an english question

The last day of yet another year, a year that seems to have passed by even more quickly than the previous year, and it’s time for another connection puzzle. The title of this post is intended to warn American readers that some knowledge of British geography, history and culture will be needed to solve it, but even then it might give you a bigger headache than the alcohol you’ve probably been drinking this evening.

How might contemplating the force of the wind lead you to think about
• an English bay;
• an English palace;
• a northern English town;
• a mediæval English city; and
• a former British prime minister?

If you haven’t seen this kind of puzzle before, you need to turn what are general clues into specific answers. For example, is the mediæval English city Canterbury? York? Oxford? Cambridge? Or somewhere else? The correct overall answer can only be found by comparing lists of answers for the individual clues, but once you have a match between two clues, the rest should fall into place quite easily.

As usual, I will acknowledge all correct answers, but I won’t actually publish an answer for a few weeks, to give other readers a chance to work it out for themselves.

similar puzzles
A Hard Question
What’s the Connection?
Odd One Out