shipbuilding and trade due to the city being positioned on the River Clyde.   Much of the trade took place in the nearby towns of Greenock and Port Glasgow as the River Clyde is too shallow at Glasgow for larger ships to reach.   The present site of Glasgow has been used since prehistoric times for settlement due to it being the forded point of the River Clyde furthest downstream, which also provided a natural area for salmon fishing.

The origins of Glasgow as an established city derive ultimately from its medieval position as Scotland’s second largest bishopric. Glasgow increased in importance during the 10th and 11th centuries as the site of this bishopric, reorganised by King David I of Scotland and John, Bishop of Glasgow.   There had been an earlier religious site established by Saint Mungo in the 6th century.

The bishopric became one of the largest and wealthiest in the Kingdom of Scotland, bringing wealth and status to the town. Between 1175 and 1178 this position was strengthened even further when Bishop Jocelin obtained for the episcopal settlement the status of burgh from King William I of Scotland, allowing the settlement to expand with the benefits of trading monopolies and other legal guarantees.   Sometime between 1189 and 1195 this status was supplemented by an annual fair, which survives to this day as the Glasgow Fair.

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Garden Maintenance Crawley

West Sussex

Approximate Population: 99,744

Although Crawley itself is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, the nearby settlements of Ifield and Worth are recorded.  The first written record of Crawley dates from 1202, when a licence was issued by King John for a weekly market on Wednesdays.  Crawley grew slowly in importance over the next few centuries, but was boosted in the 18th century by the construction of the turnpike road between London and Brighton.   When this was completed in 1770, travel between the newly fashionable seaside resort and London became safer and quicker, and Crawley (located approximately halfway between the two) prospered as a coaching halt.

By 1839 it offered almost an hourly service to both destinations.  The George, a timber-framed house dating from the 15th century, expanded to become a large coaching inn, taking over adjacent buildings.  Eventually an annexe had to be built in the middle of the wide High Street; this survived until the 1930s.  The original building has become the George Hotel, with conference facilities and 84 bedrooms; it retains many period features including an iron fireback.

Crawley’s oldest church is St John the Baptist’s, between the High Street and the Broadway. It has 13th century origins, but there has been much rebuilding (especially in the 19th century) and the oldest part remaining is the south wall of the nave, which is believed to be 14th century.   The church has a 15th-century tower (rebuilt in 1804) which originally contained four bells cast in 1724.   Two were replaced by Thomas Lester of London in 1742; but in 1880 a new set of eight bells were cast and installed by the Croydon-based firm Gillett, Bland & Company.

The Coventry Canal terminates near the city centre at Coventry Canal Basin and is navigable for 61 km (38 miles) to Fradley Junction in Staffordshire.

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Armagh Northern Ireland

Approximate Population: 14,590

The city is run by Armagh City and District Council, headquartered in Armagh, which covers a larger area than just the city, but not the entire county. Together with part of the district of Newry and Mourne, it forms the Newry & Armagh constituency for elections to the Westminster Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly.   The Member of Parliament is Conor Murphy of Sinn Féin, who is a former Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoner and a member of the Sinn Féin negotiations team.   He won the seat in the United Kingdom general election, 2005, after the retirement of long-serving SDLP MP Seamus Mallon.

The city has a long reputation as an administrative centre and currently located in the city is the headquarters of the Southern Education and Library Board and the Southern Health and Social Services Board.

The secretariat of the North-South Ministerial Council is based in Armagh, and consists jointly of members of the civil services of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  Armagh is the seat of both the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, both of whom hold the position of Primate of All Ireland for their respective denominations.

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Huddersfield West Yorkshire

Approximate Population: 146,234

Huddersfield was incorporated as a municipal borough within the ancient West Riding of Yorkshire in 1868.   The borough comprised the parishes of Almondbury, Dalton, Huddersfield, Lindley-cum-Quarmby and Lockwood. When the West Riding County Council was formed in 1889, Huddersfield became a county borough, exempt from county council control.

Huddersfield expanded in 1937, including parts of the Golcar, Linthwaite, and South Crosland urban districts.  The county borough was abolished in 1974 and its former area was combined with that of other districts to form the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire.

Attempts by the local council to gain support for city status were rejected by the town’s population in an unofficial referendum held by the local newspaper, the Huddersfield Daily Examiner. The council did not apply for that status in either the 2000 or 2002 competitions.  City status is given to districts, so it would have been Kirklees rather than Huddersfield that would have been declared a city.

According to the United Kingdom Census 2001 the population of the Huddersfield urban sub-area of the West Yorkshire Urban Area was 146,234, and the population of the former area of the county borough was 121,620. The wider South Kirklees area had a population of 216,011.

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Huddersfield West Yorkshire

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Brighton East Sussex

Approximate Population: 263,464

The Royal Pavilion is a former royal palace built as a home for the Prince Regent during the early 1800s and is notable for Indian architecture and Oriental interior design. The building and grounds were purchased by the town in 1849 for £53,000.

Brighton Pier (originally and in full “The Brighton Marine Palace and Pier”, and for long known as the Palace Pier) opened in 1899.   It features a funfair, restaurants and arcade halls.   The funfair has been criticised for its prices, with rides costing up to £8. Brightonians refer to it as Palace Pier in protest at the commercialisation.

The West Pier was built in 1866 and has been closed since 1975 awaiting renovation, which faces continual setbacks, in part because the owners of the Palace Pier, the Noble Organisation, have opposed plans.[12] The West Pier is one of only two Grade I listed piers in the United Kingdom, but suffered two fires in 2003.   Plans for a new landmark in its place – the i360, a 183m (600 ft) observation tower designed by London Eye architects Marks Barfield – were announced in June 2006. Plans were approved by the council on 11 October 2006.  As of early 2009, construction had yet to begin.

Created in 1883, Volk’s Electric Railway runs along the inland edge of the beach from Brighton Pier to Black Rock.   It is the world’s oldest operating electric railway.

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Sunderland Tyne and Wear

Approximate Population: 177,739

As the former heavy industries have declined in Sunderland, so electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufactures have replaced them, including the Nissan car plant at Washington.

From 1990, the banks of the Wear experienced a massive physical regeneration with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites.   Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has also built a new campus on the St. Peter’s site.   The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the City Centre has created a further opportunity for new development in the city centre.

Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, for example Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south.

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