1.
Garden square
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A garden square is an open space with buildings surrounding a garden, often located in fashionable urban areas. There are many squares in London, England, for example. The large estates in London, e. g. the Bedford Estate in Bloomsbury, originally the gardens were a private amenity for the residents of the houses in the square. Some remain private, while others are now open to the public, there may be levies to raise money for maintenance of the garden in a garden square. Normally the charge is set annually by a garden committee, however they are not only a British phenomenon, as the Place des Vosges in Paris and the Square de Meeûs and Square Orban in Brussels show. Dublin, Ireland contains several Georgian garden squares, including Merrion Square, private gardens in town squares are sometimes opened to the public on a temporary basis. Parks and open spaces in London List of garden squares in London Squares in London Town square
2.
Knightsbridge
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Knightsbridge is a residential and retail district in West London, south of Hyde Park. It is identified in the London Plan as one of two international centres in London, alongside the West End. Knightsbridge was a hamlet located primarily in the parish of St Margaret and it also extended into the parishes of Kensington and Chelsea. It was therefore divided between local authorities from an early time. In the time of Edward I, the manor of Knightsbridge appertained to the abbey of Westminster and it was named after a crossing of the River Westbourne, which is now an underground river. It is recorded that the citizens of London met Matilda of England at the Knights Bridge in 1141, the exhibition was very popular, with over 250,000 visitors during its early months. Japanese artisans illustrated the manners, customs, and art-industries of their country, attired in their national, magnificently decorated and illuminated Buddhist temple. Five o’clock tea in the Japanese tea-house, W. S. Gilbert and his wife attended the exhibition, which is said to have inspired him to write The Mikado. When the Mikado requests of Ko-Ko the address of his son after Ko-Ko tells the Mikado that Nanki-Poo has gone abroad, the original bridge was where one of the old roads to the west that crossed the River Westbourne. The allusion may simply be to a place where cnihtas congregated, bridges, however there is possibly a more specific reference to the important cnihtengild in 11th century London and to the limits of its jurisdiction. Cniht in the pre Norman days did not have the meaning of a minor noble. There are however other claims of the origins,1. According to a topographer named Norden, the bridge was known as ‘Stonebridge’ until a knight called Sir Knyvett was attacked while walking across the bridge late at night. The knight managed to better his attackers and ‘slew the master thief with his own hand’ and this tale of Sir Knyvett’s valour supposedly gave a new name to the bridge. A claim that the bridge may have used by wealthy residents. A claim that the area was used as a place for local youths – where ‘knight’ was a slang term for ‘lad’. Even the original name of the area has come under scrutiny with some claiming it was called ‘Knightsbrigg’ while others believe it was ‘Kynesbrigg’, Knightsbridge is east of Exhibition Road and west of Sloane Street. South of this area, the district fades into Chelsea while Belgravia lies to the east, the district also has banks that cater to wealthy individuals
3.
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
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The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is an inner London borough of Royal borough status, to the west of the centre. As the smallest borough in London and the second smallest district in England, the borough is immediately to the west of the City of Westminster and to the east of London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It contains major museums and universities in Albertopolis, department stores such as Harrods, Peter Jones and Harvey Nichols and it is home to the Notting Hill Carnival, Europes largest. It contains many of the most expensive places in the world. The local authority is Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council, the boroughs motto is Quam Bonum in Unum Habitare, which can be roughly translated as How good to dwell in unity. The borough was created in 1965 from the boroughs of Kensington. Kensingtons Royal Borough status was inherited by the new borough, the new borough was originally to be called just Kensington – the inclusion of Chelsea was locally supported. Due to its high French population it has held the unofficial title of the 21st arrondissement of Paris. In 2005, the borough had more of its covered by domestic buildings than anywhere else in England at 19%. It also had the fifth highest proportion of land covered by buildings at 12%. As of 2010, statistics released by the Office for National Statistics showed that life expectancy at birth for females was 89.8 years in 2008–2010, male life expectancy at birth for the same period was 85.1 years. The figures in 1991–1993 were significantly lower,73.0 years for males and 80.0 for females, the borough has a higher proportion of high earners than any other local government district in the country. It has the highest proportion of workers in the financial sector, in December 2006, Sport England published a survey which showed that the boroughs residents were the fourth most active in England in sports and other fitness activities. 27. 9% of the population participate at least three times a week for 30 minutes, the top quarter earn at least £41 per hour, three and a half times the level of the lowest quarter at £12 per hour or less. Two of its more notable leaders were Nicholas Freeman, from 1977 until 1989. The Council has 42 Conservative,9 Labour and 3 Liberal Democrat councillors, the borough has combined a number of services and departments with its neighbours, Hammersmith & Fulham and Westminster City Council. Chelsea has less Underground access than Kensington, the station within Chelsea being Sloane Square. There are long-term plans for the Chelsea-Hackney line, with a station in the Kings Road near Chelsea Old Town Hall, buses Many London bus routes pass through the borough, most of them along Kings Road, Fulham Road, Kensington High Street and Ladbroke Grove
4.
Central London
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Central London is the innermost part of London, UK. Over time a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of central London for statistics, urban planning and local government. From 2004 to 2008, the London Plan included a sub-region called Central London comprising Camden, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth and it had a 2001 population of 1,525,000. The sub-region was replaced in 2008 with a new structure which amalgamated inner and outer boroughs together and this was altered in 2011 when a new Central London sub region was created, now including the City of London and excluding Wandsworth. However, districts at the edge of this subregion such as Streatham, Dulwich. During the Herbert Commission and the subsequent passage of the London Government Bill, the first two were detailed in the 1959 Memorandum of Evidence of the Greater London Group of the London School of Economics. It had an population of 350,000 and occupied 7,000 acres. The area had an population of 400,000 and occupied 8,000 acres. During the passage of the London Government Bill an amendment was put forward to create a central borough corresponding to the used at the 1961 census. The population was estimated to be 270,000
5.
Harrods
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Harrods is a luxury department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London. It is owned by the state of Qatar, the store occupies a 5-acre site and has 330 departments covering one million square feet of retail space. The Harrods motto is Omnia Omnibus Ubique, which is Latin for all things for all people, several of its departments, including the seasonal Christmas department and the food halls, are well known. In 1824, at the age of 25, Charles Henry Harrod established a business at 228 Borough High Street in Southwark and he ran this business, variously listed as a draper, mercer, and a haberdasher, until 1831 at least. During 1825, the business was listed as Harrod and Wicking, Linen Drapers, Retail and his first grocery business appears to be as ‘Harrod & Co. Grocers’ at 163 Upper Whitecross Street, Clerkenwell, E. C.1. in 1832. In 1834 in Londons East End, he established a grocery in Stepney, at 4, Cable Street. Harrods rapidly expanded, acquired the buildings, and employed one hundred people by 1880. However, the stores booming fortunes were reversed in early December 1883, remarkably, in view of this calamity, Charles Harrod fulfilled all of his commitments to his customers to make Christmas deliveries that year—and made a record profit in the process. A. Milne, and many members of the British Royal Family, a chance meeting in London with businessman, Edgar Cohen, eventually led to Charles Harrod selling his interest in the store for £120,000 via a stock market floatation in 1889. The new company was called Harrod’s Stores Limited, sir Alfred James Newton became chairman and Richard Burbidge managing director. Financier William Mendel was appointed to the board in 1891 and he raised funding for many of the expansion plans. Richard Burbidge was succeed in 1917 by his son Woodman Burbidge, nervous customers were offered brandy at the top to revive them after their ordeal. The department store was purchased by the Fayed brothers in 1985, following denial that it was for sale, Harrods was sold to Qatar Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar in May 2010. A fortnight previously, chairman of Harrods since 1985, Mohamed Al-Fayed, had stated that People approach us from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, but I put two fingers up to them. This is not Marks and Spencer or Sainsburys and it is a special place that gives people pleasure. A spokesman for Mohamed Al-Fayed said in reaching the decision to retire, wished to ensure that the legacy, Harrods was sold for £1.5 billion, half of the sale will be used to pay bank debts of £625 million. Al-Fayed later revealed in an interview that he decided to sell Harrods following the difficulty in getting his dividend approved by the trustee of the Harrods pension fund. Al-Fayed said Im here every day, I cant take my profit because I have to take a permission of those bloody idiots. I say is this right, I run a business and I need to take the trustees permission to take my profit
6.
Hans Sloane
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His name was later used for streets and places such as Hans Place, Hans Crescent and Sloane Square in London, and also to Sir Hans Sloane Square in his birthplace, Killyleagh. Sloane was born on 16 April 1660 at Killyleagh in County Down and he was the seventh son of Alexander Sloane, agent for James Hamilton, second Viscount Claneboye and later first Earl of Clanbrassil. Sloanes family had migrated from Ayrshire in Scotland, but settled in the north of Ireland under James I and his father died when he was six years old. As a youth, Sloane collected objects of natural history and other curiosities and this led him to the study of medicine, which he went to London, where he studied botany, materia medica, surgery and pharmacy. His collecting habits made him useful to John Ray and Robert Boyle, after four years in London he travelled through France, spending some time at Paris and Montpellier, and stayed long enough at the University of Orange-Nassau to take his MD degree there in 1683. He returned to London with a collection of plants and other curiosities, of which the former were sent to Ray. Sloane was elected to the Royal Society in 1685, at the same time attracted the notice of Thomas Sydenham, who gave him valuable introductions to practice. Jamaica was fast emerging as a source of profit to British merchants based on the cultivation of sugar. He became secretary to the Royal Society in 1693, and edited the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for twenty years, Sloane married Elizabeth Langley Rose, the widow of Fulke Rose of Jamaica, and daughter of alderman John Langley. They had three daughters, Mary, Sarah and Elizabeth, and one son, Hans, of the four children only Sarah and Elizabeth survived infancy. Sarah married George Stanley of Paultons and Elizabeth married Charles Cadogan, Sloane encountered cacao while he was in Jamaica, where the locals drank it mixed with water, though he is reported to have found it nauseating. Many recipes for mixing chocolate with spice, eggs, sugar, after returning from Jamaica, Sloane may have devised his own recipe for mixing chocolate with milk, though if so, he was not the first. By the 1750s, a Soho grocer named Nicholas Sanders claimed to be selling Sloanes recipe as a medicinal elixir, by the nineteenth century, the Cadbury Brothers sold tins of drinking chocolate whose trade cards also invoked Sloanes recipe. His practice as a physician among the classes was large, fashionable. He served three successive sovereigns, Queen Anne, George I and George II, in 1716, Sloane was created a baronet, making him the first medical practitioner to receive a hereditary title. In 1719 he became president of the Royal College of Physicians, in 1722, he was appointed physician-general to the army, and in 1727 first physician to George II. In 1727 he succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society and he was a founding governor of Londons Foundling Hospital, the nations first institution to care for abandoned children. Sloanes fame is based on his judicious investments rather than what he contributed to the subject of science or even of his own profession
7.
British Museum
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The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally a museum of art objects and antiquities. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish-born British physician, on 7 June 1753, King George II gave his formal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. They were joined in 1757 by the Old Royal Library, now the Royal manuscripts, together these four foundation collections included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf. The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public, sloanes collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary, the body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The Trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost. With the acquisition of Montagu House the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts. A list of donations to the Museum, dated 31 January 1784, in the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman Sculpture, in 1805. In 1816 these masterpieces of art, were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815, the Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an extension to the Museum. For the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it, and put forward plans for todays quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the Kings Library Gallery began in 1823, the extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. The Museum became a site as Sir Robert Smirkes grand neo-classical building gradually arose
8.
Henry Holland (architect)
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Henry Holland was an architect to the English nobility. He was born in Fulham, London, where his father, also Henry and his younger brother was Richard Holland, who later changed his surname to Bateman-Robson and became an MP. Although Henry would learn a lot from his father about the practicalities of construction, Brown and Holland formed a partnership in 1771 and Henry Holland married Browns daughter Bridget on 11 February 1773 at St Georges, Hanover Square. In 1772 Sir John Soane joined Hollands practice in order to further his education, Holland paid a visit to Paris in 1787 which is thought to have been in connection with his design of the interiors at Carlton House. From this moment on his interior work owed less to the Adam style, Holland was a founder member in 1791 of the Architects Club, which included Thomas Hardwick as a signtory. In the 1790s he translated into English A. M, cointereauxs Traite sur la construction des Manufactures, et des Maisons de Champagne. He had got out of bed shortly before and inquired what the hour was, being told he said is was too early to rise and got into bed again. He immediately fell into a fit, I was sent for, and a minute after I came to his bedside he breathed his last. He was buried at All Saints Church, Fulham, in a simple tomb, Bridget Holland his wife lived for another 17 years and was the main beneficiary of her husbands will. Of his sons, the elder Henry Jr remained a bachelor, the younger son, Colonel Lancelot, married Charlotte Mary Peters and they had fifteen children. Of Hollands five daughters, two married two brothers, Bridget to Daniel Craufurd and Mary Frances Holland to Major-General Robert Craufurd, commander of the Light Division during the Peninsular War, Bridget later remarried to Sir Robert Wilmot of Chaddesden. The remaining daughters, Harriet, Charlotte and Caroline never married, Holland began his practice by designing Claremont House for Robert Clive, with his future father-in-law in 1771 and their partnership lasted until Browns death twelve years later. Claremont is of nine by five bays, of brick with stone dressings. The main feature on the front is the tetrastyle Corinthian pedimented portico. This leads to the hall with red scagliola columns, these are arranged in an oval with the rectangular room. The drawing room has a plaster ceiling and marble fireplace with two caryatids. In 1771 he took a lease from Charles Cadogan, 2nd Baron Cadogan on his Chelsea estate and began the Hans Town development on 89 acres of open field and marsh. There he laid out parts of Knightsbridge and Chelsea, including Sloane Street and Sloane Square and these developments quickly became some of the most fashionable areas in greater London
9.
Earl Cadogan
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Earl Cadogan /kəˈdʌɡən/ is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of Great Britain. The Cadogan family descends from Major William Cadogan, a officer in Oliver Cromwells army. His son Henry Cadogan was a barrister in Dublin and his eldest son William Cadogan was a noted soldier, politician and diplomat. He was a general in the army and fought in the War of the Spanish Succession and also served as Ambassador to the Netherlands and as Master-General of the Ordnance. In 1716, he was raised to the Peerage of Great Britain as Baron Cadogan, of Reading in the County of Berkshire and these titles were also in the Peerage of Great Britain. Lord Cadogan had two daughters but no sons, so on his death in 1726, three titles - the barony of 1716, the viscountcy, and earldom - became extinct. However, he was succeeded in the barony of 1718 according to the remainder by his brother Charles. He was a General of the Horse and also represented Reading and Newport, Isle of Wight, Cadogan married Elizabeth, second daughter and heiress of the prominent physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane. Through this marriage the Sloane estates in central London came into the Cadogan family, and his son, the third Baron, sat as Member of Parliament for Cambridge and served as Master of the Mint. In 1800 the earldom of Cadogan held by his uncle was revived when he was created Viscount Chelsea, in the County of Middlesex and these titles were in the Peerage of Great Britain. His youngest son, the third Earl, was an admiral in the Royal Navy. In 1831, one year before he succeeded in the earldom, he was raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom in his own right as Baron Oakley and he was succeeded by his eldest son, the fourth Earl. He was a Conservative politician and served under Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli as whip and his eldest son, the fifth Earl, was also a noted Conservative politician. He held office under Disraeli and later Lord Salisbury as Under-Secretary of State for War, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Privy Seal and his only son Edward, Viscount Chelsea, died in 1910 at the age of seven. Lord Cadogan was therefore succeeded by his third but eldest surviving son, as of 2014 the titles are held by the latters grandson, the eighth Earl, who succeeded his father in 1997. Several other members of the Cadogan family have gained distinction, lady Sarah Cadogan, daughter of the first Earl of the first creation, married Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, and was the mother of the famous Lennox sisters. Sir George Cadogan, second son of the third Earl, was a general in the army, two further members represented seats in the House of Commons. The family seat was Culford Park, near Culford, Suffolk, the heir apparents heir apparent is his eldest son Hon. George Edward Charles Diether Cadogan
