Everyone who lives in the area will have seen the signs celebrating the town Kirkby is twinned with.

But while we all know the name Ronchin, very few, if any of us, will actually know anything about the compact commuter town in far north France that is now forever linked to our home.

It’s 25 years since the towns came together in the spirit of friendship, with a special event to mark that historic occasion taking place at Kirkby Library back in June.

Aside from the fact that different languages are obviously spoken, Kirkby and Ronchin actually have a lot more in common that you may realise.

Ronchin Gardens is located just off Kingsway Park.

placeholder image — Ronchin Gardens is located just off Kingsway Park.

While Kirkby lives in the shadow of our far more glamorous Nottingham neighbour, the same can also be said of Ronchin, which lies just four kilometers to the south of Lille and is classed as a suburban part of the European Metropolis of Lille.

Ronchin is a similar size to Kirkby with around 19,787 people calling the traditional Hauts-de-France town home, according to the census of 2023.

It’s a community that has slowly, but rather unspectacularly, grown over the decades with the modern day population now eight times bigger than the 2,415 recorded by a census 150 years ago..

The town, which has a small street off Kingsway Park named in its honour, was mentioned for the first time in 877 under the name Rumcinium, derived from the French word for brambles (ronces).

Locals are pictured enjoyed a recent cultural event in Ronchin.

Ronchin is perhaps best known for its significant role in the development of aviation with the area’s airfield hosting manned ballooning experiments in the 18th century, followed by a military observation balloon school in the 1880s.

In 1907, local textile industrialist Fernand Scrive began launching gliders from the site. Powered aircraft hangars quickly followed, turning the Lille-Ronchin airfield into one of France's premier aviation centres.

But, away from the basic facts, the older generations of Ronchinois and Kirkby folk share the common bond of having gone through tough times with both towns suffering badly from the devastating loss of the coal-mining industry.

Like Kirkby, Ronchin has also come out the other side thanks to major investment and the hard-work of the community, which all points to better times ahead.

Part of the exhibition which took place at Kirkby Library to make 25 years of Kirkby and Ronchin being twinned.

Ronchin is now made up of three distinct areas, the Grand Ronchin historical centre, Petit Ronchin, and the modern garden-city area, which was built in the 1950s to overcome the shortage of housing following The Second World War.

Nowadays the Countess of Ségur Park remains a popular venue in Ronchin with cultural events such as concerts, festivals and sports days a regular feature of life in the town.

And with Lille, Paris and the Belgian border all within easy reach of Ronchin, it’s a place that any Kirkby resident could certainly do a lot worse than pay it a visit.