Dalkey
Dalkey is a suburb of Dublin, a seaside resort southeast of the city, the town of Dún Laoghaire, in Ireland. It became an active port during the Middle Ages. According to chronicler John Clyn, it was one of the ports through which the plague entered Ireland in the mid-14th century. In modern times, Dalkey has become a seaside suburb. One of Dublin's more affluent suburbs, it has been home to writers and celebrities including Jane Emily Herbert, Maeve Binchy, Hugh Leonard, Van Morrison and Enya; the village and broader area lie within the jurisdiction of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. The town is named after Dalkey Island, just off shore; the name is derived from the Old Norse ey. Dalkey lies between Dún Laoghaire and Killiney. Off the coast are Dalkey Island, Malden Rock, Clare Rock, Lamb Island, further offshore, The Muglins, which have their own lighthouse; the town is on level land, but the district rises to Dalkey Hill, the northern peak of a ridge which continues to Killiney Hill to the southwest.
Along the coast are the natural harbour at Bullock, a couple of small inlets, Sorrento Point just east of the town proper, the northern park of Killiney Bay. Dalkey Quarry is a disused granite quarry, stone from, used during the 19th century to build Dún Laoghaire Harbour, is now a rock climbing location within Killiney Hill Park. During the building of the harbour, the quarry was connected to Dún Laoghaire via a metal tramway known as'The Metals', some parts of which are still visible in some parts of Dalkey. There are several small harbours on the coast of Dalkey. Bulloch Harbour is the biggest. Coliemore Harbour is smaller and in the southern part of Dalkey at Coliemore Road. In the Middle Ages, Coliemore was the main harbour for Dublin City. Bulloch Harbour is still a working harbour with boats that fish for lobster and crab, mackerel in season, it is used by locals and tourists who hire boats for nearby fishing and for getting to Dalkey Island. Dalkey Island is home to a colony of seals, a herd of wild goats lives on the island.
Birdwatch Ireland have established a colony of Roseate Terns on Maiden Rock just north of Dalkey Island. A pod of three bottlenose dolphins frequents the waters around Dalkey Island. There are 5 schools in Dalkey: - Loreto Primary School caters for boys from junior infants through first class, for girls from junior infants through sixth class. - Loreto Abbey Secondary School caters for girls from first year through sixth year. - Harold Boys' National School caters for boys from second class through sixth class. - Saint Patrick's National School caters for boys and girls from junior infants through sixth class. - Castle Park School is an independent school for boys and girls from Montessori to the end of Primary School. Cuala CLG, a Gaelic Athletic Association sports club, Dalkey United, an association football club, are both based at Hyde Park. Early in his soccer career, Paul McGrath played for Dalkey United. In the 1940s, the town produced Peter Farrell, it has set up the Dalkey Dashers. Dalkey Rowing Club is based at Coliemore Harbour and Kayaking is taught at Bulloch.
Dalkey Sea Scouts keep two old sailing boats at Bulloch Harbour. The Vico Bathing Place and Whiterock Beach, accessed off Vico Road, offer. Both have changing shelters. Sandycove Beach and the adjacent'Forty Foot' bathing place are a short distance away, beside the Joyce Tower. Dalkey Sound and the islands beyond are used as scuba diving locations; the Dalkey Atmospheric station at Atmospheric Road was the terminus for the first commercial application of the atmospheric system of train propulsion. The current Dalkey railway station was opened on 10 July 1854; the station is served by the DART electric rail system which affords quick access to and from Dublin City Centre. Clifftop views of Dalkey Island and Killiney Bay are afforded as the train emerges from a short tunnel just south of Dalkey Station. An Aircoach service with a stop at Hyde Road links the area with Dublin Airport. Go-Ahead Ireland and Dublin Bus services 7D, 59 and 111 link the area with the nearby seaside town of Dún Laoghaire and the city centre.
Dalkey is the original hometown of two Irish writers: novelists Maeve Binchy and playwright Hugh Leonard. It is the setting for Flann O'Brien's novel The Dalkey Archive. Several well-known Irish and international music figures — including U2 members Bono and The Edge, Chris de Burgh and Van Morrison — have bought residences in the area. Film director Neil Jordan lives in the town. Pat Kenny, former host of RTÉ's flagship chat show The Late Late Show, is a resident, as is the current host, Ryan Tubridy. Singer Lisa Stansfield is a former resident. George Bernard Shaw has a close association with the area, he lived in Torca Cottage on Dalkey Hill from 1866 to 1874. Victoria Cross recipient Major William Leet was born in Dalkey. Dalkey's main street, Castle Street, has a 10th Century church and two 14th Century Norman castles, one of which, Goat's Castle, houses the local Heritage Centre. There are several historical walks and tours. Dalkey Hill offers views over Dublin city, Dublin Bay, towards the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains.
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Republic of Ireland
Ireland known as the Republic of Ireland, is a country in north-western Europe occupying 26 of 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, located on the eastern part of the island, whose metropolitan area is home to around a third of the country's over 4.8 million inhabitants. The sovereign state shares its only land border with a part of the United Kingdom, it is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south-east, the Irish Sea to the east. It is a parliamentary republic; the legislature, the Oireachtas, consists of a lower house, Dáil Éireann, an upper house, Seanad Éireann, an elected President who serves as the ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the Taoiseach, elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President; the state was created as the Irish Free State in 1922 as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It had the status of Dominion until 1937 when a new constitution was adopted, in which the state was named "Ireland" and became a republic, with an elected non-executive president as head of state.
It was declared a republic in 1949, following the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955, it joined the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union, in 1973. The state had no formal relations with Northern Ireland for most of the twentieth century, but during the 1980s and 1990s the British and Irish governments worked with the Northern Ireland parties towards a resolution to "the Troubles". Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the Irish government and Northern Ireland Executive have co-operated on a number of policy areas under the North-South Ministerial Council created by the Agreement. Ireland ranks among the top twenty-five wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, as the tenth most prosperous country in the world according to The Legatum Prosperity Index 2015. After joining the EEC, Ireland enacted a series of liberal economic policies that resulted in rapid economic growth.
The country achieved considerable prosperity between the years of 1995 and 2007, which became known as the Celtic Tiger period. This was halted by an unprecedented financial crisis that began in 2008, in conjunction with the concurrent global economic crash. However, as the Irish economy was the fastest growing in the EU in 2015, Ireland is again ascending league tables comparing wealth and prosperity internationally. For example, in 2015, Ireland was ranked as the joint sixth most developed country in the world by the United Nations Human Development Index, it performs well in several national performance metrics, including freedom of the press, economic freedom and civil liberties. Ireland is a member of the European Union and is a founding member of the Council of Europe and the OECD; the Irish government has followed a policy of military neutrality through non-alignment since prior to World War II and the country is not a member of NATO, although it is a member of Partnership for Peace. The 1922 state, comprising 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, was "styled and known as the Irish Free State".
The Constitution of Ireland, adopted in 1937, provides that "the name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland". Section 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 states, "It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland." The 1948 Act does not name the state as "Republic of Ireland", because to have done so would have put it in conflict with the Constitution. The government of the United Kingdom used the name "Eire" and, from 1949, "Republic of Ireland", for the state; as well as "Ireland", "Éire" or "the Republic of Ireland", the state is referred to as "the Republic", "Southern Ireland" or "the South". In an Irish republican context it is referred to as "the Free State" or "the 26 Counties". From the Act of Union on 1 January 1801, until 6 December 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island's population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and/or disease and another 1.5 million emigrated to the United States.
This set the pattern of emigration for the century to come, resulting in constant population decline up to the 1960s. From 1874, under Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence; this was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League, that won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts, secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy. These led to "grass-roots" control of national affairs, under the Local Government Act 1898, in the hands of landlord-dominated grand juries of the Protestant Ascendancy. Home Rule seemed certain when the Parliament Act 1911 abolished the veto of the House of Lords, John Redmond secured the Third Home Rule Act in 1914. However, the Unionist movement had been growing since 1886 among Irish Protestants after the introduction of the first home rule bill, fearing discrimination and loss of economic and social privileges if Irish Catholics achieved real political power
Chairman
The chairman is the highest officer of an organized group such as a board, a committee, or a deliberative assembly. The person holding the office is elected or appointed by the members of the group, the chairman presides over meetings of the assembled group and conducts its business in an orderly fashion. In some organizations, the chairman position is called president, in others, where a board appoints a president, the two different terms are used for distinctly different positions. Other terms sometimes used for the office and its holder include chair, chairwoman, presiding officer, moderator and convenor; the chairman of a parliamentary chamber is called the speaker. The term chair is sometimes used in lieu of chairman, in response to criticisms that using chairman is sexist, it is used today, has been used as a substitute for chairman since the middle of the 17th century, with its earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary dated 1658–1659, only four years after the first citation for chairman.
Major dictionaries state that the word derives from a person. A 1994 Canadian study found the Toronto Star newspaper referring to most presiding men as "chairman", to most presiding women as "chairperson" or as "chairwoman"; the Chronicle of Higher Education uses "chairman" for men and "chairperson" for women. An analysis of the British National Corpus found chairman used 1,142 times, chairperson 130 times and chairwoman 68 times; the National Association of Parliamentarians adopted a resolution in 1975 discouraging the use of “chairperson” and rescinded it in 2017. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and United Press International all use "chairwoman" or "chairman" when referring to women, forbid use of "chair" or of "chairperson" except in direct quotations. In World Schools Style debating, male chairs are called "Mr. Chairman" and female chairs are called "Madame Chair"; the FranklinCovey Style Guide for Business and Technical Communication, as well as the American Psychological Association style guide, advocate using "chair" or "chairperson", rather than "chairman".
The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style suggests that the gender-neutral forms are gaining ground. It advocates using "chair" to refer both to women; the Telegraph style guide bans the use of both "Chair" and "Chairperson" on the basis that "Chairman" is correct English. The word chair can refer to the place from which the holder of the office presides, whether on a chair, at a lectern, or elsewhere. During meetings, the person presiding is said to be "in the chair" and is referred to as "the chair". Parliamentary procedure requires that members address the "chair" as "Mr. Chairman" rather than using a name – one of many customs intended to maintain the presiding officer's impartiality and to ensure an objective and impersonal approach. In the United States, the presiding officer of the lower house of a legislative body, such as the House of Representatives, is titled the Speaker, while the upper house, such as the Senate, is chaired by a President. In his 1992 State of the Union address, then-U.
S. President George H. W. Bush used "chairman" for men and "chair" for women. In the British music hall tradition, the Chairman was the master of ceremonies who announced the performances and was responsible for controlling any rowdy elements in the audience; the role was popularised on British TV in the 1960s and 1970s by Leonard Sachs, the Chairman on the variety show The Good Old Days."Chairman" as a quasi-title gained particular resonance when socialist states from 1917 onward shunned more traditional leadership labels and stressed the collective control of soviets by beginning to refer to executive figureheads as "Chairman of the X Committee". Vladimir Lenin, for example functioned as the head of Soviet Russia not as tsar or as president but in roles such as "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR". Note in particular the popular standard method for referring to Mao Zedong: "Chairman Mao". In addition to the administrative or executive duties in organizations, the chairman has the duties of presiding over meetings.
Such duties at meetings include: Calling the meeting to order Determining if a quorum is present Announcing the items on the order of business or agenda as they come up Recognition of members to have the floor Enforcing the rules of the group Putting questions to a vote Adjourning the meetingWhile presiding, the chairman should remain impartial and not interrupt a speaker if the speaker has the floor and is following the rules of the group. In committees or small boards, the chairman votes along with the other members. However, in assemblies or larger boards, the chairman should vote only when it can affect the result. At a meeting, the chairman only has one vote; the powers of the chairman vary across organizations. In some organizations the chairman has the authority to hire staff and make financial decisions, while in others the chairman only makes recommendations to a board of directors, still others the chairman has no executive powers and is a spokesman for the organization; the amount of power given to the chairman depends on the type of organization, its structure, the rules it has created for itself.
If the chairman exceeds the given authority, engages in misconduct, or fails to perform t
Primary education
Primary education called an elementary education is the first stage of formal education, coming after preschool and before secondary education. Primary education takes place in a primary school or elementary school. In some countries, primary education is followed by middle school, an educational stage which exists in some countries, takes place between primary school and high school. Primary Education in Australia consists of grades foundation to grade 6. In the United States, primary education is Grades 1 - 3 and elementary education consists of grades 1-6; the United Nations Millennium Development Goal 2 was to achieve universal primary education by the year 2015, by which time their aim was to ensure that all children everywhere, regardless of race or gender, will be able to complete primary schooling. Due to the fact that the United Nations focused on Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, as they are both home to the vast majority of children out of school, they hypothesized that they might not have been able to reach their goal by 2015.
According to the September 2010 fact sheet, this was because there were still about 69 million school-age children who were not in school with half of the demographic in sub-Saharan Africa and more than a quarter in Southern Asia. In order to achieve the goal by 2015, the United Nations estimated that all children at the official entry age for primary school would have had to have been attending classes by 2009; this would depend upon the duration of the primary level, as well as how well the schools retain students until the end of the cycle. Not only was it important for children to be enrolled in education, but countries will have needed to ensure that there are a sufficient number of teachers and classrooms to meet the demand of pupils; as of 2010, the number of new teachers needed in sub-Saharan Africa alone, equaled the current teaching force in the region. However, the gender gap for children not in education had been narrowed. Between 1999 and 2008, the number of girls not in education worldwide had decreased from 57 percent to 53 percent, however it should be noted that in some regions, the percentage had increased.
According to the United Nations, there are many things in the regions that have been accomplished. Although enrollment in the sub-Saharan area of Africa continues to be the lowest region worldwide, by 2010 "it still increased by 18 percentage points—from 58 percent to 76 percent—between 1999 and 2008." There was progress in both Southern Asia and North Africa, where both areas saw an increase in enrollment, For example, In Southern Asia, this had increased by 11 percent and in North Africa by 8 percent- over the last decade. Major advances had been made in the poorest of countries like the abolition of primary school fees in Burundi where there was an increase in primary-school enrollment which reached 99 percent as of 2008. Tanzania experienced a similar outcome; the country doubled its enrollment ratio over the same period. Moreover, other regions in Latin America such as Guatemala and Nicaragua, Zambia in Southern Africa "broke through the 90 percent towards greater access to primary education."
1st grade: 6 to 7 years old 2nd grade: 7 to 8 years old 3rd grade: 8 to 9 years old 4th grade: 9 to 10 years old 5th grade: 10 to 11 years old 6th grade: 11 to 12 years old 7th grade: 12 to 13 years old 8th grade: 13 to 14 years old 9th grade: 14 to 15 years old crèche École maternelle toute petite section Cycle I petite section moyenne section grande section Cycle II grande section École primaire CP CE1 Cycle III CE2 CM1 CM2 SecondaryCollège Brevet diploma Lycée Baccalauréat diploma In Somalia, pupils start primary school when they are 7 and finish it at the age of 11 starting from form 1 to form 4. Pupils must firstly have attended casual school known as dugsi and learnt the Muslim holy book Qur'an, the meaning of the Arabic language. Pupils who had not done this are not permitted to start primary school as they will be examined before starting. Pupils' age may sometimes vary seeing that some pupils achieve higher than their predicted grade and may skip the year while some require to repeat the year if they had not achieved the grade required from them.
After finishing primary, students move to intermediate school. In Tunisia pre-school education is optional and provided in three settings: Kindergartens:socio-educational institutions that come under the supervision of Ministry of culture. Kouttabs:religious institutions cater for children between 3 and 5 years of age, their task is to initiate them into learning the Quran as well as reading and arithmetic. They are under the supervision of the Ministry of Religious Affairs Preparatory year: It is an integral part of basic education but it is not compulsory, it is supervised by the Ministry of Education and is provided in public and quasi-public primary schools 9 years of basic education are compulsory. Kindergarten: 5–6 years 1st grade: 6–7 years 2nd grade: 7–8 years 3rd grade: 8–9 years 4th grade: 9–10 years 5th grade: 10–11 years 6th grade: 11–12 years 7th grade: 12–13 years 8th grade: 13–14 years 9th grade: 14–15 years In Hong Kong, students attend primary schools for the first six years of compuls
Chief executive officer
The chief executive officer or just chief executive, is the most senior corporate, executive, or administrative officer in charge of managing an organization – an independent legal entity such as a company or nonprofit institution. CEOs lead a range of organizations, including public and private corporations, non-profit organizations and some government organizations; the CEO of a corporation or company reports to the board of directors and is charged with maximizing the value of the entity, which may include maximizing the share price, market share, revenues or another element. In the non-profit and government sector, CEOs aim at achieving outcomes related to the organization's mission, such as reducing poverty, increasing literacy, etc. In the early 21st century, top executives had technical degrees in science, engineering or law; the responsibility of an organization's CEO are set by the organization's board of directors or other authority, depending on the organization's legal structure.
They can be far-reaching or quite limited and are enshrined in a formal delegation of authority. Responsibilities include being a decision maker on strategy and other key policy issues, leader and executor; the communicator role can involve speaking to the press and the rest of the outside world, as well as to the organization's management and employees. As a leader of the company, the CEO or MD advises the board of directors, motivates employees, drives change within the organization; as a manager, the CEO/MD presides over the organization's day-to-day operations. The term refers to the person who makes all the key decisions regarding the company, which includes all sectors and fields of the business, including operations, business development, human resources, etc; the CEO of a company is not the owner of the company. In some countries, there is a dual board system with two separate boards, one executive board for the day-to-day business and one supervisory board for control purposes. In these countries, the CEO presides over the executive board and the chairman presides over the supervisory board, these two roles will always be held by different people.
This ensures a distinction between management by the executive board and governance by the supervisory board. This allows for clear lines of authority; the aim is to prevent a conflict of interest and too much power being concentrated in the hands of one person. In the United States, the board of directors is equivalent to the supervisory board, while the executive board may be known as the executive committee. In the United States, in business, the executive officers are the top officers of a corporation, the chief executive officer being the best-known type; the definition varies. In the case of a sole proprietorship, an executive officer is the sole proprietor. In the case of a partnership, an executive officer is a managing partner, senior partner, or administrative partner. In the case of a limited liability company, executive officer is any manager, or officer. A CEO has several subordinate executives, each of whom has specific functional responsibilities referred to as senior executives, executive officers or corporate officers.
Subordinate executives are given different titles in different organizations, but one common category of subordinate executive, if the CEO is the president, is the vice-president. An organization may have more than one vice-president, each tasked with a different area of responsibility; some organizations have subordinate executive officers who have the word chief in their job title, such as chief operating officer, chief financial officer and chief technology officer. The public relations-focused position of chief reputation officer is sometimes included as one such subordinate executive officer, but, as suggested by Anthony Johndrow, CEO of Reputation Economy Advisors, it can be seen as "simply another way to add emphasis to the role of a modern-day CEO – where they are both the external face of, the driving force behind, an organisation culture". In the US, the term chief executive officer is used in business, whereas the term executive director is used in the not-for-profit sector; these terms are mutually exclusive and refer to distinct legal duties and responsibilities.
Implicit in the use of these titles, is that the public not be misled and the general standard regarding their use be applied. In the UK, chief executive and chief executive officer are used in both business and the charitable sector; as of 2013, the use of the term director for senior charity staff is deprecated to avoid confusion with the legal duties and responsibilities associated with being a charity director or trustee, which are non-executive roles. In the United Kingdom, the term director is used instead of chief officer". Business publicists since the days of Edward Bernays and his client John D. Rockefeller and more the corporate publicists for Henry Ford, promoted the concept of the "celebrity CEO". Business journalists have adopted this approach, which assumes that the corporate achievements in the arena of manufacturing, wer
Secularist of the Year
Secularist of the Year is an award presented annually by the UK's National Secular Society to the individual or organisation considered to have made the greatest contribution to secularism in the previous year. The prize consists of a trophy, the "Golden Ammonite", a cheque for £5000, it was first awarded in 2005 and is sponsored by humanist and secularist campaigner Dr. Michael Irwin; the award ceremony takes place in London in March
Bristol
Bristol is a city and county in South West England with a population of 459,300. The wider district has the 10th-largest population in England; the urban area population of 724,000 is the 8th-largest in the UK. The city borders North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, with the cities of Bath and Gloucester to the south-east and north-east, respectively. South Wales lies across the Severn estuary. Iron Age hill forts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the rivers Frome and Avon, around the beginning of the 11th century the settlement was known as Brycgstow. Bristol received a royal charter in 1155 and was divided between Gloucestershire and Somerset until 1373, when it became a county of itself. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities after London in tax receipts. Bristol was surpassed by the rapid rise of Birmingham and Liverpool in the Industrial Revolution. Bristol was a starting place for early voyages of exploration to the New World.
On a ship out of Bristol in 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, became the first European since the Vikings to land on mainland North America. In 1499 William Weston, a Bristol merchant, was the first Englishman to lead an exploration to North America. At the height of the Bristol slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, more than 2,000 slave ships carried an estimated 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas; the Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock. Bristol's modern economy is built on the creative media and aerospace industries, the city-centre docks have been redeveloped as centres of heritage and culture; the city has the largest circulating community currency in the UK—the Bristol pound, pegged to the Pound sterling. The city has two universities, the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, a variety of artistic and sporting organisations and venues including the Royal West of England Academy, the Arnolfini, Spike Island, Ashton Gate and the Memorial Stadium.
It is connected to London and other major UK cities by road and rail, to the world by sea and air: road, by the M5 and M4. One of the UK's most popular tourist destinations, Bristol was selected in 2009 as one of the world's top ten cities by international travel publishers Dorling Kindersley in their Eyewitness series of travel guides; the Sunday Times named it as the best city in Britain in which to live in 2014 and 2017, Bristol won the EU's European Green Capital Award in 2015. The most ancient recorded name for Bristol is the archaic Welsh Caer Odor, consistent with modern understanding that early Bristol developed between the River Frome and Avon Gorge, it is most stated that the Saxon name Bricstow was a simple calque of the existing Celtic name, with Bric a literal translation of Odor, the common Saxon suffix Stow replacing Caer. Alternative etymologies are supported by numerous orthographic variations in medieval documents, with Samuel Seyer enumerating 47 alternative forms; the Old English form Brycgstow is used to derive the meaning place at the bridge.
Utilizing another form, Rev. Dr. Shaw derived the name from the Celtic words bras, or braos and tuile; the poet Thomas Chatterton popularised a derivation from Brictricstow linking the town to Brictric, a leading landholder in the area. It appears that the form Bricstow prevailed until 1204, the Bristolian'L' is what changed the name to Bristol. Archaeological finds, including flint tools believed to be between 300,000 and 126,000 years old made with the Levallois technique, indicate the presence of Neanderthals in the Shirehampton and St Annes areas of Bristol during the Middle Palaeolithic. Iron Age hill forts near the city are at Leigh Woods and Clifton Down, on the side of the Avon Gorge, on Kings Weston Hill near Henbury. A Roman settlement, existed at what is now Sea Mills. Isolated Roman villas and small forts and settlements were scattered throughout the area. Bristol was founded by 1000. By 1067 Brycgstow was a well-fortified burh, that year the townsmen beat off a raiding party from Ireland led by three of Harold Godwinson's sons.
Under Norman rule, the town had one of the strongest castles in southern England. Bristol was the place of exile for Diarmait Mac Murchada, the Irish king of Leinster, after being overthrown; the Bristol merchants subsequently played a prominent role in funding Richard Strongbow de Clare and the Norman invasion of Ireland. The port developed in the 11th century around the confluence of the Rivers Frome and Avon, adjacent to Bristol Bridge just outside the town walls. By the 12th century Bristol was an important port, handling much of England's trade with Ireland, including slaves. There was an important Jewish community in Bristol from the late 12th century through to the late 13th century when all Jews were expelled from England; the stone bridge built in 1247 was replaced by the current bridge during the 1760s. The town incorporated neighbouring suburbs and became a county in 1373, the first town in England to be given this status. During this period, Bristol became manufacturing centre. By the 14th centur
