VS #589A Moggerhanger
Originally, I didn't consider signs like these to be worthy of inclusion in the VS series, alongside their fancier counterparts. However, now that I know more about them, I realise their historical significance.
As part of the 1951 Festival of Britain celebrations, Bedford County Council – as was – wanted to fund five projects and the village signs was one of them. In addition, the council created a new county coat of arms, they bought Moot Hall and the village green in Elstow, bought and restored Stevington Windmill and planted 1,951 roadside trees across the county.
The signs were offered to villages at a subsidised cost of £10 (roughly £316 in today’s money) and were manufactured in the county council’s own workshop. 138 were initially made, although some are in better repair than others. Some (including this one) have an additional ‘hump’ feature to accommodate ‘best kept village’ badges.
As for Moggerhanger, Moggerhanger is a village in the English countyof Bedfordshire. It is west of Sandy on the road to Bedford. It has a population of 636. In the twentieth century the village name was spelled variously as: Moggerhanger, Mogerhanger, Muggerhanger and Morehanger. Local pronunciation of the name is as Morhanger.
The parish church is dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. It was built in 1860 when the village, with the hamlet of Chalton, became a separate ecclesiastical parish. Before that, they had been hamlets in the parish of Blunham.
Moggerhanger House, a Grade I listed building designed largely by John Soane, is situated in the village.
To find the cache you need to go to the published co-ords and gather the numbers:
A is the number of words on the left hand disc
B is the number of words on the central disc
C is the number of words on the right hand disc
D is the number of letters in the shortest word on the three discs
E is the number of letters in the longest word on the three discs
N52 07.(B+A)(A)(B-A) W000 19.(E/D)(B+A)(C+B)
Check sum of all he digits = 52
Due to proximity issues with the CM, this is a little further from the published coordinates than I would like - I recommend walking as parking at GZ isn't great.
About Village Sign Caches
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This cache belongs to the Village Sign Series, a series of caches based on ornate signs that depict the heritage, history and culture of the villages that put them up (generally on the village green!).
The signs can be made of different materials from fibreglass to wood, from forged steel to stone. They can depict anything from local industry to historical events. The tradition probably started in Norfolk or Suffolk and has now spread across most of the country so we thought we would base a series on them!
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More information, bookmarks and statistics can be found at the Village Signs Website
If anybody would like to expand the Village Sign Series, please do.
I would ask that you request a number for your cache first at www.villagesignseries.co.uk
so we can keep track of the Village Sign numbers and names to avoid duplication.