Foundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools; the most common metals processed are cast iron. However, other metals, such as bronze, steel and zinc, are used to produce castings in foundries. In this process, parts of desired shapes and sizes can be formed. In metalworking, casting involves pouring liquid metal into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, allowing it to cool and solidify; the solidified part is known as a casting, ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting is most used for making complex shapes that would be difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods. Melting is performed in a furnace. Virgin material, external scrap, internal scrap, alloying elements are used to charge the furnace. Virgin material refers to commercially pure forms of the primary metal used to form a particular alloy.
Alloying elements are either pure forms of an alloying element, like electrolytic nickel, or alloys of limited composition, such as ferroalloys or master alloys. External scrap is material from other forming processes such as forging, or machining. Internal scrap consists of gates, defective castings, other extraneous metal oddments produced within the facility; the process includes melting the charge, refining the melt, adjusting the melt chemistry and tapping into a transport vessel. Refining is done to remove deleterious gases and elements from the molten metal to avoid casting defects. Material is added during the melting process to bring the final chemistry within a specific range specified by industry and/or internal standards. Certain fluxes may be used to separate the metal from slag and/or dross and degassers are used to remove dissolved gas from metals that dissolve certain gasses. During the tap, final chemistry adjustments are made. Several specialised furnaces are used to heat the metal.
Furnaces are refractory-lined vessels that contain the material to be melted and provide the energy to melt it. Modern furnace types include electric arc furnaces, induction furnaces, cupolas and crucible furnaces. Furnace choice is dependent on the alloy. For ferrous materials EAFs, induction furnaces are used. Reverberatory and crucible furnaces are common for producing aluminium and brass castings. Furnace design is a complex process, the design can be optimized based on multiple factors. Furnaces in foundries can be any size, ranging from small ones used to melt precious metals to furnaces weighing several tons, designed to melt hundreds of pounds of scrap at one time, they are designed according to the type of metals. Furnaces must be designed based on the fuel being used to produce the desired temperature. For low temperature melting point alloys, such as zinc or tin, melting furnaces may reach around 500 °C. Electricity, propane, or natural gas are used to achieve these temperatures. For high melting point alloys such as steel or nickel-based alloys, the furnace must be designed for temperatures over 1,600 °C.
The fuel used to reach these high temperatures can be coke. The majority of foundries specialize in a particular metal and have furnaces dedicated to these metals. For example, an iron foundry may use a cupola, induction furnace, or EAF, while a steel foundry will use an EAF or induction furnace. Bronze or brass foundries use crucible furnaces or induction furnaces. Most aluminium foundries use either electric resistance or gas heated crucible furnaces or reverberatory furnaces. Degassing is a process that may be required to reduce the amount of hydrogen present in a batch of molten metal. Gases can form in metal castings in one of two ways: by physical entrapment during the casting process or by chemical reaction in the cast material. Hydrogen is a common contaminant for most cast metals, it forms from water vapor or machine lubricants. If the hydrogen concentration in the melt is too high, the resulting casting will be porous. Porosity seriously deteriorates the mechanical properties of the metal.
An efficient way of removing hydrogen from the melt is to bubble a dry, insoluble gas through the melt by purging or agitation. When the bubbles go up in the melt, they bring it to the surface. Chlorine, nitrogen and argon are used to degas non-ferrous metals. Carbon monoxide is used for iron and steel. There are various types of equipment. Alternatively, the presence of hydrogen can be measured by determining the density of a metal sample. In cases where porosity still remains present after the degassing process, porosity sealing can be accomplished through a process called metal impregnating. In the casting process, a pattern is made in the shape of the desired part. Simple designs can be made in solid pattern. More complex designs are made in two parts, called split patterns. A split pattern has a top or upper section, called a cope, a bottom or lower section called a drag. Both solid and split patterns can have cores inserted to complete the final part shape. Cores are used to create hollow areas in the mold.
Where the cope and drag separates is called the parting line. When making a pattern it is best to taper the edges so that the pattern c
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley is a public research university in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1868 and serves as the flagship institution of the ten research universities affiliated with the University of California system. Berkeley has since grown to instruct over 40,000 students in 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs covering numerous disciplines. Berkeley is one of the 14 founding members of the Association of American Universities, with $789 million in R&D expenditures in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015. Today, Berkeley maintains close relationships with three United States Department of Energy National Laboratories—Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory—and is home to many institutes, including the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the Space Sciences Laboratory. Through its partner institution University of California, San Francisco, Berkeley offers a joint medical program at the UCSF Medical Center.
As of October 2018, Berkeley alumni, faculty members and researchers include 107 Nobel laureates, 25 Turing Award winners, 14 Fields Medalists. They have won 9 Wolf Prizes, 45 MacArthur Fellowships, 20 Academy Awards, 14 Pulitzer Prizes and 207 Olympic medals. In 1930, Ernest Lawrence invented the cyclotron at Berkeley, based on which UC Berkeley researchers along with Berkeley Lab have discovered or co-discovered 16 chemical elements of the periodic table – more than any other university in the world. During the 1940s, Berkeley physicist J. R. Oppenheimer, the "Father of the Atomic Bomb," led the Manhattan project to create the first atomic bomb. In the 1960s, Berkeley was noted for the Free Speech Movement as well as the Anti-Vietnam War Movement led by its students. In the 21st century, Berkeley has become one of the leading universities in producing entrepreneurs and its alumni have founded a large number of companies worldwide. Berkeley is ranked among the top 20 universities in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the U.
S. News & World Report Global University Rankings, it is considered one of the "Public Ivies", meaning that it is a public university thought to offer a quality of education comparable to that of the Ivy League. In 1866, the private College of California purchased the land comprising the current Berkeley campus in order to re-sell it in subdivided lots to raise funds; the effort failed to raise the necessary funds, so the private college merged with the state-run Agricultural and Mechanical Arts College to form the University of California, the first full-curriculum public university in the state. Upon its founding, The Dwinelle Bill stated that the "University shall have for its design, to provide instruction and thorough and complete education in all departments of science and art, industrial and professional pursuits, general education, special courses of instruction in preparation for the professions". Ten faculty members and 40 students made up the new University of California when it opened in Oakland in 1869.
Frederick H. Billings was a trustee of the College of California and suggested that the new site for the college north of Oakland be named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley. In 1870, Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California, became the first president. With the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 22 female students where it held its first classes. Beginning in 1891, Phoebe Apperson Hearst made several large gifts to Berkeley, funding a number of programs and new buildings and sponsoring, in 1898, an international competition in Antwerp, where French architect Émile Bénard submitted the winning design for a campus master plan. In 1905, the University Farm was established near Sacramento becoming the University of California, Davis. In 1919, Los Angeles State Normal School became the southern branch of the University, which became University of California, Los Angeles. By 1920s, the number of campus buildings had grown and included twenty structures designed by architect John Galen Howard.
Robert Gordon Sproul served as president from 1930 to 1958. In the 1930s, Ernest Lawrence helped establish the Radiation Laboratory and invented the cyclotron, which won him the Nobel physics prize in 1939. Based on the cyclotron, UC Berkeley scientists and researchers, along with Berkeley Lab, went on to discover 16 chemical elements of the periodic table – more than any other university in the world. In particular, during World War II and following Glenn Seaborg's then-secret discovery of plutonium, Ernest Orlando Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory began to contract with the U. S. Army to develop the atomic bomb. UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942. Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley was a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. By 1942, the American Council on Education ranked Berkeley second only to Harvard in the number of distinguished departments.
During the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an anti-communist loyalty oath. A number of faculty members led by Edward C. Tolman were dismissed. In 1952, the University of California became; each campus was give
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas referred to as KU, is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence and several satellite campuses and educational centers, medical centers, classes across the state of Kansas. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital in Kansas City, the Edwards Campus in Overland Park, a hospital and research center in the state's capital of Topeka. There are educational and research sites in Garden City, Leavenworth and Topeka, branches of the medical school in Salina and Wichita; the university is one of the 62 members of the Association of American Universities. Founded March 21, 1865, the university was opened in 1866, under a charter granted by the Kansas State Legislature in 1864 following enabling legislation passed in 1863 under the State Constitution, adopted two years after the 1861 admission of the former Kansas Territory as the 34th state into the Union following an internal civil war known as "Bleeding Kansas" during the 1850s.
Enrollment at the Lawrence and Edwards campuses was 28,401 students in 2016. The university overall employed 2,814 faculty members in fall 2015. On February 20, 1863, Kansas Governor Thomas Carney signed into law a bill creating the state university in Lawrence; the law was conditioned upon a gift from Lawrence of a $15,000 endowment fund and a site for the university, in or near the town, of not less than forty acres of land. If Lawrence failed to meet these conditions, Emporia instead of Lawrence would get the university; the site selected for the university was a hill known as Mount Oread, donated by Charles L. Robinson, Republican governor of the state of Kansas from 1861 to 1863, one of the original settlers of Lawrence, Kansas. Robinson and his wife Sara bestowed the 40-acre site to the State of Kansas in exchange for land elsewhere; the philanthropist Amos Adams Lawrence donated $10,000 of the necessary endowment fund, the citizens of Lawrence raised the remaining money themselves via private donations.
On November 2, 1863, Governor Carney announced Lawrence had met the conditions to get the state university, the following year the university was organized. The school's Board of Regents held its first meeting in March 1865, the event that KU dates its founding from. Work on the first college building began that year; the university opened for classes on September 12, 1866, the first class graduated in 1873. According to William L. Burdick, the first degree awarded by the university was a Doctor of Divinity, bestowed upon noted abolitionist preacher Richard Cordley. During World War II, Kansas was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. KU is home to the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, the Beach Center on Disability, Lied Center of Kansas and radio stations KJHK, 90.7 FM, KANU, 91.5 FM. The university is host to several museums including the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and the Spencer Museum of Art.
The libraries of the University include Watson Library, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, the Murphy Art and Architecture Library, Thomas Gorton Music & Dance Library, Anschutz Library. Of athletic note, the university is home to Allen Fieldhouse, heralded as one of the greatest basketball arenas in the world, David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium; the University of Kansas is a state-sponsored university with five campuses. KU is a member of the Association of American Universities and it is classified among "R-1: Doctoral Universities – Highest Research Activity" by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. KU features the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, which includes the School of the Arts and the School of Public Affairs & Administration; the university offers more than 345 degree programs. In its 2018 list, U. S. News & World Report ranked KU as tied for 115th place among National Universities and 53rd place among public universities; the city management and urban policy program was ranked first in the nation, the special education program second, by U.
S. News & World Report's 2016 rankings. USN&WR ranked several programs in the top 25 among U. S. universities. The University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design, with its main building being Marvin Hall, traces its architectural roots to the creation of the architectural engineering degree program in KU's School of Engineering in 1912; the Bachelor of Architecture degree was added in 1920. In 1969 the School of Architecture and Urban Design was formed with three programs: architecture, architectural engineering, urban planning. In 2001 architectural engineering merged with environmental engineering; the design programs from the discontinued School of Fine Arts were merged into the school in 2009 forming the School of Architecture and Planning with three departments. In 2017, the Urban Planning department merged into KU's School of Public Affairs and Administration. Accordingly, the SADP was renamed to the School of Design. According to the journal DesignIntelligence, which annually publishes "America's Best Architecture and Design Schools," the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Kansas was named the best in the Midwest and ranked 11t
Oxford
Oxford is a university city in south central England and the county town of Oxfordshire. With a population of 155,000, it is the 52nd largest city in the United Kingdom, with one of the fastest growing populations in the UK, it remains the most ethnically diverse area in Oxfordshire county; the city is 51 miles from London, 61 miles from Bristol, 59 miles from Southampton, 57 miles from Birmingham and 24 miles from Reading. The city is known worldwide as the home of the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Buildings in Oxford demonstrate notable examples of every English architectural period since the late Saxon period. Oxford is known as a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold. Oxford has a broad economic base, its industries include motor manufacturing, publishing and a large number of information technology and science-based businesses, some being academic offshoots. Oxford was first settled in Anglo-Saxon times and was known as "Oxenaforda", meaning "ford of the oxen".
It began with the establishment of a river crossing for oxen around AD 900. In the 10th century, Oxford became an important military frontier town between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex and was on several occasions raided by Danes. In 1002, many Danes were killed in Oxford during the England-wide St. Brice's Day massacre, a killing of Danes ordered by King Æthelred the Unready; the skeletons of more than 30 suspected victims were unearthed in 2008 during the course of building work at St John's College. The ‘massacre’ was a contributing factor to King Sweyn I of Denmark’s invasion of England in 1003 and the sacking of Oxford by the Danes in 1004. Oxford was damaged during the Norman Invasion of 1066. Following the conquest, the town was assigned to a governor, Robert D'Oyly, who ordered the construction of Oxford Castle to confirm Norman authority over the area; the castle has never been used for military purposes and its remains survive to this day. D'Oyly set up a monastic community in the castle consisting of a chapel and living quarters for monks.
The community never grew large but it earned its place in history as one of Britain's oldest places of formal education. It was there that in 1139 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his History of the Kings of Britain, a compilation of Arthurian legends. Additionally, there is evidence of Jews living in the city as early as 1141, during the 12th century the Jewish community is estimated to have numbered about 80–100; the city was besieged during The Anarchy in 1142. In 1191, a city charter stated in Latin, "Be it known to all those present and future that we, the citizens of Oxford of the Commune of the City and of the Merchant Guild have given, by this, our present charter, confirm the donation of the island of Midney with all those things pertaining to it, to the Church of St. Mary at Oseney and to the canons serving God in that place. Since, every year, at Michaelmas the said canons render half a mark of silver for their tenure at the time when we have ordered it as witnesses the legal deed of our ancestors which they made concerning the gift of this same island.
We have made this concession and confirmation in the Common council of the City and we have confirmed it with our common seal. These are those who have made this confirmation. Oxford's prestige was enhanced by its charter granted by King Henry II, granting its citizens the same privileges and exemptions as those enjoyed by the capital of the kingdom. Oxford's status as a liberty obtained from this period until the 19th century. A grandson of King John established Rewley Abbey for the Cistercian Order. Parliaments were held in the city during the 13th century; the Provisions of Oxford were instigated by a group of barons led by Simon de Montfort. Richard I of England and John, King of England the sons of Henry II of England, were both born at Beaumont Palace in Oxford, on 8 September 1157 and 24 December 1166 respectively. A plaque in Beaumont Street commemorates these events; the University of Oxford is first mentioned in 12th-century records. Of the hundreds of Aularian houses that sprang up across the city, only St Edmund Hall remains.
What put an end to the halls was the emergence of colleges. Oxford's earliest colleges were University College and Merton; these colleges were established at a time when Europeans were starting to translate the writings of Greek philosophers. These writings challenged European ideology, inspiring scientific discoveries and advancements in the arts, as society began to see itself in a new way; these colleges at Oxf
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of 410,301, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall; the city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory, 280 km south-west of Sydney, 660 km north-east of Melbourne. A resident of Canberra is known as a Canberran. Although Canberra is the capital and seat of government, many federal government ministries have secondary seats in state capital cities, as do the Governor-General and the Prime Minister; the site of Canberra was selected for the location of the nation's capital in 1908 as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two largest cities. It is unusual among Australian cities, being an planned city outside of any state, similar to Washington, D. C. in the United States, or Brasília in Brazil. Following an international contest for the city's design, a blueprint by American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected and construction commenced in 1913.
The Griffins' plan featured geometric motifs such as circles and triangles, was centred on axes aligned with significant topographical landmarks in the Australian Capital Territory. The city's design was influenced by the garden city movement and incorporates significant areas of natural vegetation; the growth and development of Canberra were hindered by the World Wars and the Great Depression, which exacerbated a series of planning disputes and the ineffectiveness of a procession of bodies that were created in turn to oversee the development of the city. The national capital emerged as a thriving city after World War II, as Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies championed its development and the National Capital Development Commission was formed with executive powers. Although the Australian Capital Territory is now self-governing, the Commonwealth Government retains some influence through the National Capital Authority; as the seat of the government of Australia, Canberra is the site of Parliament House, the official residence of the Monarch's representative the Governor-General, the High Court and numerous government departments and agencies.
It is the location of many social and cultural institutions of national significance, such as the Australian War Memorial, Australian National University, Royal Australian Mint, Australian Institute of Sport, National Gallery, National Museum and the National Library. The Australian Army's officer corps is trained at the Royal Military College and the Australian Defence Force Academy is located in the capital; the ACT is independent of any state to prevent any one state from gaining an advantage by hosting the seat of Commonwealth power. The ACT has voting representation in the Commonwealth Parliament, has its own Legislative Assembly and government, similar to the states; as the city has a high proportion of public servants, the Commonwealth Government contributes the largest percentage of Gross State Product and is the largest single employer in Canberra, although no longer the majority employer. Compared to the national averages, the unemployment rate is the average income higher. Property prices are high, in part due to comparatively restrictive development regulations.
The word "Canberra" is popularly claimed to derive from the word Kambera or Canberry, claimed to mean "meeting place" in Ngunnawal, one of the Indigenous languages spoken in the district by Aboriginal Australians before European settlers arrived, although there is no clear evidence to support this. An alternative definition has been claimed by numerous local commentators over the years, including the Ngunnawal elder Don Bell, whereby Canberra or Nganbra means "woman's breasts" and is the indigenous name for the two mountains, Black Mountain and Mount Ainslie, which lie opposite each other. In the 1860s, the name was reported by Queanbeyan newspaper owner John Gale to be an interpretation of the name nganbra or nganbira, meaning "hollow between a woman's breasts", referring to the Sullivans Creek floodplain between Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain. An 1830s map of the region by Major Mitchell indeed does mark the Sullivan's Creek floodplain between these two mountains as "Nganbra". "Nganbra" or "Nganbira" could have been anglicised to the name "Canberry", as the locality soon become known to European settlers.
R. H. Cambage in his 1919 book Notes on the Native Flora of New South Wales, Part X, the Federal Capital Territory noted that Joshua John Moore, the first settler in the region, named the area Canberry in 1823 stating that "there seems no doubt that the original was a native name, but its meaning is unknown."' Survey plans of the district dated 1837 refer to the area as the Canberry Plain. In 1920, some of the older residents of the district claimed that the name was derived from the Australian Cranberry which grew abundantly in the area, noting that the local name for the plant was canberry. Although popularly pronounced or, the original pronunciation at its official naming in 1913 was. Before white settlement, the area in which Canberra would be constructed was seasonally inhabited by Indigenous Australians. Anthropologist Norman Tindale suggested the principal group occupying the region were the Ngunnawal people, while the Ngarigo lived to the south of the ACT, the Wandandian to the east, the Walgulu to the south, Gandangara people to the north and Wiradjuri to the north-west.
Archaeological evidence of settlement in the region includes inhabited rock shelters, rock paintings and engravings, burial places and quarry sites as well as stone tools and arrangements. Artefacts suggests early human activity occurred at some po
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these items available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary; the largest museums are located in major cities throughout the world, while thousands of local museums exist in smaller cities and rural areas. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public; the goal of serving researchers is shifting to serving the general public. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, children's museums. Amongst the world's largest and most visited museums are the Louvre in Paris, the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. the British Museum and National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and Vatican Museums in Vatican City.
According to The World Museum Community, there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries. The English "museum" comes from the Latin word, is pluralized as "museums", it is from the Ancient Greek Μουσεῖον, which denotes a place or temple dedicated to the Muses, hence a building set apart for study and the arts the Musaeum for philosophy and research at Alexandria by Ptolemy I Soter about 280 BC. The purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve and display items of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for the education of the public. From a visitor or community perspective, the purpose can depend on one's point of view. A trip to a local history museum or large city art museum can be an entertaining and enlightening way to spend the day. To city leaders, a healthy museum community can be seen as a gauge of the economic health of a city, a way to increase the sophistication of its inhabitants. To a museum professional, a museum might be seen as a way to educate the public about the museum's mission, such as civil rights or environmentalism.
Museums are, above all, storehouses of knowledge. In 1829, James Smithson's bequest, that would fund the Smithsonian Institution, stated he wanted to establish an institution "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge."Museums of natural history in the late 19th century exemplified the Victorian desire for consumption and for order. Gathering all examples of each classification of a field of knowledge for research and for display was the purpose; as American colleges grew in the 19th century, they developed their own natural history collections for the use of their students. By the last quarter of the 19th century, the scientific research in the universities was shifting toward biological research on a cellular level, cutting edge research moved from museums to university laboratories. While many large museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, are still respected as research centers, research is no longer a main purpose of most museums. While there is an ongoing debate about the purposes of interpretation of a museum's collection, there has been a consistent mission to protect and preserve artifacts for future generations.
Much care and expense is invested in preservation efforts to retard decomposition in aging documents, artifacts and buildings. All museums display objects; as historian Steven Conn writes, "To see the thing itself, with one's own eyes and in a public place, surrounded by other people having some version of the same experience can be enchanting."Museum purposes vary from institution to institution. Some favor education over conservation, or vice versa. For example, in the 1970s, the Canada Science and Technology Museum favored education over preservation of their objects, they displayed objects as well as their functions. One exhibit featured a historic printing press that a staff member used for visitors to create museum memorabilia; some seek to reach a wide audience, such as a national or state museum, while some museums have specific audiences, like the LDS Church History Museum or local history organizations. Speaking, museums collect objects of significance that comply with their mission statement for conservation and display.
Although most museums do not allow physical contact with the associated artifacts, there are some that are interactive and encourage a more hands-on approach. In 2009, Hampton Court Palace, palace of Henry VIII, opened the council room to the general public to create an interactive environment for visitors. Rather than allowing visitors to handle 500-year-old objects, the museum created replicas, as well as replica costumes; the daily activities, historic clothing, temperature changes immerse the visitor in a slice of what Tudor life may have been. This section lists the 20 most visited museums in 2015 as compiled by AECOM and the Themed Entertainment Association's annual report on the world's most visited attractions. For 2016 figures see List of most visited museums; the cities of London and Washington, D. C. contain more of the 20 most visited museums in the world than any others, with six museums and four museums, respectively. Early museums began as the private collections of wealthy individuals, families or institutions of art and rare or curious natural objects and artifacts.
These were displayed in so-called wonder rooms or cabinets of curiosities. One of the oldest museums known is Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, built by Princess Ennigaldi at the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire; the site dates from c. 530 BCE, contained artifacts from earlier M
Wareham, Dorset
Wareham is a historic market town and, under the name Wareham Town, a civil parish, in the English county of Dorset. The town is situated on the River Frome eight miles southwest of Poole; the town is built on a strategic dry point between the River Frome and the River Piddle at the head of the Wareham Channel of Poole Harbour. The Frome Valley runs through an area of unresistant sand and gravel rocks, much of its valley has wide flood plains and marsh land. At its estuary the river has formed the wide shallow ria of Poole Harbour. Wareham is built on a low dry island between the marshy river plains; the town is situated on the A351 Lytchett Minster-Swanage road and at the eastern terminus of the A352 road to Dorchester and Sherborne, both roads now bypassing the town centre. The town has a station on the South Western Main Line railway, was the junction station for services along the branch line to Swanage, now preserved as the Swanage Railway; the steam railway has ambitions to extend its service from Swanage to Norden, near Corfe Castle back to Worgret Junction and into Wareham again.
To the north west of the town a large conifer plantation, Wareham Forest stretches several miles to the A35 road and the southern foothills of the Dorset Downs. To the south east is Corfe Castle and the heathland that borders Poole Harbour, including Wytch Farm oil field and Studland & Godlingstone Heath Nature Reserve. About four miles to the south is a chalk ridge, the Purbeck Hills, eight miles to the south is the English Channel; the town's strategic setting has made it an important settlement throughout its long history. Excavations at the nearby Bestwall site have produced evidence of transient early Mesolithic activity dating to around 9000 BCE. At the same site four large Neolithic pits containing worked flint and pottery fragments dating to 3700 BCE were found. Three greenstone axeheads discovered probably date to this period. Flint working and potting continued throughout the Bronze Age; the first house discovered dates to the mid 15th century BCE. Archaeological evidence exists of a small Roman settlement, though the current town was founded by the Saxons.
The Roman name is unknown, but the town is referred to as Werham in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry of 784, from Old English wer and hām or hamm. The town's oldest features are the town walls, ancient earth ramparts surrounding the town built by Alfred the Great in the 9th century to defend the town from the Danes as part of his system of burh towns; the Danes invaded and occupied Wareham in 876, only left after Alfred returned with an army and made a payment of Danegeld. In 998 they attacked again, in 1015 an invasion led by King Canute left the town in ruins; the town was a Saxon royal burial place. In the town at the ancient minster church of Lady St. Mary is the coffin said to be that of Edward the Martyr, dating from 978, his remains had been hastily buried there and were taken from Wareham to Shaftesbury Abbey in north Dorset. By the end of the Saxon period, Wareham had become one of the most important towns in the county, to the extent that it housed two mints for the issue of Royal money.
The Burghal Hidage lists the town as the third largest in the realm. After the conquest of England, the Normans built a castle on the banks of the River Frome, at the site now known as Castle Close; the castle was the focus of much fighting between the forces of Stephen and Matilda during the period of civil war in the mid 12th century. The keep was destroyed at an unknown date in the 12th or 13th century under the terms of the Treaty of Wallingford, no visible trace remains. Up until this time Wareham had been an important port. Local trade continued to be handled at the Quay until the construction of the railway in the 19th century. During the English Civil War, Wareham changed hands several times between the Royalists and Parliamentarians and in August 1644 was the site of a fierce battle with 2,000 Cromwellian soldiers besieging the town. After the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, Wareham was one of a number of towns in Dorset where Judge Jeffreys held the Bloody Assizes, with five rebels being hanged and quartered on the West Walls, an area known as'Bloody Bank'.
This may have been the site of the execution of a hermit known as Peter de Pomfret who in 1213 had prophesied that before the next Ascension Day King John's rule would be over. The prophecy turned out to be incorrect, the King decreed that Peter should be dragged through the streets of the town tied to a horse's tail and hanged together with his son. In 1762, a fire destroyed two thirds of the town, rebuilt in Georgian architecture with red brick and Purbeck limestone, following the earlier street pattern; the town is divided into four quarters by the two main roads. The medieval almshouses escaped the fire, some of the Georgian façades are in fact disguising earlier buildings which survived. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Wareham became a garrison town with up to 7,000 soldiers living and training locally; the camp was re-located to nearby Bovington in 1922. The town survived the Second World War intact, although five houses were destroyed when a bomb dropped by a German aeroplane fell near St Martin's Church in 1942.
Because of the constraints of the rivers and marshland Wareham grew little dur
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