McKinley: kennet

last night i was looking at a map of Thomas Hardy's "Wessex"(a land with lots of imaginary place names that correspond to actual places in england) and came across a place called "Kennetbridge" - "kennet" is the same spelling as that for aerin's fire-ointment, right?(i left my copy of _hero_ at home so i can't check it myself...) Robin herself is of course a big fan of Hardy(_Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ being one of her favorite books) so maybe she had Kennetbridge consciously or subconsciously in mind when the name/idea of "kennet" came to her. does anyone know how Kennetbridge figures in Hardy's stories?(of course it's not probably not as prominent as, say, "Castorbridge," but it must be in there somewhere...). also, the actual place in england that corresponds to Kennetbridge is "Newbury" - does Newbury have any particular historical significance? sorry if all this is digging a little too deep, but until robin comes out with more books it's all i have to think about!
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Received on Fri Mar 26 14:23:57 1999