1.
St Mary-le-Bow
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St Mary-le-Bow /sənt ˈmɛəri lə ˈboʊ/ is an historic church rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 by Sir Christopher Wren in the City of London on the main east–west thoroughfare, Cheapside. According to tradition a true Cockney must be born within earshot of the sound of Bow Bells, the sound of the bells of St Marys is credited with having persuaded Dick Whittington to turn back from Highgate and remain in London to become Lord Mayor. Details of the bells, Weights in hundredweights, quarters and pounds, however, on the road from London to Lewes, the mileage is taken from the church door of St Mary-le-Bow. To note the reference used, mileposts along the way are marked with a depiction of a bow. Archaeological evidence indicates that a church existed on site in Saxon times. A medieval version of the church had destroyed by the London Tornado of 1091, one of the earliest recorded tornadoes in Britain. During the later Norman period the church, known as “St Mary de Arcubus”, was rebuilt and was famed for the arches of stone, at that period the 12 feet 6 inches high vaulted crypt—although only accessible from within the church—had windows and buttresses visible from the street. However, the anecdotalist and historian John Stow dates the titular arches, made of Caen stone in the form of a steeple and supporting a lantern. This is the form of the steeple in the Agas woodcut of 1561 and this erroneous explanation for the source of the name gained some traction in the centuries to follow, including an endorsement by Palace of Westminster architect Augustus Pugin. From at least the 13th century, the church was a peculier of the Diocese of Canterbury, the “bow bells”, which could be heard as far away as Hackney Marshes, were once used to order a curfew in the City of London. This building burned in the Great Fire of London of 1666, the church with its steeple had been a landmark of London. The current structure was built to the designs of Wren between 1671 and 1673, the 223-foot steeple was completed in 1680, the mason-contractor was Thomas Cartwright, one of the leading London mason-contractors and carvers of his generation. Since the early 1940s, a recording of the Bow Bells made in 1926 has been used by the BBC World Service as a signal for the English-language broadcasts. It is still used today preceding some English-language broadcasts, much of the current building was destroyed by a German bomb during the Blitz on 10 May 1941, during which fire the bells crashed to the ground. Restoration under the direction of Laurence King began in 1956, the bells as listed above, cast in 1956, were eventually installed to resume ringing in 1961. The church was reconsecrated in 1964, having achieved designation as a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950. In the church is a memorial to members of the Norwegian resistance who died in the Second World War, in the churchyard is a statue of Captain John Smith of Jamestown, founder of Virginia and former parishioner of the church. Since 1989, there has been a restaurant in the crypt, St Mary-le-Bow ministers to the financial industry and livery companies of the City of London
St Mary-le-Bow
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Exterior of St Mary-le-Bow
St Mary-le-Bow
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The spire, St Mary-le-Bow
St Mary-le-Bow
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St Mary-le-Bow Church as shown on Agas map of 1561 (shown as "Bowe church")
St Mary-le-Bow
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The interior, facing the altar
2.
Greater London
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London, or Greater London, is a region of England which forms the administrative boundaries of London. It is organised into 33 local government districts, the 32 London boroughs, the Greater London Authority, based in Southwark, is responsible for strategic local government across the region and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The county of Greater London was created on 1 April 1965 through the London Government Act 1963, administratively, Greater London was first established as a sui generis council area under the Greater London Council between 1963 and 1986. The area was re-established as a region in 1994, and the Greater London Authority formed in 2000, the region covers 1,572 km2 and had a population of 8,174,000 at the 2011 census. In 2012, it had the highest GVA per capita in the United Kingdom at £37,232, the Greater London Built-up Area—used in some national statistics—is a measure of the continuous urban area of London, and therefore includes areas outside of the administrative region. The term Greater London has been and still is used to different areas in governance, statistics, history. In terms of ceremonial counties, London is divided into the small City of London, outside the limited boundaries of the City, a variety of arrangements has governed the wider area since 1855, culminating in the creation of the Greater London administrative area in 1965. The Greater London Arterial Road Programme was devised between 1913 and 1916, one of the larger early forms was the Greater London Planning Region, devised in 1927, which occupied 1,856 square miles and included 9 million people. The LCC pressed for an alteration in its boundaries soon after the end of the First World War, noting that within the Metropolitan, a Royal Commission on London Government was set up to consider the issue. The LCC proposed a vast new area for Greater London, with a boundary somewhere between the Metropolitan Police District and the home counties, protests were made at the possibility of including Windsor, Slough and Eton in the authority. The Commission made its report in 1923, rejecting the LCCs scheme, two minority reports favoured change beyond the amalgamation of smaller urban districts, including both smaller borough councils and a central authority for strategic functions. The London Traffic Act 1924 was a result of the Commission, Greater London originally had a two-tier system of local government, with the Greater London Council sharing power with the City of London Corporation and the 32 London Borough councils. The GLC was abolished in 1986 by the Local Government Act 1985 and its functions were devolved to the City Corporation and the London Boroughs, with some functions transferred to central government and joint boards. Greater London was used to form the London region of England in 1994, a referendum held in 1998 established a public will to recreate an upper tier of government to cover the region. The Greater London Authority, London Assembly and the directly elected Mayor of London were created in 2000 by the Greater London Authority Act 1999, in 2000, the outer boundary of the Metropolitan Police District was re-aligned to the Greater London boundary. The 2000 and 2004 mayoral elections were won by Ken Livingstone, the 2008 and 2012 elections were won by Boris Johnson. The 2016 election was won by Sadiq Khan, Greater London continues to include the most closely associated parts of the Greater London Urban Area and their historic buffers. Thus it includes, in five boroughs, significant parts of the Metropolitan Green Belt which protects designated greenfield land in a way to the citys parks
Greater London
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London
Greater London
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Greater London shown within England
Greater London
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The Greater London Authority is based in
City Hall
Greater London
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High resolution view from the top of Tolworth Tower in South West London over the sprawling suburban housing that is typical in some areas of Greater London
3.
Ordnance Survey National Grid
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The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using Latitude and Longitude. It is often called British National Grid, the Ordnance Survey devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps based on those surveys. Grid references are commonly quoted in other publications and data sources. The Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system is used to provide references for worldwide locations. European-wide agencies also use UTM when mapping locations, or may use the Military Grid Reference System system, the grid is based on the OSGB36 datum, and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962. It replaced the previously used Cassini Grid which, up to the end of World War Two, had issued only to the military. The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain, more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS, the British maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W. Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly, the distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W. 2° 0′ 5″ W. OSGB36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS84 has been used, a geodetic transformation between OSGB36 and other terrestrial reference systems can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true, the definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy, the difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB36 are the same as for WGS84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall, the WGS84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB36 equivalents, the smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent. But Great Britain has not shrunk by 100+ metres, a point near Lands End now computes to be 27.6 metres closer to a point near Duncansby Head than it did under OSGB36. For the first letter, the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km, there are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain, S, T, N and H. The O square contains an area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide
Ordnance Survey National Grid
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Grid square TF. The map shows
The Wash and the
North Sea, as well as places within the counties of
Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and
Norfolk.
Ordnance Survey National Grid
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Geodesy
4.
Districts of England
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The districts of England are a level of subnational division of England used for the purposes of local government. As the structure of government in England is not uniform. Some districts are styled as boroughs, cities, or royal boroughs, these are purely honorific titles, prior to the establishment of districts in the 1890s, the basic unit of local government in England was the parish overseen by the parish church vestry committee. Vestries dealt with the administraction of both parochial and secular governmental matters, parishes were the successors of the manorial system and historically had been grouped into hundreds. Hundreds once exercised some supervising administrative function, however, these powers ebbed away as more and more civic and judicial powers were centred on county towns. From 1834 these parishes were grouped into Poor Law Unions, creating areas for administration of the Poor Law and these areas were later used for census registration and as the basis for sanitary provision. In 1894, based on these earlier subdivisions, the Local Government Act 1894 created urban districts and rural districts as sub-divisions of administrative counties, another reform in 1900 created 28 metropolitan boroughs as sub-divisions of the County of London. Meanwhile, from this date parish-level local government administration was transferred to civil parishes, the setting-down of the current structure of districts in England began in 1965, when Greater London and its 32 London boroughs were created. They are the oldest type of still in use. In 1974, metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan counties were created across the rest of England and were split into metropolitan districts, in London power is now shared again, albeit on a different basis, with the Greater London Authority. During the 1990s a further kind of district was created, the unitary authority, metropolitan boroughs are a subdivision of a metropolitan county. These are similar to unitary authorities, as the county councils were abolished in 1986. Most of the powers of the county councils were devolved to the districts but some services are run by joint boards, the districts typically have populations of 174,000 to 1.1 million. Non-metropolitan districts are second-tier authorities, which share power with county councils and they are subdivisions of shire counties and the most common type of district. These districts typically have populations of 25,000 to 200,000, the number of non-metropolitan districts has varied over time. Initially there were 296, after the creation of unitary authorities in the 1990s and late 2000s and these are single-tier districts which are responsible for running all local services in their areas, combining both county and district functions. They were created in the out of non-metropolitan districts, and often cover large towns. In addition, some of the smaller such as Rutland, Herefordshire
Districts of England
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Districts (England)
5.
City of Westminster
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The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough which also holds city status. It occupies much of the area of Greater London including most of the West End. It is to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and it was created with the 1965 establishment of Greater London. Upon creation, Westminster was awarded city status, which had previously held by the smaller Metropolitan Borough of Westminster. Aside from a number of parks and open spaces, the population density of the district is high. Many sites commonly associated with London are in the borough, including St. Jamess Palace, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, much of the borough is residential, and in 2008 it was estimated to have a population of 236,000. The local authority is Westminster City Council, the current Westminster coat of arms were given to the city by an official grant on September 2,1964. Westminster had other arms before, which had an identical to the chief in the present arms. The symbols in the two thirds of the shield stand for former municipalities now merged with the city, Paddington. The original arms had a portcullis as the charge, which now forms the crest. The origins of the City of Westminster pre-date the Norman Conquest of England, in the mid-11th Century king Edward the Confessor began the construction of an abbey at Westminster, only the foundations of which survive today. For centuries Westminster and the City of London were geographically quite distinct, Westminster briefly became a city in 1540 when Henry VIII created the short-lived Diocese of Westminster. Following the dissolution of Westminster Abbey, a court of burgesses was formed in 1585 to govern the Westminster area, Jamess, Strand, Westminster, Pimlico, Belgravia, and Hyde Park. The Westminster Metropolitan Borough was itself the result of an amalgamation which took place in 1900. Sir John Hunt O. B. E was the First Town Clerk of the City of Westminster, the boundaries of the City of Westminster today, as well as those of the other London boroughs, have remained more or less unchanged since the Act of 1963. On 22 March 2017, a terrorist attack took place on Westminster Bridge, Bridge Street and Old Palace Yard, five people - three pedestrians, one police officer, and the attacker - died as a result of the incident. More than 50 people were injured, an investigation is ongoing by the Metropolitan Police. The city is divided into 20 wards, each electing three councillors, Westminster City Council is currently composed of 44 Conservative Party members and 16 Labour Party members
City of Westminster
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Coat of arms of the City of Westminster at Westminster City Hall
City of Westminster
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BP head office in
St. James's, City of Westminster
City of Westminster
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The Economist Building, St James's Street
City of Westminster
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Piccadilly Circus
6.
Ceremonial counties of England
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The ceremonial counties, also referred to as the lieutenancy areas of England, are areas of England to which a Lord Lieutenant is appointed. The Local Government Act 1888 established county councils to assume the functions of Quarter Sessions in the counties. It created new entities called administrative counties, the Act further stipulated that areas that were part of an administrative county would be part of the county for all purposes. The greatest change was the creation of the County of London, which was both an administrative county and a county, it included parts of the historic counties of Middlesex, Kent. Other differences were small and resulted from the constraint that urban sanitary districts were not permitted to straddle county boundaries, apart from Yorkshire, counties that were subdivided nevertheless continued to exist as ceremonial counties. In 1974, administrative counties and county boroughs were abolished, at this time, Lieutenancy was redefined to use the new metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties directly. Following a further rearrangement in 1996, Avon, Cleveland, Hereford and Worcester, Cleveland was partitioned between North Yorkshire and Durham. Hereford and Worcester was divided into the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Humberside was split between Lincolnshire and a new county of East Riding of Yorkshire. Rutland was restored as a ceremonial county, many county boroughs were re-established as unitary authorities, this involved establishing the area as an administrative county, but usually not as a ceremonial county. Most ceremonial counties are therefore entities comprising local authority areas, as they were from 1889 to 1974, the Association of British Counties, a traditional counties lobbying organisation, has suggested that ceremonial counties be restored to their ancient boundaries, as nearly as practicable. In present-day England, the ceremonial counties correspond to the shrieval counties, the Lieutenancies Act 1997 defines counties for the purposes of lieutenancies in terms of metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties as well as Greater London and the Isles of Scilly. Although the term is not used in the Act, these counties are known as ceremonial counties. gov. uk
Ceremonial counties of England
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Ceremonial counties (England)
7.
Regions of England
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The regions are the highest tier of sub-national division in England. Between 1994 and 2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within Government, while they no longer fulfil this role, they continue to be used for statistical and some administrative purposes. They define areas for the purposes of elections to the European Parliament, Eurostat also uses them to demarcate first level Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics regions within the European Union. The regions generally follow the boundaries of the former standard regions, the London region has a directly elected Mayor and Assembly. Six regions have local authority leaders boards to assist with correlating the headline policies of local authorities, the remaining two regions no longer have any administrative functions, having abolished their regional local authority leaders boards. In 1998, regional chambers were established in the eight regions outside of London, the regions also had an associated Government Office with some responsibility for coordinating policy, and, from 2007, a part-time regional minister within the Government. House of Commons regional Select Committees were established in 2009, Regional ministers were not reappointed by the incoming Coalition Government, and the Government Offices were abolished in 2011. Regional development agencies were public bodies established in all nine regions in 1998 to promote economic development and they had certain delegated functions, including administering European Union regional development funds, and received funding the central government as well. After about 500 AD, England comprised seven Anglo-Saxon territories – Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, the boundaries of some of these, which later unified as the Kingdom of England, roughly coincide with those of modern regions. During Oliver Cromwells Protectorate in the 1650s, the rule of the Major-Generals created 10 regions in England, proposals for administrative regions within England were mooted by the British government prior to the First World War. In 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill was passing through parliament, the Bill was expected to introduce a devolved parliament for Ireland, and as a consequence calls were made for similar structures to be introduced in Great Britain or Home Rule All Round. On 12 September the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, within England, he suggested that London, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands would make natural regions. While the creation of regional parliaments never became official policy, it was for a widely anticipated. In 1946 nine standard regions were set up, in central government bodies, statutory undertakings. However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s, creation of some form of provinces or regions for England was an intermittent theme of post-Second World War British governments. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed the creation of eight provinces in England, one-fifth of the advisory councils would be nominees from central government. The boundaries suggested were the eight now existing for economic planning purposes, a minority report by Lord Crowther-Hunt and Alan T. Peacock suggested instead seven regional assemblies and governments within Great Britain, some elements of regional development and economic planning began to be established in England from the mid-1960s onwards
Regions of England
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Regions of England English regions
8.
Countries of the United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom comprises four countries, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within the United Kingdom, a sovereign state, Northern Ireland, Scotland. England, comprising the majority of the population and area of the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are not themselves listed in the International Organization for Standardization list of countries. However the ISO list of the subdivisions of the UK, compiled by British Standards, Northern Ireland, in contrast, is described as a province in the same lists. Each has separate governing bodies for sports and compete separately in many international sporting competitions. Northern Ireland also forms joint All-Island sporting bodies with the Republic of Ireland for most sports, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are dependencies of the Crown and are not part of the UK. Similarly, the British overseas territories, remnants of the British Empire, are not part of the UK, southern Ireland left the United Kingdom under the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922. * Figures for GVA do not include oil and gas revenues generated beyond the UKs territorial waters, various terms have been used to describe England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Wales was described as the country, principality, and dominion of Wales, outside Wales, England was not given a specific name or term. The Laws in Wales Acts have subsequently been repealed, the Acts of Union 1707 refer to both England and Scotland as a part of a united kingdom of Great Britain The Acts of Union 1800 use part in the same way to refer to England and Scotland. The Northern Ireland Act 1998, which repealed the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the Interpretation Act 1978 provides statutory definitions of the terms England, Wales and the United Kingdom, but neither that Act nor any other current statute defines Scotland or Northern Ireland. Use of the first three terms in other legislation is interpreted following the definitions in the 1978 Act and this definition applies from 1 April 1974. United Kingdom means Great Britain and Northern Ireland and this definition applies from 12 April 1927. In 1996 these 8 new counties were redistributed into the current 22 unitary authorities, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are regions in their own right while England has been divided into nine regions. The official term rest of the UK is used in Scotland, for example in export statistics and this term is also used in the context of potential Scottish independence to mean the UK without Scotland. The alternative term Home Nations is sometimes used in sporting contexts, the second, or civic group, contained the items about feeling British, respecting laws and institutions, speaking English, and having British citizenship. Contrariwise, in Scotland and Wales there was a much stronger identification with each country than with Britain, studies and surveys have reported that the majority of the Scots and Welsh see themselves as both Scottish/Welsh and British though with some differences in emphasis. The propensity for nationalistic feeling varies greatly across the UK, and can rise and it reported that 37% of people identified as British, whilst 29% identified as Irish and 24% identified as Northern Irish
Countries of the United Kingdom
9.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
England
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Stonehenge, a
Neolithic monument
England
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Flag
England
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Boudica led an uprising against the
Roman Empire
England
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Replica of a 7th-century ceremonial
helmet from the
Kingdom of East Anglia, found at
Sutton Hoo
10.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
United Kingdom
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Stonehenge, in
Wiltshire, was erected around 2500 BC.
United Kingdom
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Flag
United Kingdom
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The
Bayeux Tapestry depicts the
Battle of Hastings, 1066, and the events leading to it.
United Kingdom
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The
Treaty of Union led to a single united kingdom encompassing all Great Britain.
11.
London postal district
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The London postal district is the area in England of 241 square miles to which mail addressed to the LONDON post town is delivered. It was integrated by the Post Office into the national system of the United Kingdom during the early 1970s and corresponds to the N, NW, SW, SE, W, WC, E. The postal district has also known as the London postal area. The County of London was much smaller at 117 square miles, by the 1850s, the rapid growth of the metropolitan area meant it became too large to operate efficiently as a single post town. A Post Office inquiry into the problem had been set up in 1837, in 1854 Charles Canning, the Postmaster General, set up a committee at the Post Office in St. Martins Le Grand to investigate how London could best be divided for the purposes of directing mail. In 1856, of the 470 million items of mail sent in the United Kingdom during the year, approximately one fifth were for delivery in London, the General Post Office thus at the control of the Postmaster General devised the area in 1856 project-managed by Sir Rowland Hill. Hill produced an almost perfectly circular area of 12 miles radius from the central post office at St. Martins Le Grand, within the district it was divided into two central areas and eight compass points which operated much like separate post towns. Each was constituted London with a suffix indicating the area it covered, the system was introduced during 1857 and completed on 1 January 1858. The remaining eight letter prefixes have not changed, at the same time, the London postal district boundary was retracted in the east, removing places such as Ilford for good. In 1868 the S district was split between SE and SW, the NE and S codes have been re-used in the national postcode system and now refer to the NE postcode area around Newcastle upon Tyne and the S postcode area around Sheffield. In 1917, as a measure to improve efficiency, the districts were further subdivided with a number applied to each sub-district. Exceptionally and esoterically, W2 and SW11 are also head districts, the numbered sub-districts became the outward code of the postcode system as expanded into longer codes during the 1970s. Ad hoc changes have taken place to the organisation of the districts, subdivisions of postcode sub-districts Owing to heavier demand, seven high-density postcode districts in central London have been subdivided to create new, smaller postcode districts. This is achieved by adding a letter after the postcode district. Where such sub-districts are used such as on street signs and maps. The districts subdivided are E1, N1, EC SW1, W1, WC1, similarly, there are solely non-geographic suffixed sub-districts for PO boxes in NW1 and SE1. The London postal district has never been aligned with the London boundary, when the initial system was designed, the London boundary was restricted to the square mile of the small, ancient City of London. The wider metropolitan area covered parts of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex
London postal district
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Map of the original London postal district in 1857
London postal district
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London
London postal district
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The Post Office in St. Martin's Le Grand
12.
Postcodes in the United Kingdom
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Postal codes used in the United Kingdom are known as postcodes. They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been devised by the GPO, a full postcode is known as a postcode unit and designates an area with a number of addresses or a single major delivery point. For example, the postcode of the University of Roehampton in London is SW15 5PU, the postcode of GCHQ is GL51 0EX, where GL signifies the postal town of Gloucester. The postal town refers to an area and does not relate to a specific town. GL51 is one of the postcodes for the town of Cheltenham which is where GCHQ is located, the London post town covers 40% of Greater London. On inception it was divided into ten districts, EC, WC, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W. The S and NE sectors were later abolished and these divisions changed little, usually only changed for operational efficiency. Some older road signs in Hackney still indicate the North East sector/district, following the successful introduction of postal districts in London, the system was extended to other large towns and cities. Liverpool was divided into Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western districts in 1864/65, in 1917 Dublin – then still part of the United Kingdom – was divided into numbered postal districts. These continue in use in a form by An Post. In 1923 Glasgow was divided in a way to London. In January 1932 the Postmaster General approved the designation of some urban areas into numbered districts. In November 1934 the Post Office announced the introduction of numbered districts in every town in the United Kingdom large enough to justify it. Pamphlets were issued to each householder and business in ten areas notifying them of the number of the district in which their premises lay, the pamphlets included a map of the districts, and copies were made available at local head post offices. The public were invited to include the district number in the address at the head of letters. A publicity campaign in the following year encouraged the use of the district numbers, the slogan for the campaign was For speed and certainty always use a postal district number on your letters and notepaper. A poster was fixed to every box in the affected areas bearing the number of the district. Every post office in the district was also to display this information
Postcodes in the United Kingdom
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Street name signs on Birdbrook Road, Great Barr, Birmingham, showing old "Birmingham 22" (top) and modern "B44" postcodes.
Postcodes in the United Kingdom
13.
NW postcode area
–
The NW postcode area, also known as the London NW postcode area, is a group of postcode districts covering part of northwest London, England. It is the successor of the NW sector, originally created as part of the London postal district in 1856, the district names are no longer included in the postal address because the first part of the postcode contains equivalent sorting information. The boundaries of the area and its districts have changed over time and are the result of the working requirements of Royal Mail. They are not tied to those of the local authority areas served, the NW7 district extends to the Greater London boundary with Hertfordshire and follows that boundary for a short distance near Scratch Wood. The remainder of northwest Greater London is covered by the HA, UB, part of the EN, list of postcode areas in the United Kingdom London postal district Postcode Address File Royal Mails Postcode Address File A quick introduction to Royal Mails Postcode Address File
NW postcode area
–
NW postcode area map, showing postcode districts in red and post towns in grey text, with links to nearby
EN,
HA,
N,
W,
WC and
WD postcode areas.
14.
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom
–
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom are administered by the UK governments Office of Communications. For this purpose Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, since 28 April 2001, almost all geographic numbers and most non-geographic numbers have 9 or 10 national numbers after the 0 trunk code. All mobile telephone numbers have 10 national numbers after the 0 trunk code, regions with shorter area codes, typically large cities, permit the allocation of more telephone numbers as the local number portion has more digits. Local customer numbers are four to eight figures long, the total number of digits is ten, but in a very few areas the total may be nine digits. The area code is referred to as an STD or a dialling code in the UK. The code allocated to the largest population is for London, the code allocated to the largest area is for all of Northern Ireland. The UK Numbering Plan also applies to three British Crown dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man—even though they are not part of the UK itself. Possible number formats for UK telephone numbers are as follows, Number ranges starting 01 can have NSN length as 10 or 9 digits, the 0800 range can have NSN length as 10,9 or 7 digits. The 0845 range can have NSN length as 10 or 7 digits, the 0500 range has NSN length as 9 digits only. There are no numbers in the UK with an NSN length of 8 digits. Geographic telephone numbers in the UK always have nine or ten digits, four-digit area codes have either six-digit subscriber numbers or a mix of five- and six-digit subscriber numbers. Xxxxxx This is the used by most areas. It has an area code and a six digit subscriber number. These area codes were changed by adding a 1 directly after the zero as a part of PhONEday in 1995. Just short of 581 areas use this format, and the area range from 01200 to 01998. A small number of areas also have a few subscriber numbers that have only five digits. That is, almost all area codes now have only six digit local numbers, six of the four-digit area codes are known as mixed areas as they share those four digits with the twelve five-digit area codes. The numbers therefore have only nine digits after the initial zero trunk code and these area codes were changed by adding a 1 directly after the initial zero as a part of PhONEday in 1995
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom
–
Location of the United Kingdom (dark green)
15.
Metropolitan Police Service
–
As of March 2016, the Met employed 48,661 full-time personnel. This included 32,125 sworn police officers,9,521 police staff and this number excludes the 3,271 Special Constables, who work part-time and who have the same powers and uniform as their regular colleagues. This makes the Metropolitan Police the largest police force in the United Kingdom by a significant margin, the post of Commissioner was first held jointly by Sir Charles Rowan and Sir Richard Mayne. The post is occupied by the now-outgoing Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe. The Commissioners deputy, the Deputy Commissioner, is currently Craig Mackey, a number of informal names and abbreviations exists for the Metropolitan Police Service, the most common being the Met. In colloquial London, it is referred to as the Old Bill. The Met is also referred to by the metonym Scotland Yard after the location of its headquarters in a road called Great Scotland Yard in Whitehall. The Mets current headquarters is New Scotland Yard, in Victoria, the Metropolitan Police Service, whose officers became affectionately known as bobbies, was founded in 1829 by Robert Peel under the Metropolitan Police Act 1829. In 1839, the Marine Police Force, which had formed in 1798, was amalgamated into the Metropolitan Police. In 1837, it also incorporated with the Bow Street Horse Patrol that had organised in 1805. Since January 2012, the Mayor of London is responsible for the governance of the Metropolitan Police through the Mayors Office for Policing, the mayor is able to appoint someone to act on his behalf, the current office-holder is Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Sophie Linden. The work of MOPAC is scrutinised by the Police and Crime Committee of the London Assembly, the area policed by the Metropolitan Police Service is known as the Metropolitan Police District. In terms of policing, the Met is divided into a number of Borough Operational Command Units. The City of London is a police area and is the responsibility of the separate City of London Police. The British Transport Police are responsible for policing of the network in the United Kingdom. Within London, they are responsible for the policing of the London Underground, Tramlink, The Emirates Air Line. There is also a park police force, the Kew Constabulary, responsible for the Royal Botanic Gardens. Officers also have limited powers in Scotland and Northern Ireland, within the MPD, the Met will take over the investigation of any serious crime from the British Transport Police and Ministry of Defence Police, if it is deemed appropriate
Metropolitan Police Service
–
London
Metropolitan Police Service
–
Flag of the Metropolitan Police Service
Metropolitan Police Service
–
Carved
whale bone whistle dated 1821. 8 cm long. Belonged to a 'Peeler' in the Metropolitan Police Service in
London in the early 19th century.
Metropolitan Police Service
–
Met officers talk with a woman in
Hyde Park, 1976
16.
Fire services in the United Kingdom
–
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty fire and rescue services, many FRS were previously known as brigades or county fire services, but almost all now use the standard terminology. They are distinct from and governed by an authority, which is the legislative, public and administrative body. Fire authorities in England and Wales, and therefore fire and rescue services, Scotland and Northern Ireland have centralised fire and rescue services, and so their authorities are effectively committees of the devolved parliaments. The total budget for services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. The devolved government in Scotland has an agency, HMFSI Scotland. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain,1947, Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed entirely in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire,1959, Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act, it dealt with pensions, staffing arrangements and provision of services by other authorities. It was repealed in England and Wales along with the 1947 Act,1999, Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of fire strikes. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the action still ongoing. Bains report ultimately led to a change in the relating to firefighting. 2002, Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004, Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, generally only applying to England and it came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises,2006, The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on Fire, promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation. But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries, There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association. The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee, in June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report. For example, where FRSs were historically inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office, Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee heard evidence on the Fire Control project. Called to give evidence were Cllr Brian Coleman and Cllr James Pearson from the Local Government Association, also giving evidence Matt Wrack from the Fire Brigades Union and John Bonney Chief Fire Officers Association
Fire services in the United Kingdom
–
A fire engine of the
London Fire Brigade, the second-largest service in the country after the
Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
Fire services in the United Kingdom
–
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service in action
Fire services in the United Kingdom
–
A 1951 Dennis P12 fire appliance belonging to the
Wiltshire Fire Brigade
Fire services in the United Kingdom
–
Fire on
West Pier in
Brighton, England
17.
London Fire Brigade
–
The London Fire Brigade is the statutory fire and rescue service for London. It was formed by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act of 1865 under the leadership of superintendent Eyre Massey Shaw. Dany Cotton is the Commissioner for Fire and Emergency Planning, which includes the position of Chief Fire Officer, statutory responsibility for the running of the brigade lies with the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2013/14 the LFB handled 171,067999 emergency calls, of the calls it actually mobilised to,20,934 were fires, including 10,992 that were of a serious nature, making it one of the busiest fire brigades in the world. In the same 12-month period, it received 3,172 hoax calls, the highest number of any UK fire service, in 2015/16 the LFB received 171,488 emergency calls. These consisted of,20,773 fires,30,066 special service callouts and it also conducts emergency planning and performs fire safety inspections and education. He introduced a uniform that, for the first time, included personal protection from the hazards of firefighting. With 80 firefighters and 13 fire stations, the unit was still a private enterprise, funded by the insurance companies, in 1904 it was renamed as the London Fire Brigade. The LFB moved into a new headquarters built by Higgs and Hill on the Albert Embankment in Lambeth in 1937, during the Second World War the countrys brigades were amalgamated into a single National Fire Service. The separate London Fire Brigade for the County of London was re-established in 1948, in 1986 the Greater London Council was disbanded and a new statutory authority, the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, was formed to take responsibility for the LFB. The LFCDA was replaced in 2000 by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, at the same time, the Greater London Authority was established to administer the LFEPA and coordinate emergency planning for London. Consisting of the Mayor of London and other elected members, the GLA also takes responsibility for the Metropolitan Police Authority, Transport for London, in 2007 the LFB vacated its Lambeth headquarters and moved to a site in Union Street, Southwark. In the same year, the Department for Communities and Local Government announced that LFB Commissioner Ken Knight had been appointed as the first Chief Fire, Knight was succeeded as Commissioner at that time by Ron Dobson, who served for almost ten years. Dany Cotton took over in 2017, becoming the brigades first female commissioner, dany Cotton is the current commissioner, having taken up the role on 1 January 2017. She holds the Queens Fire Service Medal, frank Jackson, CBE1938 to 1941, Cdr. Sir Aylmer Firebrace, CBE1933 to 1938, Maj. Cyril Morris 1918 to 1933, Arthur Reginald Dyer 1909 to 1918, sir Sampson Sladen 1903 to 1909, RAdm. James de Courcy Hamilton 1896 to 1903, Capt, lionel de Latour Wells 1891 to 1896, James Sexton Simmonds 1861 to 1891, Capt. Both divisions were divided into three districts, each under a Superintendent with his headquarters at a superintendent station, the superintendent stations themselves were commanded by District Officers, with the other stations under Station Officers
London Fire Brigade
–
London Fire Brigade
London Fire Brigade
–
LFB firefighters at a warehouse in south London after a major fire in 1980
London Fire Brigade
–
London Fire Brigade headquarters from 1937 to 2007, in
Lambeth.
London Fire Brigade
–
The LFB's current headquarters since 2007, in
Southwark.
18.
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
–
Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status. The NHS commissions most emergency services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other services, the public normally access emergency medical services through one of the valid emergency telephone numbers. This led to the formation of predominantly county based ambulance services, which gradually merged up and changed responsibilities until 2006, when there were 31 NHS ambulance trusts in England. Following further changes as part of the NHS foundation trust pathway, the commissioners in each region are responsible for contracting with a suitable organisation to provide ambulance services within their geographical territory. The primary contract for each area is held by a public NHS body, of which there are 11 in England. The service was operated before reorganisation in 1974 by the St Andrews’ Ambulance Association under contract to the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service was established in 1995 by parliamentary order, and serves the whole of Northern Ireland. The Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust was established on 1 April 1998, there is a large market for private and voluntary ambulance services, with the sector being worth £800m to the UK economy in 2012. This places the voluntary providers in direct competition with private services, expenditure on private ambulances in England increased from £37m in 2011−12 to £67. 5m in 2013/4, rising in London from £796,000 to more than £8. 8m. In 2014−15, these 10 ambulance services spent £57.6 million on 333,329 callouts of private or voluntary services - an increase of 156% since 2010−11, in 2013, the CQC found 97% of private ambulance services to be providing good care. These private, registered services are represented by the Independent Ambulance Association, there are also a number of unregistered services operating, who do not provide ambulance transport, but only provide response on an event site. These firms are not regulated, and are not subject to the checks as the registered providers, although they may operate similar vehicles. There are a number of ambulance providers, sometimes known as Voluntary Aid Services or Voluntary Aid Societies, with the main ones being the British Red Cross. The history of the ambulance services pre-dates any government organised service. As they are in competition for work with the private ambulance providers. Voluntary organisations have also provided cover for the public when unionised NHS ambulance trust staff have taken industrial action, there are a number of smaller voluntary ambulance organisations, fulfilling specific purposes, such as Hatzola who provide emergency medical services to the orthodox Jewish community in some cities. These have however run into difficulties due to use of vehicles not legally recognised as ambulances, all emergency medical services in the UK are subject to a range of legal and regulatory requirements, and in many cases are also monitored for performance. This framework is largely statutory in nature, being mandated by government through a range of primary and secondary legislation and this requires all providers to register, to meet certain standards of quality, and to submit to inspection of those standards
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
–
A
Mercedes Sprinter ambulance of the
South Western Ambulance Service responds to an emergency call
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
–
The
London Air Ambulance in action
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
–
A paramedic's motorcycle in Birmingham
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
–
Device of the
Scottish Ambulance Service
19.
London Ambulance Service
–
It is one of the busiest ambulance services in the world, and the busiest in the United Kingdom, providing care to more than 8.6 million people, who live and work in London. The service is currently under the leadership of chief executive Dr Fionna Moore MBE, the service employ around 4,500 staff. In exceptional cases, or where the service deems in necessary, specialist teams can be deployed from within the service, such as the Hazardous Area Response Team and these teams are specially trained and equipped to deal with incidents such as working at height or in confined spaces. It is one of 10 ambulance trusts in England providing emergency medical services, there is no charge to patients for use of the service, as every person in England has the right to the attendance of an ambulance in an emergency. The LAS responded to over 1.8 million calls for assistance, incidents rose by 20,000 in 2015/16, putting more pressure on the service. All 999 calls from the public are answered at the Emergency Operations Centre in Waterloo, to assist, the services command and control system is linked electronically with the equivalent system for Londons Metropolitan Police. This means that police updates regarding specific jobs will be updated directly on the computer-aided dispatch log, to be viewed by the EOC, the first became operational at The South Eastern Fever Hospital, Deptford, in October 1883. In all, six hospitals operated horse-drawn land ambulances, putting almost the whole of London within three miles of one of them, each ambulance station included accommodation for a married superintendent and around 20 drivers, horse keepers and attendants, nurses, laundry staff and domestic cleaners. At Deptford, in order to transfer patients between the hospitals at Joyce Green and Long Reach near Gravesend, a horse-drawn ambulance tramway was constructed in 1897, in 1902, the MAB introduced a steam driven ambulance and in 1904, their first motor ambulance. The last horse-drawn ambulances were used on 14 September 1912, although the MAB was legally supposed to be transporting only infectious patients, it increasingly also carried accident victims and emergency medical cases. Also in 1915, the MAB Ambulance Section were the first public body to women drivers. By July 1916 the London County Council Ambulance Corps was staffed entirely by women, the LCC also took control of the River Ambulance Service, but it was disbanded in 1932. During World War II, the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service was operated by over 10,000 auxiliaries, mainly women and they ran services from 139 Auxiliary Stations across London. A plaque at one of the last to close, Station 39 in Weymouth Mews, near Portland Place, in 1948 the National Health Service Act made it a requirement for ambulances to be available for anyone who needed them. On 1 April 1996, the LAS left the control of the South West Thames Regional Health Authority, as an NHS Trust, the LAS has a Trust Board consisting of 12 members. The board includes, a chairman, five of the Service’s executive directors. Special events in London are co-ordinated from the Services event control room, also located in east London, during mass casualty incidents, the command structure works on three levels, gold, silver and bronze. Silver control, tactical command, from a point in the vicinity of the incident, Bronze control
London Ambulance Service
–
Contents
London Ambulance Service
–
The female crew of a
London County Council ambulance return to their station during the First World War,
London Ambulance Service
–
During a training exercise in
Fulham in 1942, ambulance crew and civil defence workers place a "casualty" into an ambulance.
London Ambulance Service
–
LAS vehicles on the scene of an emergency incident in
central London.
20.
London (European Parliament constituency)
–
London is a constituency of the European Parliament. It currently elects 8 MEPs using the method of party-list proportional representation. The constituency corresponds to the Greater London region of England, in the south east of the United Kingdom, prior to 1999, London was represented by a number of single-member constituencies. The European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999 reduced this to a constituency returning a number of MEPs. Below are all the members since the creation of the London constituency, the number of seats allocated to London has been reduced from 10 to 8 between 1999 and 2009 due to EU enlargement. Members elected in 1999 who previously represented a London constituency were Pauline Green, elected candidates are shown in bold. Brackets indicate the number of votes per seat won, the 2014 results were delayed by Tower Hamlets, where there were recounts needed for six local election wards
London (European Parliament constituency)
–
London
London (European Parliament constituency)
–
Location among the 2014 constituencies
21.
List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies
–
There are 650 constituencies in the United Kingdom, each electing a single Member of Parliament to the House of Commons every five years. Voting last took place in all 650 of those constituencies at the United Kingdom general election on 7 May 2015, in addition there is the constituency of the Speaker, which by tradition does not belong to any party. The number of seats rose from 646 at the 2005 general election after proposals made by the commissions for England, Wales. Constituencies in Scotland remained unchanged, as the Boundary Commission for Scotland had completed a review just before the 2005 general election, for the 2013 review this was primarily the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. The Sainte-Laguë formula method is used to form groups of seats split between the four parts of the United Kingdom and the English Regions, the electorate figures given in the second column of the tables below are those used by the commissions during their reviews. These electorate figures date from the start of the review in each country, England, February 2000, Scotland, June 2001, Wales, December 2002, and Northern Ireland, May 2003. Of the 650 seats listed below,533 are in England,59 in Scotland,40 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland, Scotland – No changes from 2005 election. Wales – Number of seats unchanged, three seats were abolished and three were created, Aberconwy, Arfon, and Dwyfor Meirionnydd, Northern Ireland – No extra or fewer seats allocated. England, North Yorkshire, Hampshire, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Norfolk, Essex, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, isle of Wight maintained its status as one constituency, the largest by electorate. The City of York was divided into two seats, neither overlapping part of North Yorkshire, North London, Birmingham and the metropolitan counties of Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear and South Yorkshire lost a seat each. Herefordshire and Worcestershire, to reflect their full reinstatement as separate counties, were considered in separate reviews, bath, Bristol and Somerset underwent arguably the most significant changes to reflect the abolition of Avon. Updated electorate figures from December 2010 have been added for the English, lists of electoral districts by nation Boundary Commission for N. I. Fifth Periodical Report – Parliamentary Constituencies of Northern Ireland
List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies
–
United Kingdom
22.
Westminster North (UK Parliament constituency)
–
Westminster North is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 2010 recreation by Karen Buck, a member of the Labour Party. Its previous 1983 to 1997 existence is also covered by this article and it was based largely on Paddington but also took in the abolished St Marylebone constituency. Political history The seat was held with modest majorities for the first creation, Paddington constituency, its main predecessor was often marginal, by length of a single partys representation and by majorities achieved. The far less contributory precursor, St Marylebone, was a Conservative safe seat, the 1997 boundary changes expanded the constituency to the west, taking in Labour-voting areas of north Kensington and tilting the seat towards Labour. Wheeler decided that he did not wish to contest such unfavourable territory, however he was unsuccessful in finding a new safe seat and thus retired at the 1997 general election. The 2015 result gave the seat the 21st most marginal majority of Labours 232 seats by percentage of majority. The seat has electoral wards, Abbey Road, Bayswater, Church Street, Harrow Road, Lancaster Gate, Little Venice, Maida Vale, Queens Park, Regents Park, and Westbourne in the City of Westminster. From 1983–1997 the constituency had the wards, Bayswater, Church Street, Hamilton Terrace, Harrow Road, Lancaster Gate, Little Venice, Lords, Maida Vale, Queens Park, Regents Park, Kensington Cities of London and Westminster Notes References
Westminster North (UK Parliament constituency)
–
Boundary of Westminster North in Greater London.
23.
Geographic coordinate system
–
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
Geographic coordinate system
–
Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.
24.
Inner-city
–
The inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. Inner city areas tend to have population densities than outer suburbs, with more of the population living inside multi-floored townhouses. Sociologists sometimes turn this euphemism into a designation, applying the term inner city to such residential areas. However, some city areas of American cities have undergone gentrification. Such connotations are less common in countries, where deprived areas may be located in outlying parts of cities. For instance, in many European and Brazilian cities, the city is the most prosperous part of the metropolis, where housing is expensive. Poverty and crime are more associated with the distant suburbs, the same is true of many American cities, like New York and San Francisco, and is becoming true of other cities as they become revitalized. The Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Swedish words for suburb often have a negative connotation similar to that of the English term inner city, the American sociological usage is rooted in the middle 20th century. The loss of population and affluent taxpayers caused many inner city communities to fall into urban decay, late in the century, many such areas underwent gentrification, especially in the Northeast and West coast, depriving them of the inner city label despite their unchanged location. Notable exceptions are cities built in the 20th century, usually planned with modernist concepts, such as Brasília, Goiânia, Belo Horizonte, Campo Grande and Palmas, under the personal car culture. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, thousands of walled townhouses and condos are being built in, inside the Inner City, Life Under the Cutting Edge. This book takes Hackney in London as a study of inner city urban deprivation
Inner-city
–
Inner city of
Zürich and
Lake Zurich as seen from
Käferberg
25.
Central London
–
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
Central London
–
Panorama of central London as seen from the
London Eye
Central London
–
OpenStreetMap of Central London.
26.
West End of London
–
Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross. The West End covers much of the boroughs of Westminster and Camden, while the City of London, or the Square Mile, is the main business and financial district in London, the West End is the main commercial and entertainment centre of the city. It is one of the most expensive locations in the world in which to rent office space and it was also close to the royal seat of power at Westminster, and is largely contained within the City of Westminster. Developed in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, it was built as a series of palaces, expensive town houses, fashionable shops. The areas closest to the City around Holborn, Seven Dials, as the West End is a term used colloquially by Londoners and is not an official geographical or municipal definition, its exact constituent parts are up for debate. The Edgware Road to the north-west and the Victoria Embankment to the south-east were also covered by the document but were treated as adjacent areas to the West End. According to Ed Glinerts West End Chronicles the districts falling within the West End are Mayfair, Soho, Covent Garden, Fitzrovia, one of the local government wards within the City of Westminster is called West End. This covers a area that defined by Glinert, Mayfair, Soho. The population of this ward at the 2011 Census was 10,575, the New West End Company is a business improvement district and runs services including street cleaning and security on Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street. NWEC also runs the Red Caps service, the West End is laid out with many notable public squares and circuses, the latter being the original name for roundabouts in London. London West End Things to do General overview of what to do in the West End
West End of London
–
Piccadilly Circus, the heart of the West End
West End of London
–
Shaftesbury Avenue from
Piccadilly Circus in 1949.
West End of London
–
Her Majesty's Theatre in
Haymarket, home to
Andrew Lloyd Webber ’s
The Phantom of the Opera.
West End of London
–
Nelson's Column in
Trafalgar Square
27.
Oxford Street
–
Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road via Oxford Circus. It is Europes busiest shopping street, with half a million daily visitors. It is designated as part of the A40, a road between London and Fishguard, though it is not signed as such, and traffic is regularly restricted to buses. The road was originally a Roman road, part of the Via Trinobantina between Essex and Hampshire via London and it was known as Tyburn Road through the Middle Ages and was once notorious as a street where prisoners from Newgate Prison would be transported towards a public hanging. The first department stores in Britain opened on Oxford Street in the early 20th century, including Selfridges, John Lewis, unlike nearby shopping streets such as Bond Street, it has retained an element of downmarket street trading alongside more prestigious retail stores. The street suffered heavy bombing during World War II, and several longstanding stores including John Lewis were completely destroyed, the annual switching on of Christmas lights by a celebrity has been a popular event since 1959. However, the combination of a popular retail area and a main thoroughfare for London buses and taxis has caused significant problems with traffic congestion, safety. Various traffic management schemes have proposed by Transport for London, including a ban on private vehicles during daytime hours on weekdays and Saturdays. Oxford Street runs for approximately 1.2 miles, the eastward continuation is New Oxford Street, and then Holborn. The road is entirely within the City of Westminster and it is within the London Congestion Charging Zone. Numerous bus routes run along Oxford Street, including 10,25,55,73,98,390 and Night Buses N8, N55, N73, N98 and N207. Oxford Street follows the route of a Roman road, the Via Trinobantina, between the 12th century and 1782, it was variously known as Tyburn Road, Uxbridge Road, Worcester Road and Oxford Road. Despite being a major coaching route, there were several obstacles along it, a turnpike trust was established in the 1730s to improve upkeep of the road. It became notorious as the route taken by prisoners on their journey from Newgate Prison to the gallows at Tyburn near Marble Arch. Spectators drunkenly jeered at prisoners as they carted along the road, by about 1729, the road had become known as Oxford Street. The street began to be redeveloped in the 18th century after many of the fields were purchased by the Earl of Oxford. In 1739, local gardener Thomas Huddle began to build property on the north side, John Rocques Map of London, published in 1746, shows urban buildings as far as North Audley Street, but only intermittent rural property thereafter. Buildings began to be erected on the corner of Oxford Street, further development along the street occurred between 1763 and 1793
Oxford Street
–
View west along Oxford Street in December 2006, showing
Selfridges department store in the background
Oxford Street
–
Oxford Street in 1875, looking west from the junction with Duke Street. The buildings on the right are on the future site of
Selfridges.
Oxford Street
–
View west down Oxford Street in 1961, outside
Bond Street tube station
Oxford Street
–
Stanley Green advertising on Oxford Street in 1974
28.
Marylebone Road
–
Marylebone Road is an important thoroughfare in central London, within the City of Westminster. It runs east-west from the Euston Road at Regents Park to the A40 Westway at Paddington. The road which runs in 3 lanes in both directions, is part of the London Inner Ring Road and as such part of the boundary of the zone within which the London congestion charge applies. As part of the Ring Road and a route to the A40 and the A5 and M1 motorway much of the traffic leaving central London for the Midlands. The road was effectively Londons first bypass, construction of the New Road, as it was called, began in 1756 along the northern edge of the built-up area. In 1857, the name was changed from New Road, with sections, west to east, renamed Marylebone Road, Euston Road. The name Marylebone originates from a church, called St Marys, the church and the surrounding area later became known as St Mary at the bourne, which over time became shortened to its present form Marylebone. The current St Marylebone Parish Church is on the south of Marylebone Road, opposite the Royal Academy of Music, one of Londons principal tourist attractions lies on Marylebone Road - Madame Tussauds. It is also the location of the Royal Academy of Music, mainline Marylebone Paddington Tube Edgware Road Edgware Road Marylebone Paddington Baker Street Regents Park Great Portland Street
Marylebone Road
–
Marylebone Road, London, looking west towards the junction with
Baker Street
29.
Edgware Road
–
Edgware Road is a major road through north-west London, starting at Marble Arch in the City of Westminster and running north to Edgware in the London Borough of Barnet. It is also a boundary between several North London boroughs, the route has its origins as a Roman road and therefore runs for 10 miles in an almost perfect straight line, which is unusual in London. It is part of the modern A5 road, the road runs north-west from Marble Arch to Edgware on the outskirts of London. It crosses the Harrow Road and Marylebone Road, passing beneath the Marylebone flyover, the road passes through the areas of Maida Vale, Kilburn and Cricklewood. It then crosses the North Circular Road before West Hendon at Staples Corner, after this, the road continues in the same direction, through the Hyde, Colindale, Burnt Oak, and then reaches Edgware. The southernmost part of the Edgware Road forms part of the London Inner Ring Road and as such is part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone. However, when the zone was extended in February 2007, the became part of the free through routes which allows vehicles to cross the zone during its hours of operation without paying the charge. Along the entire route, it retains its identity as the A5 road under the Great Britain road numbering scheme, the A5 continues beyond the end of the Edgware Road, following the old Roman road for much of its route and terminating at Holyhead, Wales. The name Edgware Road is also used to refer to an area of London. The districts northern boundary is the Marylebone flyover, the postal codes of the area are W1, W2, NW1 and NW2. The part of the road between Marble Arch and the Marylebone Flyover also separates the areas of Marylebone and Bayswater, before the Romans, todays Edgware Road began as an ancient trackway within the Great Middlesex Forest. The Romans later incorporated the track into Watling Street, during the 18th century, it was a destination for Huguenot migrants. By 1811, Thomas Telford produced a re-design for what was known as a section of the London to Holyhead road. Telfords redesign emerged only a year after the area saw the establishment of Great Britains first Indian restaurant, the area began to attract Arab migrants in the late 19th century during a period of increased trade with the Ottoman Empire. They established the present-day mix of bars and shisha cafes, which make the area known to Londoners by nicknames such as Little Cairo and these shisha cafés have been hard hit by the enforcement of the England-wide smoking ban in 2007. One of the two Edgware Road tube stations was one of the sites of the 7 July bombings, a bomb was detonated on a train leaving the tube station serving the Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines and heading for Paddington tube station. Six people were killed in the blast, Colin Morley,52, Jennifer Vanda Ann Nicholson,24, Johnathan Downey,34, Laura Webb,29, Michael Brewster,52, the perpetrator was the ringleader of the 7 July bombings, Mohammed Siddique Khan. On the first anniversary of the bombings, a plaque to the victims was unveiled at the station
Edgware Road
–
Edgware Road at Paddington
Edgware Road
–
Shoot-up Hill, one of several names for Edgware Road.
Edgware Road
–
Roman Britain, with the route of Watling Street in red
Edgware Road
–
Hyde Park toll gate.
30.
Great Portland Street
–
Great Portland Street in the West End of London links Oxford Street with Albany Street and the A501 Marylebone Road and Euston Road. The road forms the boundary between Fitzrovia to the east and Marylebone to the west, parts of it are in the City of Westminsters Marylebone High Street and West End wards. Long sections of Great Portland Street are in two Westminster City Council conservation areas, Great Portland Street was developed by the Dukes of Portland, who owned most of the eastern half of Marylebone in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was first rated as John Street in 1726, Great Portland Street separates different areas with distinct identities, such as the grandeur of Portland Place and Harley Street, and the artistic and independent areas of Fitzrovia. Different owners and interests influenced the development of the area and affected the street layout. Great Portland Streets name is derived from the estate and several street names in the area are related to the areas ownership. Although the land up to Great Titchfield Street was controlled by the Portland Estate, the Berners family who owned land just to the east of Great Portland Street, developed from Wells Street and Rathbone Place in the mid-18th century. At the same time the Middlesex Hospital expanded on land on a 99-year lease around Mortimer Street, encroaching on Riding House, the proximity of unrelated developers with different agendas explains the unusual pattern of street grids centred on Great Portland Street, where several east-west streets terminate or originate. Great Portland Street runs straight north to south through the grid of streets. It has also resulted in it becoming a divider, emphasising the areas to either side. Development of the estate was gradual but particularly so on Great Portland Street, the trend of period groupings is another result of the slowness of the first development. Various area maps from the 18th century onward provide detail to how Great Portland Street has changed over time, the southern end of Great Portland Street has been built as part of the development begun by Edward Harley and Lady Cavendish. With the exception of small villages at Mary Le Bone and Tottenham Court, to the south, the street patterns which were the inspiration for the new development of formal squares and streets can be seen in places such as Soho Square. The street pattern of the area has been laid out almost exactly as it is today. Notable differences are the presence of Foley House where Langham Place is today, and Portland Place shown in its original design as a close of grand houses. Also, the line of Great Portland Street has been established but the buildings at the end have not been built. One other curiosity in the planning of Great Portland Street, which remains today, is its abrupt widening just north of Clipstone Street. Great Portland Streets buildings are not complete at the northern end
Great Portland Street
–
Great Portland Street marks the border of Marylebone and Fitzrovia
Great Portland Street
–
A view south down Great Portland Street from the Marylebone Road
Great Portland Street
–
Marylebone Toll Booth on Great Portland Street circa 1790
Great Portland Street
–
Fields north of Great Portland Street in the late 1700s
31.
Marylebone Station
–
Marylebone station is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the Marylebone area of the City of Westminster. On the National Rail network it is known as London Marylebone and is the southern terminus of the Chiltern Main Line to Birmingham. On the Underground it is on the Bakerloo line between Edgware Road and Baker Street and it is in Travelcard Zone 1. Marylebone was the last of Londons main line termini to be built and it has limited connections to the Underground as it was built after the main tube lines in the area. Marylebone station suffered from a lack of traffic and after the GCML closed in 1966, by the 1980s, it was threatened with closure, but was reprieved due to continued commuter traffic on the London to Aylesbury Line and from High Wycombe. In 1994 the station found a new role as the terminus of the Chiltern Main Line, following privatisation, the station was expanded with two additional platforms in 2006 and improved services to Birmingham Snow Hill. In 2015 services began between Marylebone and Oxford Parkway via a new chord connecting the line to the Oxford to Bicester Line. Marylebone is one of the squares on the British Monopoly board, the station stands on Melcombe Place just north of Marylebone Road, a straight west-to-east thoroughfare through Marylebone in central London, Baker Street is close by to the east and south east. It is in the northern, Lisson Grove, neighbourhood of the district, in a projection of the Bryanston. North-east is Regents Park, north in a network of residential streets is Lords Cricket Ground and south. Other nearby London termini are Euston and Paddington, the London Bus routes 2,13,18,27,30,74,113,139,189,205,274 and 453 and night routes N18, N74 and N205 serve the station. The main line station has six platforms, two built in 1899, two inserted into the carriage road in the 1980s, and two built in September 2006. It is the only non-electrified terminal in London, Marylebone is operated by Chiltern Railways, making it one of the few London terminal stations not to be managed by Network Rail. There are services to Oxford via the Oxford to Bicester Line, the early history of Marylebone is tied into the Great Central Railways Great Central Main Line extension into London. When Sir Edward Watkin became chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1864, the approach to Marylebone was the last section of the Great Central Main Line to be built. Progress was delayed in the 1890s because of objections, particularly as the line would pass through Lords, Watkin promised that Lords would not be disrupted by the railway construction, and an Act to complete the line was passed on 28 March 1893. The station was built on a 51-acre site around Blandford and Harewood Squares, Watkin resigned the chairmanship in 1894 following ill health, and was replaced by Lord Wharncliffe. The approach to the station through Lords was achieved by a cut, the station opened to coal traffic on 27 July 1898 and to passengers on 15 March 1899
Marylebone Station
–
Main Entrance
Marylebone Station
–
Its domestic scale fits H.W. Braddock's English Renaissance Marylebone Station (1899) unobtrusively into its urban context.
Marylebone Station
–
Manchester bound express waiting at Maryebone in 1956, headed by an
A3 Pacific
Marylebone Station
–
Up local train in 1961
32.
Marylebone Cricket Club
–
Marylebone Cricket Club is a cricket club in London, founded in 1787. It owns, and is based at, Lords in St Johns Wood, MCC was formerly the governing body of cricket both in England and Wales as well as worldwide. In 1993 many of its functions were transferred to the International Cricket Council and its English governance passed to the Test. MCC revised the Laws of Cricket in 1788 and continues to reissue them, since its foundation, the club has raised its own teams which are essentially occasional and have never taken part in any formal competition. Depending on the quality of the opposition in any match, MCC teams have held important match status from 1787 to 1894. MCC has never played in a List A match, MCC teams play many matches against minor opposition and, on these occasions, they relinquish their first-class status. Traditionally, to mark the beginning of each English season in April, MCC plays the reigning County Champions at Lords, the exact date of MCCs foundation is lost but seems to have been sometime in the late spring or the summer of 1787. Many of its members became dissatisfied with the surroundings and complained that the site was too public. They asked Thomas Lord, a bowler at the White Conduit, to secure a more private venue within easy distance of London. When Lord opened his new ground in May 1787, the White Conduit moved there, there was a match at Lords starting on 30 July 1787 titled Marylebone Cricket Club v White Conduit Club. The England touring team wore the red and yellow stripes of the Marylebone Cricket Club as their colours for the last time on the tour to New Zealand in 1996/97. The true provenance of MCCs colours is unknown, but its players often turned out sporting Sky Blue, until well into the 19th century. Another theory, which chimes with the origins, is that MCC borrowed its colours from the livery colours of a founding patron, Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond. Although MCC remains the framer and copyright holder of the Laws of Cricket, in recent times the ICC has begun instituting changes to match regulations without much consultation with MCC. Also, in moving its location from Lords to Dubai, the ICC gave a signal of breaking with the past and from MCC, changes to the laws of cricket are still made by the MCC. Any changes to these require a resolution of the MCC committee. MCC has long had an involvement in coaching the game of cricket. As of 2013 the clubs head coach Mark Alleyne heads an operation involving the running of an indoor-cricket school
Marylebone Cricket Club
–
A plaque in Dorset Square marks the site of the original Lord's Ground and commemorates the founding of the MCC
Marylebone Cricket Club
–
Marylebone Cricket Club
Marylebone Cricket Club
–
MCC coaching manuals over the years
Marylebone Cricket Club
–
MCC member in distinctive MCC colours
33.
Lisson Grove
–
Lisson Grove is a district and a street of the City of Westminster, London, just to the north of the city ring road. There are many surrounding the area. To the north is Lords Cricket Ground in St Johns Wood, to the west are Little Venice, Paddington and Watling Street. To the north east is Primrose Hill and south east is Marylebone, which includes the station and Dorset Square. It is west of the London Planetarium, Madame Tussauds, Baker Street, the postal districts are NW1 and NW8. Occasionally referred to as Lissom Grove, originally Lisson Grove was part of the manor of Lilestone which stretched as far as Hampstead. Lisson Green as a manor broke away c.1236 with its own manor house, Stingo was the name of a particular Yorkshire ale. Until the late 18th century the district remained essentially rural, the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn moved briefly to a farm in Lisson Grove in the spring of 1791 in order to have quiet surroundings in which to compose during his three-year stay in England. Nowadays Lisson Grove is a much improved section of West London, the area was notorious for drinking, crime and prostitution, as well as the extreme poverty of the people and the squalor and dilapidation of the homes they lived in. Local police officers patrolled the district in pairs, and they described the women of the area as the most drunken, violent. No.34 Alpha Cottages is memorialised in the name of a block of flats on Ashmill Street, opposite Ranston Street, One such friend and colleague of Blake was Richard Cosway whose studio on Stafford Street was renamed as Cosway Street. Cosway was not only a famous and fashionable painter, he was also a mesmerist and magician who practised arcana related to alchemical, There are reports of erotic ceremonies, the imbibing of drugs or elixirs, and ritual nudity. In 1829 the Catholic church of Our Lady was built, scoles in the new Gothic style, it was one of the first Catholic churches following the Catholic Emancipation Act. The same year George Shillibeer operated the first London omnibus from the Yorkshire Stingo taking passengers to Bank, Bell Street, now famous in history as the spot where Turkish baths were first established, is the main stream of a low colony, with many tributary channels. Hollingshead was, of course, referring only to the first such bath in London, the first Victorian Turkish bath was actually built near Cork in Ireland in 1856, while the first in England opened in Manchester in 1857. During the latter part of the 19th century a number of artisans and workers flats and cottages sprang up from social housing initiatives spearheaded by Octavia Hill and the Peabody Trust. Across the road from The Green Man Inn, in 1884 Miles Building was built by the Improved Industrial Dwellings Association, facing Bell Street and Penfold Place. John Nash as a director of the Regents Canal Company formed in 1812 began building detached villas set in gardens facing onto either side of the section of the canal running parallel to Lodge Road
Lisson Grove
–
Church Street Market, Lisson Grove
Lisson Grove
Lisson Grove
34.
Cleveland Street, London
–
Cleveland Street in central London runs north to south from Euston Road to the junction of Mortimer Street and Goodge Street. It lies within Fitzrovia, in the W1 post code area, Cleveland Street also runs along part of the border between Bloomsbury which is located in London Borough of Camden, and West End and Marylebone High Street in the City of Westminster. Cleveland Street marks the border between the City of Westminster to its west and the London Borough of Camden to the east. This border is ancient, largely following the old divide between the parish of Saint Marylebone and the parish of Saint Pancras to the east. The street was also a boundary between large estates, such as the Bedford Estate and the Berners Estate, maps show that the southern end of modern Cleveland Street, beyond Riding House Street, was known as Upper Newman Street and then Norfolk Street. The northern section was known as Upper Cleveland Street and Buckingham Place. It became Cleveland Street for its length after a renumbering was ordered by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1867. The name comes from the Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Cleveland whose estate was connected in the 19th century with the Southampton property via Henry Fitzroy, the Southampton property later became the Bedford Estate. Cleveland Street is renowned for several events and buildings, the most notable recent one being the BT Tower. The Cleveland Street Scandal happened in 1889 at 19 Cleveland Street which at the time housed a brothel in which teenage telegraph boys served as prostitutes. The scandal was rumoured to involve Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, a show inspired by the Cleveland Street scandal and titled Cleveland Street The Musical - with book and lyrics by Glenn Chandler - is scheduled to run in London between April and May 2011. In his book Jack the Ripper, The Final Solution, Stephen Knight mentions Cleveland Street in conjunction with two houses in the street, after their secret wedding, Annie Elizabeth Crook was allegedly settled in a flat at 6 Cleveland Street. The conspiracy theory behind the murders described in Knights book has been adapted into From Hell. Several scenes in the movie take place in Cleveland Street, although they were not shot on location, the Grade II listed buildings are numbers, 16-22. No 22, was twice the home of Charles Dickens,54 was Cleveland Hall which was constructed as a radical meeting place as a bequest from William Devonshire Saull. Secularists, spiritualists and anarchists met there until the hall was converted into a hall for the West London Methodist Mission in 1890. 68106 45-49139,141 The latter has a plaque signifying that Samuel Morse. 143-149151 The BT Tower complex, the tower was London tallest building when it was completed in 1960 and it remains a major London landmark, being currently the 8th tallest building in London at 177 metres plus a 12-metre antenna
Cleveland Street, London
–
A view of Cleveland Street looking south from the intersection with Greenwell Street (previously Buckingham Street), featuring the BT Tower
Cleveland Street, London
–
Cleveland Street as seen on Greenwood's map of the area in the late 1820s
Cleveland Street, London
–
Area before Cleveland Street (Norfolk St) was laid out in 1774
Cleveland Street, London
–
Cleveland Street Work House London
35.
Fitzrovia
–
It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail, education and healthcare, with no single activity dominating. The historically bohemian area was home to such writers as Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw. The neighbourhood is classified as above-averagely deprived, and parts of it have the worst living environment in the according to a government report. In 2016 the Sunday Times named the district as the best place to live in London, Fitzrovia is probably named after the Fitzroy Tavern, a public house situated on the corner of Charlotte Street and Windmill Street within the district. Until the end of the 19th century the area now includes Fitzrovia belonged to the Duke of Grafton and his family, their surname is Fitzroy. The name was adopted during the years initially by and later in recognition of the artistic. The name Fitzrovia was recorded in print for the first time by Tom Driberg MP in the William Hickey gossip column of the Daily Express in 1940. The writer and dandy Julian MacLaren-Ross recalled in his Memoirs of the Forties that Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu aka Tambi, Tambi had apparently claimed to have coined the name Fitzrovia. Maclaren-Ross recalls Tambimuttu saying, Now we go to the Black Horse, the Burglars Rest, maclaren-Ross replied, I know the Fitzroy to which Tambimuttu said, Ah, that was in the Thirties, now they go to other places. Tambimuttu then took him on a pub crawl, the Fitzroy Tavern was named after Charles FitzRoy, who first developed the northern part of the area in the 18th century. FitzRoy purchased the Manor of Tottenhall and built Fitzroy Square, to which he gave his name, the square is the most distinguished of the original architectural features of the district, having been designed in part by Robert Adam. The south-western area was first developed by the Duke of Newcastle who established Oxford Market, in addition to Fitzroy Square and nearby Fitzroy Street, there are numerous locations named for the FitzRoy family and Devonshire/Portland family, both significant local landowners. Charles FitzRoy was the grandson of Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton, William Bentinck, 2nd Duke of Portland and his wife Margaret Harley lend their names to Portland Place, Great Portland Street and Harley Street. Margaret Harley was daughter of Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, for whom Oxford Street, the Marquessate of Titchfield is a subsidiary title to the Dukedom of Portland, hence Great Titchfield Street. The name of the Grafton familys country estate is Euston Hall, two of Londons oldest surviving residential walkways can be found in Fitzrovia. Colville Place and the pre-Victorian Middleton Buildings are in the old London style of a way, another notable modern building is the YMCA Indian Student Hostel on Fitzroy Square, one of the few surviving buildings by Ralph Tubbs. The Candy brothers scheme, which was unpopular with local people, stanhope plc took over the project, and proposed a short term project which would allow residents to create temporary allotments on the site until a new development was started. However, the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which had a controlling interest in the site, announced in March 2010 its intention to sell the site on the open market, in July 2010, the site passed into the ownership of Aviva Investments and Exemplar Properties
Fitzrovia
–
Charlotte Place, on the border of Camden and Westminster
Fitzrovia
–
The
Fitzroy Tavern may have given its name to Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia
–
Map featuring the Fitzrovia area (see north of Tottenham Court Road), 1804
Fitzrovia
–
Fitzroy Square
36.
History of London
–
London has a history going back over 2,000 years. In the main time, it has grown to one of the most significant financial and cultural capitals on Earth and it has experienced plague, devastating fire, civil war, aerial bombardment, terrorist attacks, and widespread rioting. The City of London is its core and today is its primary financial district. Trinovantes were the Iron Age tribe who inhabited the area prior to the Romans. Geoffrey provides prehistoric London with an array of legendary kings, such as Lud who, he claims, renamed the town Caer Ludein, from which London was derived. However, despite intensive excavations, archaeologists have found no evidence of a major settlement in the area. There have been scattered prehistoric finds, evidence of farming, burial and traces of habitation and it is now considered unlikely that a pre-Roman city existed, but as some of the Roman city remains unexcavated, it is still just possible that some major settlement may yet be discovered. London was most likely an area with scattered settlement. Some recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area, in 1999, the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found, again on the foreshore south of Vauxhall Bridge. This bridge either crossed the Thames, or went to a now lost island in the river, dendrology dated the timbers to 1500BC. In 2001 a further dig found that the timbers were driven vertically into the ground on the bank of the Thames west of Vauxhall Bridge. In 2010 the foundations of a timber structure, dated to 4000BC, were found on the Thames foreshore. The function of the structure is not known. All these structures are on the bank at a natural crossing point where the River Effra flows into the Thames. Numerous finds have made of spear heads and weaponry from the Bronze and Iron Ages near the banks of the Thames in the London area. This suggests that the Thames was an important tribal boundary, Londinium was established as a civilian town by the Romans about seven years after the invasion of AD43. London, like Rome, was founded on the point of the river where it was enough to bridge. Early Roman London occupied a small area, roughly equivalent to the size of Hyde Park
History of London
–
Carausius coin from Londinium mint.
History of London
–
Plaque in the
City of London noting the re-establishment of the Roman walled city.
History of London
–
Medal of
Constantius I capturing
London (inscribed as LON) in 296 after defeating
Allectus. Beaurains hoard.
History of London
–
Alfred the Great.
37.
St Marylebone Parish Church
–
St Marylebone Parish Church is an Anglican church on the Marylebone Road in London. It was built to the designs of Thomas Hardwick in 1813–17, the present site is the third used by the parish for its church. The first was south, near Oxford Street. The church there was demolished in 1400 and a new one erected further north and this was completely rebuilt in 1740–42, and converted into a chapel-of-ease when Hardwicks church was constructed. The Marylebone area takes its name from the church, located behind the church is St Marylebone School, a Church of England school for girls. The first church for the parish was built in the vicinity of the present Marble Arch c.1200, and dedicated to St John the Evangelist. The bishop stipulated that the old churchyard should be preserved, but also gave permission to enclose a new ground at the new site. It was closer to the village, at the end of Marylebone High Street. Having fallen into a state of decay, it was demolished in 1740 and it was in this church Francis Bacon was married in 1606, and its interior was portrayed by William Hogarth in the marriage scene from his famous series A Rakes Progress. By 1722, its congregation was so large it needed a chapel of ease in the form of the Marybone Chapel, a new, small church built on the same site opened in April 1742. It was a brick building with a small bell tower at the west end. The interior had galleries on three sides, some monuments from the previous church were preserved in the new building. In 1818 it became a chapel-of-ease to the new parish church which superseded it. It was demolished in 1949, and its site, at the end of Marylebone High Street is now a public garden. Charles Wesley lived and worked in the area and sent for the churchs rector John Harley and told him Sir, whatever the world may say of me, I have lived, and I die, I pray you to bury me in your churchyard. On his death, his body was carried to the church by eight clergymen of the Church of England, one of his sons, Samuel, was later organist of the present church. It was also in building that Lord Byron was baptised in 1788, Nelsons daughter Horatia was baptised. This is also the church in which the diplomat Sir William Hamilton married Emma Hart, the architect James Gibbs was buried there in 1751. The crypt was the place of members of the Bentinck family, including William Cavendish-Bentinck
St Marylebone Parish Church
–
Photo of St Marylebone Parish Church
St Marylebone Parish Church
–
The marriage scene from "The Rake's Progress", showing the interior of the second St Marylebone
St Marylebone Parish Church
–
Memorial to the
3rd Duke of Portland at the family vault in St Marylebone Parish Church
38.
Bourne (stream)
–
Bourne is a word from the Anglo-Saxon language of England. It means an intermittent stream, flowing from a spring, frequent in chalk and limestone country where the rock becomes saturated with winter rain, that slowly drains away until the rock becomes dry, when the stream ceases. A winterbourne is a stream or river that is dry through the summer months, Bourne is used as a place name or as a part of a place name, usually in chalk downland countryside. Alternative forms are bourn or borne or born, the apparent variant, borne found in the placename, Camborne, arises from the Cornish language and is in fact a false friend, it refers to a hill. Born/borne in German also means fount, or spring, and is related to the Indo-European root and that born/borne appears throughout Europe as a placename is also an important clue that this spelling is an etymological precursor to the Middle English bourne/burn. Cf. Burn, in use in Scotland and North East England especially, but also found elsewhere in England such as, Blackburn, Gisburn, Woburn, Kilburn, Tyburn, Winkburn. For rivers and places named Bourne or having this word as part of the name, see Bourne
Bourne (stream)
–
Rivers
39.
Tyburn (stream)
–
The River Tyburn is a river in London, which runs underground from South Hampstead through St Jamess Park to meet the River Thames by Whitehall Stairs. It is not to be confused with the Tyburn Brook which is a tributary of the River Westbourne that is the next Thames tributary to the west on the north bank. Before it was culverted, the Tyburn rose from the confluence of two tributary streams from the hills of South Hampstead and its main source is the Shepherds Well near Fitzjohns Avenue in Hampstead. Between St Jamess Park and Buckingham Palace the waters divided to create two distributaries, creating Thorney Island on which Westminster Abbey was built, Marylebone Lane, which defies the grid pattern of streets, follows the course of the Tyburn on what was its left bank through Marylebone village. From its source at the Shepherds Well near Fitzjohns Avenue in Hampstead it follows Scholars Pond Sewer south along Fitzjohns Avenue through South Hampstead under Avenue Road to Regents Park, to enter the parks perimeter the Tyburn is carried in an aqueduct over the Regents Canal then culverted. Tyburn gave its name to the predecessors of Oxford Street and Park Lane—Tyburn Road, tributaries of the River Thames Subterranean rivers of London List of rivers in England Tyburn. Silent UK – Urban Exploration, River Tyburn at the Wayback Machine
Tyburn (stream)
–
An antique shop claims that part of the stream flows through an open conduit in its basement.
40.
Swiss Cottage
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Swiss Cottage is a district of the London Borough of Camden in London. It is located 3.25 miles north-northwest of Charing Cross and it is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and is the location of Swiss Cottage tube station. Swiss Cottage forms part of Hampstead and sits at the triumvirate of postcodes of Hampstead NW3, St Johns Wood NW8 and it is the proposed site for the tallest residential tower in Camden. This is does not appear to be true, however. There was certainly an old building which was a dairy and a farmhouse when the area was rural in the 19th century, the pub was in fact re-designed to resemble a Swiss chalet only after this old dairy/farmhouse was demolished in the mid-1960s. Before that time the pub did not look anything like a Swiss chalet or cottage and it is therefore likely that the style of the dairy building gave the area its name, and that the name of the area inspired the name and design of the pub long afterwards. The district formed part of the ancient parish of Hampstead and it developed following the Finchley Road Act 1826, which authorised construction of Finchley New Road and Avenue Road, with The Swiss Tavern built at the junction of the new roads. The neighbourhood around Finchley Road and Avenue Road was redeveloped in 1937 and 1938 with the opening of an Odeon cinema, after World War II, local authority housing was constructed by the London County Council in the area. On 20 March 2014 a planning application was submitted for a 24-storey tower to be next to Swiss Cottage tube station. The application was rejected by Camden Council on 11 September 2014 following mass local protests, Swiss Cottage is in the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency, formed at the 2010 general election. It was formerly in the Hampstead and Highgate constituency, for which the MP was Glenda Jackson and it forms part of the Barnet and Camden London Assembly constituency. There is a Swiss Cottage electoral ward, electing councillors to Camden London Borough Council, Swiss Cottage is located 3.25 miles north-northwest of Charing Cross. Adjoining neighbourhoods include Hampstead Village to the northeast, Chalk Farm and Camden Town to the southeast, Belsize Park to the east, St Johns Wood to the south, Regents Park is within walking distance of Swiss Cottage. It is bounded by five conservation areas, Belsize, Elsworthy, Fitzjohns-Netherhall, South Hampstead, St. Johns Wood, according to the 2011 census, 67% of the Swiss Cottage ward population was white. 7% was Other Asian and 5% Indian, 33% were Christians, 24% irreligious, 11% Jewish and 10% Muslim. Swiss Cottage/Finchley Road is identified as a centre in the London Plan. Local major hotels include Marriott Regents Park, Danubius Regents Park, there are many smaller hotels in the area. Notable restaurants that include European, South-East Asian and Japanese cuisine, the area is served by Swiss Cottage and Finchley Road tube stations on the Jubilee line of the London Underground and is a local hub for London Buses
Swiss Cottage
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The current Ye Olde Swiss Cottage public house
Swiss Cottage
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Districts
41.
Domesday Book
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Domesday Book is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states, Then, at the midwinter, was the king in Glocester with his council. After this had the king a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about this land, how it was occupied and it was written in Medieval Latin, was highly abbreviated, and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The assessors reckoning of a mans holdings and their values, as recorded in Domesday Book, was dispositive, the name Domesday Book came into use in the 12th century. As Richard FitzNeal wrote in the Dialogus de Scaccario, for as the sentence of that strict and terrible last account cannot be evaded by any skilful subterfuge and its sentence cannot be quashed or set aside with impunity. That is why we have called the book the Book of Judgement, because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgement, are unalterable. The manuscript is held at The National Archives at Kew, London, in 2011, the Open Domesday site made the manuscript available online. The book is a primary source for modern historians and historical economists. Domesday Book encompasses two independent works, Little Domesday and Great Domesday, no surveys were made of the City of London, Winchester, or some other towns, probably due to their tax-exempt status. Most of Cumberland and Westmorland are missing, the omission of the other counties and towns is not fully explained, although in particular Cumberland and Westmorland had yet to be fully conquered. Little Domesday – so named because its format is smaller than its companions – is the more detailed survey. It may have represented the first attempt, resulting in a decision to avoid such level of detail in Great Domesday, some of the largest such magnates held several hundred fees, in a few cases in more than one county. For example, the chapter of the Domesday Book Devonshire section concerning Baldwin the Sheriff lists 176 holdings held in-chief by him, as a review of taxes owed, it was highly unpopular. Each countys list opened with the demesne lands. It should be borne in mind that under the system the king was the only true owner of land in England. He was thus the ultimate overlord and even the greatest magnate could do no more than hold land from him as a tenant under one of the contracts of feudal land tenure. In some counties, one or more principal towns formed the subject of a separate section and this principle applies more specially to the larger volume, in the smaller one, the system is more confused, the execution less perfect. Domesday names a total of 13,418 places and these include fragments of custumals, records of the military service due, of markets, mints, and so forth
Domesday Book
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Domesday Book: an engraving published in 1900. Great Domesday (the larger volume) and Little Domesday (the smaller volume), in their 1869 bindings, lying on their older "
Tudor " bindings.
Domesday Book
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Great Domesday in its "
Tudor " binding: a wood-engraving of the 1860s
Domesday Book
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Domesday chest, the German-style iron-bound chest of c.1500 in which Domesday Book was kept in the 17th and 18th centuries
Domesday Book
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Entries for
Croydon and
Cheam,
Surrey, in the 1783 edition of Domesday Book
42.
Barking Abbey
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Barking Abbey is a former royal monastery located in Barking, in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. It has been described as one of the most important nunneries in the country, originally established in the 7th century, from the late 10th century the abbey followed the Rule of St. Benedict. The abbey had an endowment and sizable income but suffered severely after 1377, when the River Thames flooded around 720 acres of the abbeys land. Despite this, at the time of the dissolution it was still the third wealthiest nunnery in England, the abbey continued to operate for almost 900 years, until its closure in 1539, as part of King Henry VIIIs Dissolution of the Monasteries. During its existence, the abbey had many notable abbesses including several saints, former queens, the abbess of Barking held precedence over all other abbesses in England. The ruined remains of Barking Abbey now form part of an open space known as Abbey Green. Barking Abbey was one of two founded in the 7th century by Saint Erkenwald. Erkenwald founded Chertsey Abbey for himself, and Barking Abbey for his sister Saint Ethelburga, Erkenwald and Ethelburga were of royal ancestry and were born in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey. It is said Ethelburga chose to become a nun to avoid having to marry King Edwin of Northumbria, however, this seems doubtful and there may have been confusion between Ethelburga and Æthelburh of Kent. Either way, Ethelburgas brother Erkenwald founded Barking Abbey specifically for her, Ethelburga served as the Abbeys first abbess. Saint Hildelitha, a nun brought from abroad to teach Ethelburga, Erkenwald himself would die at the abbey in 693, although his body was taken to Chertsey Abbey for burial. The abbey was endowed by the East Saxon Princes, who came from the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of the East Saxons/Kingdom of Essex, the abbey was initially dedicated to Saint Mary. However, it was dedicated to both Saint Mary and Saint Ethelburga. Saint Wulfhilda became abbess of Barking Abbey during the 10th century, Wulfhilda had grown up at Wilton Abbey, Wiltshire. King Edgar the Peaceful fell in love with Wulfhilda at Wilton, eventually Edgar tried to entrap Wulfhilda, getting her aunt, Abbess Wenflaeda of Wherwell to fake an illness and summon Wulfhilda, Edgar was the one waiting when Wulfhila arrived. On arriving, Wulfhilda found his fervour so alarming that she fled, leaving her sleeve in his hand, Wulfhilda pursued her ambition and became a nun. King Edgar then created her Abbess of Barking and donated considerable estates to Barking Abbey, Wulfhilda herself donated 20 villages to the abbey and established another monastery at Horton in Kent. King Edgars eventual queen, Ælfthryth became jealous of Wulfhilda, Wulfhilda was later restored by Edgars and Ælfthryths son, King Æthelred the Unready
Barking Abbey
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Barking Abbey: curfew tower with St Margaret's church in background
Barking Abbey
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The Curfew Tower
Barking Abbey
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The ruins – Comet included.
Barking Abbey
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The ruins
43.
Shilling
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The shilling is a unit of currency formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, and other British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, a term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, and from there back to Old Norse. Slang terms for the old shilling coins include bob and hog, while the derivation of bob is uncertain, John Camden Hotten in his 1864 Slang Dictionary says the original version was bobstick and wonders if it is connected with Sir Robert Walpole. One abbreviation for shilling is s, often it was represented by a solidus symbol, which may have originally stood for a long s or ſ, thus 1/9 would be one shilling and ninepence. A price with no pence was sometimes written with a slash, the solidus symbol is still used for the shilling currency unit in former British East Africa, rather than sh. During the Great Recoinage of 1816, the mint was instructed to coin one troy pound of silver into 66 shillings. This set the weight of the shilling, and its subsequent decimal replacement 5 new pence coin, at 87.2727 grains or 5.655 grams from 1816 until 1990, in the past, the English world has had various myths about the shilling. One myth was that it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere, a shilling was a coin used in England from the reign of Henry VII. The term shilling was in use in Scotland from early medieval times, the common currency created in 1707 by Article 16 of the Articles of Union continued in use until decimalisation in 1971. In the traditional pounds, shillings and pence system, there were 20 shillings per pound and 12 pence per shilling, three coins denominated in multiple shillings were also in circulation at this time. In the Irish Free State and Republic of Ireland the shilling was issued as scilling in Irish and it was worth 1/20th of an Irish pound, and was interchangeable at the same value to the British coin, which continued to be used in Northern Ireland. The coin featured a bull on the reverse side, the first minting, from 1928 until 1941, contained 75% silver, more than the equivalent British coin. The original Irish shilling coin ) was withdrawn from circulation on 1 January 1993, Australian shillings, twenty of which made up one Australian pound, were first issued in 1910, with the Australian coat of arms on the reverse and King Edward VII on the face. The coat of arms design was retained through the reign of King George V until a new head design was introduced for the coins of King George VI. This design continued until the last year of issue in 1963, in 1966, Australias currency was decimalised and the shilling was replaced by a ten cent coin, where 10 shillings made up one Australian dollar. The slang term for a coin in Australia was deener. The slang term for a shilling as currency unit was bob, after 1966, shillings continued to circulate, as they were replaced by 10-cent coins of the same size and weight. New Zealand shillings, twenty of which made up one New Zealand pound, were first issued in 1933, in 1967, New Zealands currency was decimalised and the shilling was replaced by a ten cent coin of the same size and weight
Shilling
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A 1933
UK shilling
Shilling
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1956 Elizabeth II UK shilling showing English and Scottish reverses
Shilling
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Countries in
Africa where the currency is called shilling.
Shilling
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Owing to the reach of the
British Empire, the shilling was once used on every inhabited continent. This two-shilling piece was minted for
British West Africa.
44.
Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford
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Robert de Vere, hereditary Master Chamberlain of England, was son of Aubrey de Vere, 1st Earl of Oxford, and Agnes of Essex. He succeeded his brother as the third Earl of Oxford, and was one of the guarantors of Magna Carta. Robert de Vere was the surviving son of Aubrey de Vere, 1st Earl of Oxford. The date of his birth is not known, but he was born after 1164. Almost nothing is known of his life until 1207, when he married Isabel de Bolebec, the widow of Henry de Nonant of Totnes, Devon. In 1206-7 Isabel and her sister Constance were co-heiresses of their niece, another Isabel de Bolebec and they divided the barony of Whitchurch. The fact that aunt and niece had identical names, Isabel de Bolbec, when Roberts brother, Aubrey de Vere, 2nd Earl of Oxford, died in the latter half of 1214, Robert succeeded to his title and estates and the hereditary office of Master Chamberlain of England. The dower of Earl Aubreys second wife, Alice, had not been formalized, in 1215 Oxford settled his sister-in-laws dower by lot, the earl drawing two knights fees for every one drawn by Alice. This is the only instance of dower being settled in this manner. Oxford joined the barons who met at Stamford and forced King John to issue Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. The earl was elected one of the barons who were to guarantee the Kings adherence to its terms. Together with other Magna Carta barons, he was excommunicated as a rebel by Pope Innocent III on 16 December 1215, Oxford took up arms against King John, but pledged loyalty to him after the King had taken Castle Hedingham in March 1216. Later in the year, however, he did homage to Prince Louis at Rochester. Louis entered London and was proclaimed King, on 14 June 1216, he captured Winchester and soon controlled over half of England. In the midst of crisis, King John died, prompting many of the barons to desert Louis in favor of Johns nine-year-old son. In 1217 Prince Louis retook Castle Hedingham and restored it to Oxford, although he did homage to Henry, he was not fully restored in his offices and lands until February 1218. Earl Robert served as a justice in 1220-21, and died before 21 October 1221. Robert de Vere and Isabel de Bolebec had a son, Hugh de Vere, the Complete Peerage, edited by H. A
Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford
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One of only four surviving 1215 exemplifications of Magna Carta, property of the British Library
45.
Thomas Hobson
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Thomas Hobson, was an English carrier, best known as the origin of the expression Hobsons choice. The term Hobsons choice originated in the century, after Hobsons death. The poet John Milton made Hobson, and the phrase, well known, when his horses were not needed to deliver mail, he rented them to students and academic staff of the University of Cambridge. Hobson soon discovered that his fastest horses were the most popular, so as not to exhaust them, he established a strict rotation system, allowing customers to rent only the next horse in line. This policy, this one or none, has come to be known as Hobsons choice and it is not an absence of choice, rather choosing one thing or nothing. In legal jargon, Hobsons Choice is known to barristers as the Cab-rank rule and this may come from Hobsons choice of renting out hackney horses strictly by rote. Hobson is best remembered in the English vernacular as something of a miser and he funded the construction of Hobsons Conduit, a man-made watercourse built in 1614 to provide clean drinking water to the population of Cambridge. The conduit channelled water from Vicars Brook, a tributary of the River Cam fed by springs at Nine Wells five miles south of Cambridge. Hobson is commemorated at Nine Wells on a nineteenth century obelisk, the fountain was moved there in 1856 from its original location in the Market Square after a fire in 1849, when it was replaced by a cast iron drinking fountain. Upstream the conduit is flanked by gardens adjoining Brookside and by the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, Hobson bought Anglesey Priory in 1625 and converted it into a country house, which, under the name Anglesey Abbey, now belongs to the English National Trust. Hobson had acquired lands around Chesterton, Cambridgeshire by the late 1590s, Hobson lived at Chesterton Hall in 1627, four years before his death in 1631. In Cambridge city centre, two streets named Hobsons Passage and Hobson Street conjoin very near to his old coaching inn, at the junction of Jesus Lane. The inn is now part of the King Street Run, and has had changes of name but is today called the Cambridge Brewhouse
Thomas Hobson
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1629 portrait of Thomas Hobson, from the
National Portrait Gallery.
Marylebone
London/Mayfair-Marylebone travel guide from Wikivoyage
