Billericay Town F.C.

Billericay Town Football Club is an English football club based in Billericay, Essex. The club plays in the Isthmian League Premier Division. Billericay is one of only two clubs to have won three FA Vases.

History

Billericay Town Football Club was formed in 1880.

They competed in the Romford & District League from 1890 until World War I, after which they competed in the Mid-Essex League until 1947, when they entered the Southern Essex Combination League. In 1966 Billericay became founding members of the Essex Olympian League, and then became founder-members of the Essex Senior League five years later.

They won the Essex Senior League three times and the league cup four times during the 1970s. Billericay also won the FA Vase twice during their time in the Essex Senior League.

They were promoted to the Athenian League in 1977, winning the league cup in their first season and the championship in the following two. Due to this success the club was promoted to the Isthmian League. In 1978–79, their last season in the Athenian League, Billericay Town became the first club to win a third FA Vase; it was also notable as Dougie Young scored the first hat-trick at Wembley in a final since Geoff Hurst in 1966.

Billericay

Coordinates: 51°37′41″N 0°25′06″E / 51.628°N 0.4184°E / 51.628; 0.4184

Billericay (ⁱ/bɪləˈrɪkiː/ BIL-ə-RIK-ee) is a town and civil parish in the Basildon borough of Essex, England. It lies within the London Basin, and constitutes a commuter town 28 miles (45 km) east of central London. The town has three secondary schools and a variety of open spaces. It is thought to have been occupied since the Bronze Age.

History

Some of the earliest records of human occupation of Billericay are the burial mounds in Norsey Wood: evidence of occupation in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Evidence of Roman occupation has been found at a number of locations in the town and there may have been a small cavalry fort at Blunts Wall.

The Saxons did not settle in the centre of Billericay. They established themselves two miles south, at Great Burstead. In the late 10th century it was known as 'Burhstede'. Billericay was not mentioned in the Domesday Book, as it lay within Great Burstead. At this time the parish church for Billericay was at Great Burstead.

High Street

High Street (or the High Street, also High Road) is a metonym for the concept (and frequently the street name) of the primary business street of towns or cities, especially in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth of Nations. To distinguish it from "centres" of nearby places it is frequently preceded unofficially by the name of its settlement. In a town it implies the focal point for business, especially shops and street stalls (if any) in town and city centres. As a generic shorthand presupposed upon linear settlements it may be used to denote more precise concepts such as the urban retail sector, town centre sectors of employment, all small shops and services outlets and even wider concepts taking in social concepts. The smallest High Street in Britain is located in a small market town in Devon called Holsworthy. The street itself is no more than 100 yards long and there are only three shops located on Holsworthy's High Street.

High Street is the most common street name in the UK, which according to a 2009 statistical compilation has 5,410 High Streets, 3,811 Station Roads and 2,702 Main Streets.

Town

A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size definition for what constitutes a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world.

Origin and use

The word town shares an origin with the German word Stadt, the Dutch word tuin, and the Old Norse tun. The German word Zaun comes closest to the original meaning of the word: a fence of any material. An early borrowing from Celtic *dunom (cf. Old Irish dun, Welsh din "fortress, fortified place, camp," dinas "city;"

In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed. In England, a town was a small community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, and built a palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more specifically those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them (like the garden of palace Het Loo in Apeldoorn, which was the example for the privy garden of William and Mary at Hampton Court). In Old Norse tun means a (grassy) place between farmhouses, and is still used in a similar meaning in modern Norwegian.

West Ham

Coordinates: 51°32′05″N 0°00′28″E / 51.5347°N 0.00769°E / 51.5347; 0.00769

West Ham is in the London Borough of Newham in London, England. In the west it is a post-industrial neighbourhood abutting the site of the London Olympic Park and in the east it is mostly residential, consisting of Victorian terraced housing interspersed with higher density post-war social housing. The area has been one of the most deprived in the country and as part of the New Deal for Communities programme it forms, with neighbouring Plaistow, a regeneration area. The place lends its name to West Ham United F.C. and West Ham Church School.

History

Toponomy

A settlement in the area named Ham is first recorded as Hamme in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 958 and then in the 1086 Domesday Book as Hame. The earliest recorded use of West Ham, as distinct from East Ham, is in 1186 as Westhamma. It is formed from Old English 'hamm' and means 'a dry area of land between rivers or marshland', referring to the location of the settlement within boundaries formed by the rivers Lea, Thames and Roding and their marshes.