National Heritage List for England
The National Heritage List for England is England’s official list of buildings, monuments and gardens, wrecks and World Heritage Sites. It is maintained by Historic England and brings together these different designations as a single resource though they vary in the type of legal protection afforded to each. Conservation areas do not appear on the NHLE since they are designated by the relevant local planning authority; the passage of the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882 established the first part of what the list is today, it established a list of 50 prehistoric monuments which were protected by the state. Further amendments to this act increased the levels of protection and added more monuments to the list; the Town and Country Planning Acts created the first listed buildings and the process for adding properties to it. As of 2018, more than 600,000 properties are listed individually; each year additional properties are added to the National Register as part of the different constituent registers that are part of the list.
The National Heritage List for England was launched in 2011 as the statutory list of all designated historic places including listed buildings and scheduled monuments. The list is managed by Historic England, is available as an on-line database with 400,000 listed buildings, registered parks and battlefields, protected shipwrecks and scheduled monuments. A unique reference number, the NHLE Code, is used to refer to the related database entry, such as 1285296 – this example is for Douglas House. Template:National Heritage List for England — the template used for generating a formatted citation containing the targeted external link. Historic England.org: National Heritage List for England
South East England
South East England is the most populous of the nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It consists of Berkshire, East Sussex, the Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire and West Sussex; as with the other regions of England, apart from Greater London, the south east has no elected government. It is the third largest region of England, with an area of 19,096 km2, is the most populous with a total population of over eight and a half million; the headquarters of the region's governmental bodies are in Guildford, the region contains seven cities: Brighton and Hove, Chichester, Portsmouth and Winchester, though other major settlements include Reading and Milton Keynes. Its proximity to London and connections to several national motorways have led to South East England becoming an economic hub, with the largest economy in the country outside the capital, it is the location of Gatwick Airport, the UK's second-busiest airport, its coastline along the English Channel provides numerous ferry crossings to mainland Europe.
The region is known for its countryside, which includes the North Downs and the Chiltern Hills as well as two national parks: the New Forest and the South Downs. The River Thames flows through the region and its basin is known as the Thames Valley, it is the location of a number of internationally known places of interest, such as HMS Victory in Portsmouth, Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, Thorpe Park and RHS Wisley in Surrey, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, Windsor Castle in Berkshire, Leeds Castle, the White Cliffs of Dover and Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, Brighton Pier and Hammerwood Park in East Sussex, Wakehurst Place in West Sussex. The region has many universities. South East England is host to various sporting events, including the annual Henley Royal Regatta, Royal Ascot and The Derby, sporting venues include Wentworth Golf Club and Brands Hatch; some of the events of the 2012 Summer Olympics were held in the south east, including the rowing at Eton Dorney and part of the cycling road race in the Surrey Hills.
At Eartham Pit, Boxgrove near Halnaker in West Sussex in December 1993, the oldest human remains in the UK – a tibia bone and a pair of lower incisor teeth – were found. An Acheulean hand axe was found. Bones of a Megalosaurus were found at a slate quarry at Stonesfield in Oxfordshire and named in 1824: it is now at Oxford University Museum of Natural History. In 1822 an Iguanodon was found at Whitemans Green near West Sussex; the Meonhill Vineyard, near Old Winchester Hill in east Hampshire on the South Downs south of West Meon on the A32, was the site of where the Romano-British grew Roman grapes. The Ridgeway runs through Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire and is Britain's oldest road; the post office at Shipton-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire, in the Cotswolds, is the oldest still in use in England, built in 1845. The first British Grand Prix was held in 1926 at Brooklands, the world's first purpose-built motor circuit built in 1907 by Sir Hugh F. Locke-King, the land owner. Much of the Battle of Britain was fought in this region in Kent.
RAF Bomber Command was based at High Wycombe. RAF Medmenham at Danesfield House, west of Marlow in Buckinghamshire, was important for aerial reconnaissance. Operation Corona, based at RAF Kingsdown, was implemented to confuse German night fighters with native German-speakers, coordinated by the RAF Y Service. Bletchley Park in north Buckinghamshire was the principal Allied centre for codebreaking; the Colossus computer, arguably the world's first, began working on Lorentz codes on 5 February 1944, with Colossus 2 working from June 1944. The site was chosen, among other reasons, because it is at the junction of the Varsity Line and the West Coast Main Line; the Harwell computer, now at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley, was built in 1949 and is believed to be the oldest working digital computer in the world. John Wallis of Kent, introduced the symbol for infinity, the standard notation for powers of numbers in 1656. Thomas Bayes was an important statistician from Tunbridge Wells. Sir David N. Payne at the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre invented the erbium-doped fibre amplifier, a type of optical amplifier, in the mid-1980s, which became essential for the internet.
Henry Moseley at Oxford in 1913 discovered his Moseley's law of X-ray spectra of chemical elements that enabled him to be the first to assign the correct atomic number to elements in periodic table. Carbon fibre was invented in 1963 at the RAE in Farnborough by a team led by William Watt; the Apollo LCG space-suit cooling system originated from work done at RAE Farnborough in the early 1960s. Donald Watts Davies, who went to grammar school in Portsmouth, took over from Alan Turing in developing Britain's early computers, invented packet switching in the late 1960s at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington. Packet-switching was taken up by the Americans to form the ARPANET. The
Amelia Dyer
Amelia Elizabeth Dyer was one of the most prolific serial killers in history, murdering infants in her care over a 20-year period in Victorian Britain. Trained as a nurse, widowed in 1869, she turned to baby farming – the practice of adopting unwanted infants in exchange for money – in order to support herself, she cared for the children legitimately, in addition to having two of her own, but whether intentionally or not, a number of them died in her care, leading to a conviction for negligence and six months' hard labour. She began directly murdering children she "adopted", strangling at least some of them, disposing of the bodies in order to avoid attention. Mentally unstable, she was committed to several mental asylums throughout her life, despite suspicions of feigning, survived at least one serious suicide attempt. Dyer's downfall came when the bagged corpse of an infant was discovered in the Thames, with evidence leading to her, she was arrested on 4 April 1896, tried for the murder of infant Doris Marmon, hanged on 10 June 1896.
At the time of her death, a handful of murders was attributed to her, but there is little doubt she was responsible for many more similar deaths—possibly 400 or more. Dubbed the "Ogress of Reading", she inspired a popular ballad, her case led to stricter laws for adoption. Amelia Dyer was born the youngest of five in the small village of Pyle Marsh, just east of Bristol, the daughter of a master shoemaker, Samuel Hobley, Sarah Hobley née Weymouth, she developed a love of literature and poetry. However, her childhood was marred by the mental illness of her mother, caused by typhus. Amelia witnessed her mother's violent fits and was obliged to care for her until she died, raving, in 1848. Researchers commented on the effect this had on Dyer, what it taught her about the symptoms exhibited by those who appear to lose their mind through illness. Dyer had an elder sister, Sarah Ann who died in 1841, aged 6 and a younger sister named Sarah Ann who died in 1845, aged a few months. An elder cousin had an illegitimate daughter at the time, accepted as the daughter of the grandparents, Dyer's aunt and uncle William and Martha Hobley.
After her mother's death Amelia lived with an aunt in Bristol for a while, before serving an apprenticeship with a corset maker. Her father died in 1859, her eldest brother, inherited the family shoe business. In 1861, at the age of 24, Amelia became permanently estranged from at least one of her brothers and moved into lodgings in Trinity Street, Bristol. There she married George Thomas. George was 59 and they both lied about their ages on the marriage certificate to reduce the age gap. George deducted 11 years from his age and Amelia added 6 years to her age—many sources reported this age as fact, causing much confusion. After marrying George Thomas, Dyer trained as a nurse. From contact with a midwife, Ellen Dane, she learned of an easier way to earn a living—using her own home to provide lodgings for young women who had conceived illegitimately and farming off the babies for adoption or allowing them to die of neglect and malnutrition. Unmarried mothers in Victorian Britain struggled to gain an income, since the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act had removed any financial obligation from the fathers of illegitimate children, whilst bringing up their children in a society where single parenthood and illegitimacy were stigmatised.
This led to the practice of baby farming in which individuals acted as adoption or fostering agents, in return for regular payments or a single, up-front fee from the babies’ mothers. Many businesses were set up to care for them until they gave birth; the mothers subsequently left their unwanted babies to be looked after as "nurse children". The predicament of the parents involved was exploited for financial gain: if a baby had well-off parents who were anxious to keep the birth secret, the single fee might be as much as £80. £ 50 might be negotiated. However, it was more common for these expectant young women to be impoverished; such women would be charged about £5. Unscrupulous carers resorted to starving the farmed-out babies, to save money and to hasten death. Noisy or demanding babies could be sedated with available alcohol and/or opiates. Godfrey's Cordial—known colloquially as "Mother's Friend", —was a frequent choice, but there were several other similar preparations. Many children died as a result of such dubious practices: "Opium killed far more infants through starvation than directly through overdose."
Dr. Greenhow, investigating for the Privy Council, noted how children "kept in a state of continued narcotism will be thereby disinclined for food, be but imperfectly nourished." Death from severe malnutrition would result, but the coroner was to record the death as "'debility from birth,' or'lack of breast milk,' or simply'starvation.'" Mothers who chose to reclaim or check on the welfare of their children could encounter difficulties, but some would be too frightened or ashamed to tell the police about any suspected wrongdoing. The authorities had problems tracing any children that were reported missing; this was the world opened up to her by the now-departed Ellen Dane. Dyer had to leave nursing with the birth of Ellen Thomas. In 1869 the elderly George Thomas died and Amelia needed an income. Dyer w
Historic England
Historic England is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture and Sport. It is tasked with protecting the historical environment of England by preserving and listing historic buildings, ancient monuments and advising central and local government; the body was created by the National Heritage Act 1983, operated from April 1984 to April 2015 under the name of English Heritage. In 2015, following the changes to English Heritage's structure that moved the protection of the National Heritage Collection into the voluntary sector in the English Heritage Trust, the body that remained was rebranded as Historic England. Historic England has a similar remit to and complements the work of Natural England which aims to protect the natural environment; the body inherited the Historic England Archive from the old English Heritage, projects linked to the archive such as Britain from Above, which saw the archive work with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland to digitise and put online 96,000 of the oldest Aerofilms images.
The archive holds various nationally important collections and the results of older projects such as the work of the National Buildings Record absorbed by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and the Images of England project which set out to create a accessible online database of the 370,000 listed properties in England at a snapshot in time at the turn of the millennium. Historic England inherits English Heritage's position as the UK government's statutory adviser and a statutory consultee on all aspects of the historic environment and its heritage assets; this includes archaeology on land and under water, historic buildings sites and areas, designated landscapes and the historic elements of the wider landscape. It monitors and reports on the state of England's heritage and publishes the annual Heritage at Risk survey, one of the UK Government's Official statistics, it is tasked to secure the preservation and enhancement of the man-made heritage of England for the benefit of future generations.
Its remit involves: Caring for nationally important archive collections of photographs and other records which document the historic environment of England and date from the eighteenth century onwards. Giving grants national and local organisations for the conservation of historic buildings and landscapes. In 2013/14 over £13 million worth of grants were made to support heritage buildings. Advising central UK government on which English heritage assets are nationally important and should be protected by designation. Administering and maintaining the register of England's listed buildings, scheduled monuments, registered battlefields, World Heritage Sites and protected parks and gardens; this is published as an online resource as'The National Heritage List for England'. Advising local authorities on managing changes to the most important parts of heritage. Providing expertise through advice and guidance to improve the standards and skills of people working in heritage, practical conservation and access to resources.
In 2009–2010 it trained around 200 professionals working in local authorities and the wider sector. Consulting and collaborating with other heritage bodies and national planning organisations e.g. the preparation of Planning Policy statement for the Historic Environment Commissioning and conducting archaeological research, including the publication of'Heritage Counts' and ‘Heritage at Risk’ on behalf of the heritage sector which are the annual research surveys into the state of England's heritage. It is not responsible for approving alterations to listed buildings; the management of listed buildings is the responsibility of local planning authorities and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It owns the National Heritage Collection of nationally important historic sites in public care; however they do not run these sites as this function is instead carried out by the English Heritage Trust under licence until 2023. English Heritage Historic England Archive Cadw Historic Scotland Northern Ireland Environment Agency Manx National Heritage Department for Culture and Sport Conservation in the United Kingdom Heritage at Risk Historic houses in England National Trust Properties in England Heritage Open Days List of Conservation topics List of heritage registers List of museums in England Heritage film Official website The Historic England Archive: Search over 1 million catalogue entries describing photographs and drawings of England's buildings and historic sites, held in the Historic England Archive.
Britain from Above: presents the unique Aerofilms collection of aerial photographs from 1919-1953. Images of England website Heritage Explorer: Education site for teachers Department for Culture Media and Sport
Reading Abbey
Reading Abbey is a large, ruined abbey in the centre of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. It was founded by Henry I in 1121 "for the salvation of my soul, the souls of King William, my father, of King William, my brother, Queen Maud, my wife, all my ancestors and successors"; the traditions of the Abbey today is continued by the neighbouring St James's Church, built using stones of the Abbey ruins. Reading Abbey was the focus of a major £3 million project called'Reading Abbey Revealed' which conserved the ruins and Abbey Gateway and resulted in them being re-opened to the public on 16th June 2018. Alongside the conservation, new interpretation of the Reading Abbey Quarter was installed, including a new gallery at Reading Museum, an extensive activity programme. Abbey Ward of Reading Borough Council takes its name from Reading Abbey, which lies within its boundaries; the abbey was founded by Henry I in 1121. As part of his endowments, he gave the abbey his lands within Reading, along with land at Cholsey and Leominster.
He arranged for further land in Reading given to Battle Abbey by William the Conqueror, to be transferred to Reading Abbey, in return for some of his land at Appledram in Sussex. Following its royal foundation, the abbey was established by a party of monks from Cluny Abbey in Burgundy, together with monks from the Cluniac priory of St Pancras at Lewes in Sussex; the abbey was dedicated to the Virgin St John the Evangelist. The first abbot, in 1123, was Hugh of Amiens who became archbishop of Rouen and was buried in Rouen Cathedral. According to the twelfth century chronicler William of Malmesbury, the abbey was built on a gravel spur "between the rivers Kennet and Thames, on a spot calculated for the reception of all who might have occasion to travel to the more populous cities of England"; the adjacent rivers provided convenient transport, the abbey established wharves on the River Kennet. The Kennet provided power for the abbey water mills, most of which were established on the Holy Brook, a channel of the Kennet of uncertain origin.
When Henry I died in Lyons-la-Forêt, Normandy in 1135 his body was returned to Reading, was buried in the front of the altar of the incomplete abbey. Other royal persons buried in the abbey include parts of Matilda of Scotland, William of Poitiers, Constance of York; because of its royal patronage, the abbey was one of the pilgrimage centres of medieval England, one of its richest and most important religious houses, with possessions as far away as Herefordshire and Scotland. The abbey held over 230 relics including the hand of St James. A shrivelled human hand was found in the ruins during demolition work in 1786 and is now in St Peter's RC Church, Marlow; the song Sumer is icumen in, first written down in the abbey about 1240, is the earliest known six part harmony from Britain. The original document is held in the British Library. Reading Abbey was visited by kings and others, most by Henry III who visited three or four times a year staying several weeks on each visit, it hosted important state events, including the meeting between Henry II and the Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1185, the wedding of John of Gaunt in 1359 and a meeting of Parliament in 1453.
The abbey was destroyed in 1538 during Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries. The last abbot, Hugh Cook Faringdon, was subsequently tried and convicted of high treason and hanged and quartered in front of the Abbey Church. After this, the buildings of the abbey were extensively robbed, with lead and facing stones removed for reuse elsewhere; some twenty years after the dissolution, Reading town council created a new town hall by inserting an upper floor into the former refectory of the hospitium of the abbey. The lower floor of this building continued to be used by Reading School, as it had been since 1486. For the next 200 years, the old monastic building continued to serve as Reading's town hall, but by the 18th century it was suffering from structural weakness. Between 1785 and 1786, the old hall was dismantled and replaced on the same site by the first of several phases of building that were to make up today's Reading Town Hall. Around 1787, Henry Seymour Conway removed a large amount of stone from the wall and used it to build Conway's Bridge near his home at Park Place outside Henley.
St James's Church and School was built on a portion of the site of the abbey between 1837 and 1840. Its founder was James Wheble. Reading Gaol was built in 1844 on the eastern portion of the abbey site, replacing a small county Gaol on the same site. James Wheble sold the rest of his portion of the abbey site to Reading Corporation to create the Forbury Gardens, which were opened in 1861. Henry fitzGerold Warin II fitzGerold Henry fitzGerold The inner rubble cores of the walls of many of the major buildings of the abbey still stand; the only parts of the Abbey Church that still exist are fragments of the piers of the central tower, together with parts of transepts the south transept. In a range to the south of this transept are, in order, the remains of the vestry, the chapter house, the infirmary passage and the ground floor of the dorter or monks dormitory and reredorter or toilet block; the best preserved of these ruins are those of the chapter house, apsidal and has a triple entrance and three great windows above.
To the west of this range, the site of the cloister is laid out as a private garden and to the south is a surviving wall of the refectory. The ruins are Grade I listed and a Scheduled monument The ruins have been repaired and maintained in a piecemeal fashion leading to their deterioration. In April 2008, the cloister arch, chapter house and tre
Her Majesty's Prison Service
Her Majesty's Prison Service is a part of Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service, the part of Her Majesty's Government charged with managing most of the prisons within England and Wales. The CEO of HMPPS Michael Spurr, is the administrator of the prison service; the CEO reports to the Secretary of State for Justice and works with the Prisons Minister, a junior ministerial post within the Ministry of Justice. It has its head office in Clive House in London, its head office was in Cleland House in the City of Westminster, London; the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda's HM Prison Service was a separate organization. In 2004, the Prison Service was responsible for 130 prisons and employed around 44,000 staff; as of 2009 the number of prisons had increased to 131, including 11 owned prisons. The Service's statement of purpose states "Her Majesty's Prison Service serves the public by keeping in custody those committed by the courts. Our duty is to look after them with humanity and help them lead law-abiding and useful lives in custody and after release."
The Ministry of Justice's objective for prisons seeks "Effective execution of the sentences of the courts so as to reduce re-offending and protect the public". Population statistics for the Service are published weekly. Statistics available for 24 June 2016 showed the service housed 85,130 prisoners: 81,274 males and 3,856 females. Early in 2004, it was announced that the Prison Service would be integrated into a new National Offender Management Service in the year; as of 2008, rationalisation of the prison management system is underway with the advent of the Titan Prison concept. Six new reform prisons are to be built with prison governors in charge of budget. Penal charities claimed reforms would fail if prisoners were "crammed into filthy institutions with no staff". In 2017 the National Offender Management Service became Probation Service; the imprisonment rate for England and Wales is the highest in western Europe, at the "midpoint" worldwide. The prison population numbers 83,165 in August 2018.
The Ministry of Justice projects that this will rise to 86,400 by March 2023. Despite a fall in crime rates between 2010 and 2016, the prison population continued to rise, while staff numbers were reduced, with the number of prison officers being reduced from 25,000 in 2010 to about 18,000 in 2015. There has been a sharp rise in the number of prisoners above the age of 60. In 2017, two-thirds of prisons were found to be unsatisfactory in at least one respect. Problems include overcrowding, prisoners committing assaults and self-harm and the smuggling of mobile phones and illegal drugs into prisons. Following a significant rise in prison disorder in 2015 and 2016, in November 2016 Justice Secretary Elizabeth Truss announced a £1.3 billion investment programme in the prison service and the recruitment of 2,500 additional prison officers reversing the cuts made under the previous coalition government. A number of prison riots in late 2016 drew further media attention to the issue. Andrea Albutt of the Prison Governors Association said prison riots caused "grave concern" and further governors faced "unacceptable stress and anxiety".
The PGA maintains there are 40 prisons of concern and 10 of them are concerning. Lack of staff prevents prisoners attending hospital appointments. Shortage of nurses prevents prisoners; this causes self suicide. The Justice Select Committee and agencies such as the National Council of Independent Monitoring Boards, the Prison Governors Association, Prison Officers' Association and Council of Europe have attributed the rise of disorder in prisons to understaffing and budget cuts. Other factors include the increased availability of synthetic drones for smuggling; the PGA suggested that the recruitment of "unsuitable people" as prison officers and poor training were other factors. Albutt suggested that prison sentences of less than a year should be replaced with alternative punishments. Another issue is the age of several prisons. A 2015 announcement from the government agreed that old prisons are more expensive to run and unsuitable in design, such as having "dark corners which too facilitate violence and drug-taking."
Uniformed prison staff were under the supervision of a small number of senior and experienced officers who held one of three Chief Officer ranks. From 2000 onwards, as part of a process to increase accountability within the prison service, all operational officers have been assigned a 3-digit unique identification number, worn on all items of uniform along with the 2-digit LIDS identification code of the specific prison or institution. From 2010 onwards, attempts were made to replace the Principal Officer rank with non-uniformed junior managers, although this process was neither successful nor implemented. Further restructuring in 2013 named'Fair & Sustainable' saw the remaining historic ranks and rank insignia phased out in favour of a new structure, simple stripes on uniform epaulettes to indicate grades. Prison officers wear a white shirt and black
