Cultural clues to locations/origins

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 22704

::Amy happily drags out the Times Atlas, which by now automatically 
falls open to maps 62-63:: (tragically, it does not include the town 
of Snape--must be too small)

Al wrote:

> Hangleton exists.  It is a suburb of Brighton on the Sussex coast, 
> and is apparently fairly bog-standard suburbia, I've not been there 
> ever during my time at uni, us students tend to keep to the cheap 
> Victorian terraces in the city centre :-).  I *wouldn't* place 
Little 
> Hangleton here, but it sounds like the kind of place that might be 
> somewhere along the south coast, Kent or Sussex, maybe.

Huh.  I picture it as distinctly inland--something about the 
claustrophobia of the pub, house, and graveyard, and the fact that it 
has a hill (I know seacoast towns can have hills too, but it just 
isn't what I picture when I think of the coast).  It doesn't look like 
any village I actually know, but now that I set my mind to it, I can 
see it as any number of villages in my state if I just wipe out some 
hillside houses and replace them with one grand house and a cemetery. 
 
> Cokeworth sounds to me like a northern industrial city, a la 
Coketown 
> in Dickens' 'Hard Times.'  A dreary place with run down warehouses 
> and a decaying canal.  I think this is probably what JK was thinking 
> of too.  'Railview Hotel' certainly calls to mind a large 
marshalling 
> yard or something.  Maybe Crewe?

I laughed out loud when I found Crewe on the map.  D'you think they 
really drove that far?  It works for me.  And did they then drive all 
the way to the east coast to the Hut on the Rock?

<speculations on Dean and Lee snipped>

This is great!  I just named Dean, Lee, and Madam Pomfrey at random.  
Feel free to continue with other characters.  (I don't think Madam P 
is French, myself.  Ethnically French, certainly, but not with a 
French accent.  I think it would come through on the page.)  Anyone 
care to take on the Weasleys?  Some people have commented <MOVIE ALERT 
ON> that they have London accents in the movie <MOVIE ALERT OFF>, but 
there's that Devonshire comment--I found it, btw, and it was by Edis. 
 Perhaps Edis will tell us deprived folk who have never been to the 
West Country except via Daphne du Maurier novels what about Ottery St. 
Catchpole shouts "Devon!"

Amy Z

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 "I thought it sounded a bit like Percy 
 singing.  Maybe you've got to attack him 
 while he's in the shower, Harry."
            --HP and the Goblet of Fire
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