The City of Aldminster

Aldminster is a cathedral city standing on the River Avon in the county of Edirn in the north-east of Arransia, with a population of about 55,000. It is the seat of the University of Aldminster, which dates back to 1352 and is one of Arransia’s four ancient universities. The University is currently organised in 17 colleges and has an undergraduate population of about 5,000.

The University is an entirely self-governing foundation and is not directly controlled by the government, although it does receive a substantial amount of money from public scholar­ships. It has to abide by a law preventing the buying of degrees, but in practice this has not been invoked for over 300 years. About two-thirds of undergraduates are Arransian, maybe 10% from Brunswick and the remainder from other countries. Funding comes from a mixture of public scholarships, bursaries funded from endowments, commercial sponsorships and direct fees. The dry but chilly climate can sometimes be a shock to the system, but underlines the point that Aldminster is a scene of serious study rather than recreation. Aldminster can be counted amongst the world’s premier universities in terms of the quality of its research and the academic rigour of its courses. It tends to concentrate on humanities, mathematics and pure sciences and does not have an Engineering department or a medical school. Robert Linklater (b 1948), the Professor of Military Strategy, is a well-known and respected comment­ator in the Sabrantian media. Arransians sometimes find it convenient for others to believe they are a bit slow on the uptake, but a few days spent in Aldminster would quickly disabuse you of that notion.

Most of the colleges are now co-educational, but there are still two that are female-only and two that are male-only (one with a “rugger bugger” image and one that is known for refined aestheticism). The older colleges follow a distinctive pattern arranged around a central quandrangle (a few have two), which often has rich architectural decoration, but presenting a rather dour face to the street with few windows. Keeping out the persistent, biting wind is a major factor in this design. In the latter part of the 17th century a set of public university buildings were erected including a theatre, senate house and lecture halls, partly on the former castle site, which represent one of the most impressive collections of Classical architecture in Arransia.

Aldminster has perhaps the world’s most highbrow daily newspaper, the Courant, which is required reading in the university and is noted for publishing long and erudite essays. It has a daily circulation of about 35,000 and also finds an audience amongst academics in other major cities of Arransia. To a limited extent it occupies the position in Arransia that the Guardian does in the UK, but it doesn’t really take a political stance and is noted for not adopting party political positions in editorials. Apart from the business-focused Recorder in Danby, it is the most expensive Arransian daily newspaper, with a current cover price of 90p. It is also one of the very few in broadsheet format. The townsfolk of Aldminster tend to prefer the Northern Echo which indeed has a higher circulation within the city boundaries.

Aldminster is the seat of a bishop within the Province of Pentrich, with a small but impressive and architecturally coherent mediaeval cathedral dedicated to St Cecilia. Edirn is unique amongst Arransian counties in having two ecclesiastical dioceses, with Barcaldine also having a cathedral. The diocese of Aldminster includes much of the inland parts of the county, although the diocese of Barcaldine extends south along the coast as far as Marske.

The city has one of the few substantially complete sets of city walls in Arransia, mostly dating back to the 12th century, which were built as a defence against Skanian sea-raiders rather than Brunswickian invaders. The walls enclose an area of about 1½ square miles, considerably more than nearby Barcaldine, but it is believed that in the Middle Ages much of the area within the walls was used as kitchen gardens rather than being inhabited. Much of the mediaeval castle was demolished in the late 17th century for university improvements.

Aldminster has an extensive 3'6" gauge tramway network which entirely uses single-deck cars, mostly articulated, so they can pass under the city gates. With one exception, the gates were rebuilt in the late 17th century, but still only allow about 14' headroom. Briggswath in Marchwood is the only Arransian 3'6'" gauge tram system to use double-deck cars.

There is a single-carriageway inner ring road running around the outside of the walls, and the entire intramural area is signed as “Access Only” – although it does contain the commercial centre, three multi-storey car parks, a livestock market and a substantial brewery. The city has a dual carriageway bypass to the east taking the main A4 road, completed in the late 1980s. This is entirely at-grade and in recent years has seen a fair amount of new retail and light industrial development. To reach Wrangle to the south or Barcaldine to the north along the A4 still involves using sections of single-carriageway road, and indeed the route to Barcaldine passes through the centre of the dour and run-down town of Middleton where the locals have consistently opposed a bypass.

As the commercial hub of a large rural area, as well as a posperous university centre, Aldminster is a very busy place, but its traffic always seems to flow reasonably well, whereas Barcaldine, the adminstrative seat of Edirn twenty-five miles to the north, is notoriously congested. The city lies on the main eastern seaboard railway line from Danby to Barcaldine via Wrangle. Electrification was completed in 1964 and there is an hourly express to Danby taking about two hours. This line is crossed by the still unelectrified main line between Stainton and Lemingore which has its own station south of the river, although the two are connected by a curve. This line still sees a significant amount of steam working. There is also a link to Marske via Kepwick, branching off the main line north of the city, which is also unelectrified.

The Avon is not navigable at Aldminster, and is subject to sudden spates after heavy rainfall on the Edirn Moors, but the city was reached by the Aldminster Canal in 1801, which runs into the river at Poiseby. The canal has never been enlarged from the original barge canal dimensions of 68'x14', and has not seen any significant commercial traffic since the Great War, but is now popular with leisure boaters, and the terminal basin has been greatly smartened up in recent years.

Aldminster is not really an industrial city, but it does have a number of industries associated with Edirn’s agricultural sector, oatflour mills, plus Hunter’s, the largest brewery in Edirn, noted for their rich, malty ale. Hunter’s Oatmeal Stout enjoys national distribution. In recent years the presence of the university has attracted a number of commercial research labora­tories, primarily in the pharmaceutical and biochemical fields. Aldminster undoubtedly has the highest per capita income in Edirn. Politically, the City Council, like most in Edirn, is dominated by Independents.

There has never been any significant tension between “town” and “gown” as the local residents have always appreciated how much their fortunes owe to the university. Ill-feeling, insofar as there is any, comes more from the split between the city and the rural hinterland. Many people from the surrounding areas will descend on the city for weekend nights out as it has the only cinemas and nightclubs for miles around. While Aldminster does have a substan­tial number of pubs, it lacks the very high concentration of Edirn’s seaport towns and much socialising within the university takes place in college butteries and common rooms.

Not surprisingly, Aldminster does have a substantial tourist trade, but clearly this would be much greater if it was situated near to the Brunswickian border, as Ormsby is, or even closer to Arransia’s major centres of population. A particular source of tourist visits is parents of students spending a weekend in the city. Most of the colleges allow guided tours during the summer recess. The Sinclair Arms in the city centre is a well-known luxury hotel.

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