Dispatches from Trowelsworthy Hall

For reasons that are frankly both arbitrary and silly I am known to my archeology pals, and to the Facebook world generally, as "Badger Trowelsworthy".  Yes, yes, technically this is not the name that I use in that pesky real world.  And, yes once again, it is a nominal violation of Facebook rules for which I shall doubtless one day be called to account.

But as I see it, we live in a world where people get to "self identify" as all sorts of implausible things and if you question it you are held to be the lowest form of "hater". So if I choose to view myself as a 106 year old,  moderately disreputable English Lord with a penchant for archeology and a loose connection with Wisconsin, well, who is harmed by the minor alteration of reality?

I enjoy dropping the occasional reference to the ancestral Manse, Trowelsworthy Hall, and to the devious machinations of the distant branches of the Trowelsworthy family in their ongoing efforts to lay greedy hands upon the keys to the place.

Of course in the age of the internet it is difficult to write genuine satire.  Reality is often just as strange.  I should have checked first to see if there was an actual Trowelsworthy family in the UK or its Dominions.  And if there were places extant that would be logical locations for the oft mentioned yet never located Trowelsworthy Hall. Guess I shoulda......

For instance.  Up in Alberta Canada there apparently exists a place called Trowelsworthy Farms.  True, its offerings of chemical and antibiotic free beef, elk, rabbit, rabbit, pork, lamb and goat may not be to everyone's taste.

Also up in Alberta, near a small town called Mirror, we find Trowelsworthy Industries. It seems to be a builder's supply store and by virtue of similar owner's names, must be associated with the Farms.

But if you were looking for a plausible setting for the alternate reality that Badger Trowelsworthy occupies your best bet would actually be in Dartmoor, a wild and lonely area in Devon, UK.  There out on the windswept moors you can walk right up to a rock formation called Great Trowlesworthy Tor.

photo credit Nilfanion

You will of course by now have noted the alternate spelling as Trowlesworthy but in a family of such noble and ancient lineage this will happen from time to time.  An Ordnance map of the area shows another clue..

Alas for those grasping younger Trowelsworthys...I am thinking of you Otteria and Biff...the Trowlesworthy Warren shown above is not the ramshackle Manor House but an area used for keeping rabbits "from medieval times to the 1950s".