1.
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
2.
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
3.
Charing Cross
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Charing Cross denotes the junction of Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square in central London. It gives its name to several landmarks, including Charing Cross railway station, Charing Cross is named after the Eleanor cross that stood on the site, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. The site of the cross has been occupied since 1675 by a statue of King Charles I. A loose Victorian replica of the cross, the Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross, was erected a short distance to the east outside the railway station. Until 1931, Charing Cross referred to the part of Whitehall between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square, at least one property retains a Charing Cross postal address, Drummonds Bank, on the corner of Whitehall and The Mall, which is designated 49 Charing Cross. Since the early 19th century, Charing Cross has often been regarded as the centre of London. Erect a rich and stately carved cross, Whereon her statue shall with glory shine, George Peele The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First The name of the area, Charing, is derived from the Old English word cierring, referring to a bend in the River Thames. Folk etymology suggests the name derives from chère reine — dear queen in French — and this wooden sculpted cross was the work of the medieval sculptor, Alexander of Abingdon. It was destroyed in 1647 on the orders of Parliament during the Civil War, a 70 ft -high stone sculpture in front of Charing Cross railway station is a copy of the original cross. Erected in 1865, it is situated a few hundred yards to the east of the original cross and it was designed by the architect E. M. Barry and carved by Thomas Earp of Lambeth out of Portland stone, Mansfield stone and Aberdeen granite. It is not a replica, being more ornate than the original. A variation on the name appears to be Charygcrouche, near St Martin in the Fields, since 1675 the site of the cross has been occupied by a statue of King Charles I mounted on a horse. The site is recognised by convention as the centre of London for the purpose of indicating distances by road in favour of other measurement points. Charing Cross is marked on maps as a road junction. Since 1 January 1931 this section of road has been designated part of the Whitehall thoroughfare, the cross has given its name to a railway station, a tube station, police station, hospital, a hotel, a theatre, and a music hall. Charing Cross Road the main route from the north was named after the railway station, at some time between 1232 and 1236, the Chapel and Hospital of St Mary Rounceval was founded at Charing. It occupied land at the corner of the modern Whitehall and into the centre of Northumberland Avenue and it was an Augustinian house, tied to a mother house at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees. The house and lands were seized for the king in 1379, protracted legal action returned some rights to the prior, but in 1414, Henry V suppressed the alien houses
4.
Points of the compass
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The points of the compass, specifically on the compass rose, mark divisions of a compass, such divisions may be referred to as winds or directions. A compass point allows reference to a heading in a general or colloquial fashion. A compass is primarily divided into the four cardinal points—north, south, east and these are often further subdivided by the addition of the four intercardinal directions—northeast between north and east, southeast, southwest, and northwest —to indicate the eight principal winds. In meteorological usage, further intermediate points between cardinal and ordinal points, such as north-northeast between north and northeast, are added to give the sixteen points of a wind compass, for most applications, the fractional points have been superseded by degrees measured clockwise from North. In ancient China 24 points of the compass were used, measuring fifteen degrees between points. The names of the compass directions follow the 32-point wind compass rose follow these rules, The cardinal directions are north, east, south, west, the ordinal directions are northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest, formed by bisecting the angle of the cardinal winds. The name is merely a combination of the cardinals it bisects, the eight principal winds are the cardinals and ordinals considered together, that is N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW. Each principal wind is 45° from its neighbour, the principal winds form the basic eight-wind compass rose. The eight half-winds are the points obtained by bisecting the angles between the principal winds, the half-winds are north-northeast, east-northeast, east-southeast, south-southeast, south-southwest, west-southwest, west-northwest and north-northwest. Notice that the name is constructed simply by combining the names of the winds to either side, with the cardinal wind coming first. The eight principal winds and the eight half-winds together yield a 16-wind compass rose, all of the above named points plus the sixteen quarter winds listed in the next paragraph define the 32 points of the wind compass rose. The sixteen quarter winds are the points obtained by bisecting the angles between the points on a 16-wind compass rose. The name of a quarter-wind is X by Y, where X is a principal wind, so northeast by east means one quarter from NE towards E, southwest by south means one quarter from SW towards S. The eight principal winds, eight half-winds and sixteen quarter winds together yield a 32-wind compass rose, in the mariners exercise of boxing the compass, all thirty-two points of the compass are named in clockwise order. The title of the Alfred Hitchcock 1959 movie, North by Northwest, is not a direction point on the 32-wind compass. The traditional compass rose of eight winds was invented by seafarers in the Mediterranean Sea during the Middle Ages. This Italianate patois was used to designate the names of the winds on the compass rose found in mariner compasses. Tramutana, Gregale, Grecho, Sirocco, Xaloc, Lebeg, Libezo, Leveche, Mezzodi, Migjorn, Magistro, Mestre, etc
5.
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
6.
London Borough of Bromley
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The London Borough of Bromley /ˈbrɒmli/ is one of the 32 London boroughs which make up Greater London. The London Borough of Bromley is south of the River Thames which flows through London, the borough is named after Bromley, its principal town. The local authority is Bromley London Borough Council, the borough is the largest in Greater London by area and occupies 59 square miles, of which the majority is Metropolitan Green Belt land. It is also perhaps the most rural, most of the population lives in the north and west of the borough, with an outlier at Biggin Hill in the far south. The borough shares borders with the London Boroughs of Lewisham and Greenwich to the North, Bexley to the North East, Southwark and Lambeth to the North West, as well as Croydon to the West. It also borders the Sevenoaks District of Kent to the East and South, westerham Heights, the highest point in London at an altitude of 804 feet, is located on the southern boundary. The Prime Meridian passes through Bromley, about 30% of the land in Bromley is farmland, the highest figure of a London Borough. The borough was formed, as were all other London boroughs, in 1969, after a local campaign, the village of Knockholt was transferred back to Kent to become part of the Sevenoaks Rural District and later Sevenoaks District. Before 1965 it had part of the Orpington Urban District. The borough is partly urban and partly rural, the former to the north, other smaller suburban areas include Anerley and nearby Crystal Palace, and Penge. In addition, parts of Mottingham, Sydenham, Swanley and Ruxley lie within the borough boundaries, there are two main built-up areas in the southern part of the borough, Hayes and West Wickham. Biggin Hill, Downe and Keston with Leaves Green and Nash are separate, smaller, local attractions include Down House, Chislehurst Caves, Holwood House, Crofton Roman Villa, and the site of The Crystal Palace. Bromley is divided into 22 wards with a total of 60 council seats, after a number of by-elections and a defection, the Conservatives regained control on 5 July 2001. The 22 wards are shown on the accompanying map, ward names often straddle the named settlements and suburban areas above, their boundaries are fixed, whereas the latter are not. In 1801, the parishes that form the modern borough had a total population of 8,944. This rose slowly throughout the 19th century, as the district built up. When the railways arrived the rate of growth increased. The population peaked in the 1970s, when began to relocate from London
7.
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
8.
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
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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
10.
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
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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
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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
13.
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom
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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
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Metropolitan Police Service
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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
15.
Fire services in the United Kingdom
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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
16.
London Fire Brigade
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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
17.
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
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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
18.
London Ambulance Service
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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
19.
London (European Parliament constituency)
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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
20.
Orpington (UK Parliament constituency)
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Orpington is a constituency created in 1945 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Jo Johnson, a Conservative. Orpington was created in a boundary review enacted at the 1945 general election. Political history The seat has been won by a a Conservative since creation except for the 1962,1964 and11966 Liberal Party wins of Eric Lubbock, the 2015 result made the seat the 43rd safest of the Conservative Partys 331 seats by percentage of majority. Role in the Liberal Party revival The seat is famous for its 1962 by-election when it was taken in a shock result, 1945-1974, The Urban District of Orpington, and part of the Rural District of Dartford. 1974-1983, The London Borough of Bromley wards of Biggin Hill, Chelsfield, Darwin, Farnborough, Goddington, Petts Wood, 1983-1997, In the same borough, Chelsfield and Goddington, Crofton, Farnborough, Orpington Central, Petts Wood and Knoll, and St Mary Cray. 1997-2010, In the same borough, Biggin Hill, Chelsfield and Goddington, Crofton, Darwin, Farnborough, Orpington Central, Petts Wood and Knoll, St Mary Cray, and St Paul’s Cray. 2010–present, In the same borough, Biggin Hill, Chelsfield and Pratts Bottom, Cray Valley East, Darwin, Farnborough and Crofton, Orpington, boundary changes The seat has changed a little in subsequent boundary reviews since 1945. List of Parliamentary constituencies in Greater London Notes References UK Constituency Maps BBC Vote 2001 Includes 1997 and 2001 results BBC Election 2005 Political Science Resources
21.
Geographic coordinate system
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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
22.
Urban sprawl
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In addition to describing a particular form of urbanization, the term also relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development. In Continental Europe the term peri-urbanisation is often used to denote similar dynamics and phenomena, There is widespread disagreement about what constitutes sprawl and how to quantify it. For example, some commentators measure sprawl only with the number of residential units per acre in a given area. But others associate it with decentralization, discontinuity, segregation of uses, the term urban sprawl is highly politicized, and almost always has negative connotations. It is criticized for causing environmental degradation, and intensifying segregation and undermining the vitality of existing urban areas, due to the pejorative meaning of the term, few openly support urban sprawl as such. The term has become a cry for managing urban growth. Definitions of sprawl vary, researchers in the field acknowledge that the term lacks precision and he argued that a better way to identify sprawl was to use indicators rather than characteristics because this was a more flexible and less arbitrary method. He proposed using accessibility and functional space as indicators. Ewings approach has been criticized for assuming that sprawl is defined by negative characteristics, what constitutes sprawl may be considered a matter of degree and will always be somewhat subjective under many definitions of the term. The following characteristics are associated with sprawl, This refers to a situation where commercial, residential, institutional and industrial areas are separated from one another. Consequently, large tracts of land are devoted to a use and are segregated from one another by open space, infrastructure. The degree to which different land uses are mixed together is used as an indicator of sprawl in studies of the subject. Job sprawl is another land use symptom of urban sprawl and car-dependent communities, spatial mismatch is related to job sprawl and economic environmental justice. Job sprawl has been documented and measured in various ways and it has been shown to be a growing trend in Americas metropolitan areas. The Brookings Institution has published articles on the topic. In 2005, author Michael Stoll defined job sprawl simply as jobs located more than 5-mile radius from the CBD, and measured the concept based on year 2000 U. S. Census data. These two authors used three geographic rings limited to a 35-mile radius around the CBD,3 miles or less,3 to 10 miles and this compares to the year 1998 -23. 3%,34. 2%, and 42. 5% in those respective rings. The study shows CBD employment share shrinking, and job growth focused in the suburban and exurban outer metropolitan rings, Sprawl is often characterized as consisting of low-density development
23.
London Plan
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The London Plan is the statutory spatial development strategy for the Greater London area in the United Kingdom that is written by the Mayor of London and published by the Greater London Authority. The regional planning document was first published in form on 10 February 2004. In addition to minor alterations, it was revised and republished in February 2008. The London Plan published in July 2011 is currently in effect and has 2031 as an end date. As of June 2012 minor alterations are being made to the plan to comply with the National Planning Policy Framework, the plan replaced the previous strategic planning guidance for London issued by the Secretary of State and known as RPG3. It is a requirement of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 that the document is produced, the Act also requires that the London Plan includes in its scope, the health of Londoners, equality of opportunity, contribution to sustainable development in the United Kingdom. The plan is a development strategy for the Greater London area and has six objectives. The opportunity areas will be able to accommodate around 5,000 jobs each or about 2,500 homes, or a mixture of the two. The opportunity areas will mostly be town centres as opposed to suburban developments in the boroughs, although those are mentioned as important in terms of job growth, by definition, an Opportunity Area is brownfield land with significant capacity for development. This contrasts with an Intensification Area that can be developed to higher than existing densities with more modest economic change, for the purposes of the plan, London is divided into five sub regions. From 2004 to 2008 the sub regions were initially the same as the Learning, within this scheme there was a separate Central sub region and four others around it. The London part of the Thames Gateway zone was entirely contained within the East London sub region, the 2004—2008 sub regions each had a Sub-Regional Development Framework. The sub regions were revised in February 2008 as part of the Further Alterations to the London Plan and these sub regions each radiated from the centre to combine inner and outer London boroughs. The 2008—2011 sub regions, each had its own Sub Regional Implementation Framework, in 2011 the sub regions were revised again, reintroducing a smaller Central sub region and returning all of the London part of the Thames Gateway to be within the East sub region. The 2011 sub regions are to be used for monitoring, engagement. Throughout these revisions has been a separately defined Central Activities Zone which includes areas with a high concentration of metropolitan activities. All activity centres are categorised into,2 international centres, the West End, over 1,200 smaller neighbourhood and local centres are also identified in the plan. There have been a number of amendments to the London Plan which have incorporated into the current version that was published in February 2008
24.
Kent
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Kent /ˈkɛnt/ is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south west, the county also shares borders with Essex via the Dartford Crossing and the French department of Pas-de-Calais through the Channel Tunnel. France can be clearly in fine weather from Folkestone and the White Cliffs of Dover. Hills in the form of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge span the length of the county, because of its relative abundance of fruit-growing and hop gardens, Kent is known as The Garden of England. The title was defended in 2006 when a survey of counties by the UKTV Style Gardens channel put Kent in fifth place, behind North Yorkshire, Devon. Haulage, logistics, and tourism are industries, major industries in north-west Kent include aggregate building materials, printing. Coal mining has played its part in Kents industrial heritage. Large parts of Kent are within the London commuter belt and its transport connections to the capital. Twenty-eight per cent of the county forms part of two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the North Downs and The High Weald, the area has been occupied since the Palaeolithic era, as attested by finds from the quarries at Swanscombe. The Medway megaliths were built during the Neolithic era, There is a rich sequence of Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman era occupation, as indicated by finds and features such as the Ringlemere gold cup and the Roman villas of the Darent valley. The modern name of Kent is derived from the Brythonic word Cantus meaning rim or border and this describes the eastern part of the current county area as a border land or coastal district. Julius Caesar had described the area as Cantium, or home of the Cantiaci in 51 BC, the extreme west of the modern county was by the time of Roman Britain occupied by Iron Age tribes, known as the Regnenses. East Kent became a kingdom of the Jutes during the 5th century and was known as Cantia from about 730, the early medieval inhabitants of the county were known as the Cantwara, or Kent people. These people regarded the city of Canterbury as their capital, in 597, Pope Gregory I appointed the religious missionary as the first Archbishop of Canterbury. In the previous year, Augustine successfully converted the pagan King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity, the Diocese of Canterbury became Britains first Episcopal See with first cathedral and has since remained Englands centre of Christianity. The second designated English cathedral was in Kent at Rochester Cathedral, in the 11th century, the people of Kent adopted the motto Invicta, meaning undefeated. This naming followed the invasion of Britain by William of Normandy, the Kent peoples continued resistance against the Normans led to Kents designation as a semi-autonomous county palatine in 1067. Under the nominal rule of Williams half-brother Odo of Bayeux, the county was granted powers to those granted in the areas bordering Wales
25.
Stone Age
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The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking, bone tools were used during this period as well but are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of tools in use. According to the age and location of the current evidence, the cradle of the genus is the East African Rift System, especially toward the north in Ethiopia, where it is bordered by grasslands. The closest relative among the living primates, the genus Pan, represents a branch that continued on in the deep forest. The rift served as a conduit for movement into southern Africa and also north down the Nile into North Africa and through the continuation of the rift in the Levant to the vast grasslands of Asia. The oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks, the oldest stone tools were excavated from the site of Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana, northwestern Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years old. Prior to the discovery of these Lomekwian tools, the oldest known stone tools had been found at sites at Gona, Ethiopia, on the sediments of the paleo-Awash River. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a disconformity, or missing layer, the oldest sites containing tools are dated to 2. 6–2.55 mya. One of the most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late Pliocene, excavators at the locality point out that. the earliest stone tool makers were skilled flintknappers. The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of tools to the presence thereof include. The species who made the Pliocene tools remains unknown, fragments of Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus and Homo, possibly Homo habilis, have been found in sites near the age of the Gona tools. Innovation of the technique of smelting ore ended the Stone Age, the first most significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, each of which was smelted separately. The Chalcolithic by convention is the period of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age, the transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia. Note the Rudna Glava mine in Serbia, Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy from about 3300 BCE carried with him a copper axe and a flint knife. In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age, the Middle East and southeastern Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BCE. Europe, and the rest of Asia became post–Stone Age societies by about 4000 BCE, the proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BCE, when gold, copper and silver made their entrance
26.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
27.
Ancient Rome
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In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and then Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, Amulius, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, Amulius, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent, exiled, and unwanted. This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
28.
Crofton Roman Villa
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Crofton Roman Villa in Orpington, in the London Borough of Bromley, is a Roman villa which was inhabited between approximately 140 and 400 AD. It was the centre of an estate of about 500 acres, with farm buildings nearby, surrounded by fields, meadows. The house was altered several times during its 260 years of occupation, the remains of ten rooms can be seen today. Two rooms contain the remains of opus signinum floors, and three have evidence of tiled, or tessellated, floors, details of an underfloor central heating hypocaust can also be seen, featuring both channelled and pillared systems, as can small finds from the site. The villa is adjacent to Orpington railway station, and is not far from Lullingstone Roman Villa, near Eynsford, the site was discovered in 1926, when workmen were preparing a driveway for some new council offices, and unearthed some Roman artefacts. Details of their findings were published in a book in 1996, the site is protected within a modern building. Media related to Crofton Roman Villa at Wikimedia Commons Crofton Roman Villa website Local council website
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Public bathing
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Public baths originated from a communal need for cleanliness at a time when most people did not have access to private bathing facilities. The term public is not completely accurate, as types of public baths are restricted depending on membership, gender, religious affiliation. As societies have changed, the need for public baths has reduced, Public baths have also become incorporated into the social system as meeting places. As the title suggests, public bathing does not refer only to bathing, in ancient times public bathing included saunas, massages and relaxation therapies, comparable to todays spas. The earliest public baths are found in the ruins in of the Indus Valley Civilization, the bath is housed inside a larger—more elaborate—building and was used for public bathing. The Great Bath and the house of the priest suggest that the Indus had a religion, later gymnasia had indoor basins set overhead, the open maws of marble lions offering showers, and circular pools with tiers of steps for lounging. Bathing was ritualized, becoming an art – of cleansing sands, hot water, hot air in dark vaulted vapor baths, a cooling plunge, cities all over Ancient Greece honored sites where young ephebes stood and splashed water over their bodies. The first public thermae of 19 BC had a rotunda 25 metres across, circled by small rooms, set in a park with artificial river and pool. By AD300 the Baths of Diocletian would cover 140,000 square metres, its soaring granite, Roman baths became something like a cross between an aquacentre and a theme park, with pools, game rooms, gardens, even libraries and theatres. One of the most famous public bath sites is Aquae Sulis in Bath and he also states that In Western Europe only the Finns still practice a truly public bathing habit. Dr. Fagan has done research on public bathing. During the Ottoman Empire public baths were widely used, the baths had both a religious and popular origin deriving from the Quran and the use of steamrooms by the Turks. The Turkish baths also known as the Hammam, was considered a place for gathering in Turkish Culture. The process of Hammam is very similar to that of the Roman bathing, the origin of Japanese bathing is Misogi, ritual purification with water. After Japan imported Buddhist culture, many temples had saunas, which were available for anyone to use for free, in the Heian period, houses of prominent families, such as the families of court nobles or samurai, had baths. The bath had lost its religious significance and instead became leisure, Misogi became Gyōzui, to bathe in a shallow wooden tub. In the 17th century, the first European visitors to Japan recorded the habit of daily baths in sexually mixed groups. Before the mid-19th century, when Western influence increased, nude bathing for men, women
30.
Cnut the Great
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King Cnut the Great, also known as Canute, was King of Denmark, England, and Norway, together often referred to as the Anglo-Scandinavian or North Sea Empire. After his death, the deaths of his heirs within a decade, the medieval historian Norman Cantor said he was the most effective king in Anglo-Saxon history, though he was Danish and not a Briton or Anglo-Saxon. Cnuts father was Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, the identity of his mother is uncertain, although medieval tradition makes her a daughter of Mieszko I. As a Danish prince, Cnut won the throne of England in 1016 in the wake of centuries of Viking activity in northwestern Europe and his accession to the Danish throne in 1018 brought the crowns of England and Denmark together. Cnut maintained his power by uniting Danes and English under cultural bonds of wealth and custom, after a decade of conflict with opponents in Scandinavia, Cnut claimed the crown of Norway in Trondheim in 1028. The Swedish city Sigtuna was held by Cnut and he had coins struck there that called him king, but there is no narrative record of his occupation. Cnut attempted to gain concessions on the tolls his people had to pay on the way to Rome from other magnates of medieval Christendom, the Anglo-Saxon kings used the title king of the English. Cnut was ealles Engla landes cyning—king of all England, Cnut was a son of the Danish Prince Sweyn Forkbeard, who was the son and heir to King Harald Bluetooth from a line of Scandinavian rulers central to the unification of Denmark. Neither the place nor the date of his birth are known, Harthacnut was the semi-legendary founder of the Danish royal house at the beginning of the 10th century, and his son, Gorm the Old, was the first in the official line. Harald Bluetooth, Gorms son and Cnuts grandfather, was the Danish king at the time of the Christianization of Denmark, Cnut was two years old when his grandfather, Harald Bluetooth, died, and his father, Sweyn Forkbeard, assumed the throne. The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg and the Encomium Emmae report Cnuts mother as having been a daughter of Mieszko I of Poland, since in the Norse sagas the king of Vindland is always Burislav, this is reconcilable with the assumption that her father was Mieszko. Different theories regarding the number and ancestry of Sweyns wives have been brought forward, Cnuts brother Harald was the first born and crown prince. His date of birth, like his mothers name, is unknown, contemporary works such as the Chronicon and the Encomium Emmae, do not mention this. Even so, in a Knútsdrápa by the skald Óttarr svarti and it also mentions a battle identifiable with Sweyn Forkbeards invasion of England and attack on the city of Norwich, in 1003/04, after the St. Brices Day massacre of Danes by the English, in 1002. If it is the case that Cnut was part of this, his birthdate may be near 990, if not, and the skalds poetic verse envisages another assault, such as Forkbeards conquest of England in 1013/14, it may even suggest a birth date nearer 1000. There is a passage of the Encomiast with a reference to the force Cnut led in his English conquest of 1015/16, here it says all the Vikings were of mature age under Cnut the king. He had a fair complexion none-the-less, and a fine, thick head of hair and his eyes were better than those of other men, both the handsomer and the keener of their sight. Hardly anything is known for sure of Cnuts life until the year he was part of a Scandinavian force under his father, King Sweyn and it was the climax to a succession of Viking raids spread over a number of decades
31.
Canterbury
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Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour, a journey of pilgrims to Beckets shrine served as the frame for Geoffrey Chaucers 14th century classic The Canterbury Tales. Canterbury is a popular tourist destination, consistently one of the cities in the United Kingdom. The city has been occupied since Paleolithic times and served as the capital of the Celtic Cantiaci, modern additions include the Marlowe Theatre and the St Lawrence Ground, home of the Kent County Cricket Club. Canterbury remains, however, a city in terms of geographical size and population. In Sub-Roman Britain, it was known in Old Welsh as Cair Ceint, occupied by the Jutes, it became known in Old English as Cantwareburh, which developed into its present name. The Canterbury area has been inhabited since prehistoric times, lower Paleolithic axes, and Neolithic and Bronze Age pots have been found in the area. Canterbury was first recorded as the settlement of the Celtic tribe of the Cantiaci. In the 1st century AD, the Romans captured the settlement, the Romans rebuilt the city, with new streets in a grid pattern, a theatre, a temple, a forum, and public baths. In the late 3rd century, to defend against attack from barbarians, the Romans built an earth bank around the city and a wall with seven gates, which enclosed an area of 130 acres. Over the next 100 years, an Anglo-Saxon community formed within the city walls, as Jutish refugees arrived, in 597, Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to convert its King Æthelberht to Christianity. After the conversion, Canterbury, being a Roman town, was chosen by Augustine as the centre for his see in Kent. Augustine thus became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, the towns new importance led to its revival, and trades developed in pottery, textiles, and leather. By 630, gold coins were being struck at the Canterbury mint, in 672, the Synod of Hertford gave the see of Canterbury authority over the entire English Church. In 842 and 851, Canterbury suffered great loss of life during Danish raids, in 978, Archbishop Dunstan refounded the abbey built by Augustine, and named it St Augustines Abbey. A second wave of Danish attacks began in 991, and in 1011 the cathedral was burnt, remembering the destruction caused by the Danes, the inhabitants of Canterbury did not resist William the Conquerors invasion in 1066. William immediately ordered a wooden motte-and-bailey castle to be built by the Roman city wall, in the early 12th century, the castle was rebuilt with stone. After the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the cathedral in 1170, Canterbury became one of the most notable towns in Europe and this pilgrimage provided the framework for Geoffrey Chaucers 14th-century collection of stories, The Canterbury Tales
32.
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
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Elizabeth I of England
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Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed two and a half years after Elizabeths birth. Annes marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate, edwards will was set aside and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey. During Marys reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels, in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers, led by William Cecil, one of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England and it was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir to continue the Tudor line. She never did, despite numerous courtships, as she grew older, Elizabeth became famous for her virginity. A cult grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, in government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of her mottoes was video et taceo, in religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, by the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain. Englands defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 associated Elizabeth with one of the greatest military victories in English history, Elizabeths reign is known as the Elizabethan era. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Such was the case with Elizabeths rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, after the short reigns of Elizabeths half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity. Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace and was named after both her grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard and she was the second child of Henry VIII of England born in wedlock to survive infancy. Her mother was Henrys second wife, Anne Boleyn, at birth, Elizabeth was the heir presumptive to the throne of England. She was baptised on 10 September, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Marquess of Exeter, the Duchess of Norfolk, Elizabeth was two years and eight months old when her mother was beheaded on 19 May 1536, four months after Catherine of Aragons death from natural causes. Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and deprived of her place in the royal succession, eleven days after Anne Boleyns execution, Henry married Jane Seymour, who died shortly after the birth of their son, Prince Edward, in 1537
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St Mary Cray
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St Mary Cray is an area of southeast London, and is part of the London Borough of Bromley. It was an ancient parish in the county of Kent, that was absorbed by Orpington Urban District in 1934 and has formed part of Greater London since 1965 and it is located 13 miles southeast of Charing Cross. The name Cray possibly derives from the Saxon crecca, a brook or rivulet, the Latin word creta, chalk, must not be overlooked, as the River Cray flows over a chalk bed. The village name derives from the dedication of the church to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Roman and Saxon remains have been found in the Fordcroft area, an excavation in 1960 was conducted by members of Bromley Museum in Orpington. Members of the Orpington and District Archaeological Society have excavated further sites that have become available, St Mary Cray developed into a market town. The privilege of holding a market on Wednesdays was granted by Edward I f The district being an agricultural one, the most famous of the early industries were the 17th-century foundries of Hodson and Hull where several famous bells were cast. Christopher Hodson made bells for Canterbury Cathedral and Oxford, the advent of the Industrial Revolution saw brewing and paper manufacturing grow into principal industries beside the River Cray. Three mills are mentioned in Domesday, from the early 1800s until the Depression in the 1930s, many local workers were employed at the Joynson and the William Nash paper mills. With the expansion of the railways, the population increased rapidly, the building of the railway viaduct across the Cray Valley is considered to be the origin in 1860 of Cray Wanderers FC who are London’s oldest association football club. Migrant workers came to the district to construct the giant earth embankments for what became the London. Games of football started at Star Lane, today the site of a cemetery, in the 1930s the farmlands of Poverest on the west side of the river were turned over to the construction of industrial and office buildings. The factories along Cray Avenue were engaged in industries ranging from paint and ink manufacture to baking, during and after the Second World War, Star Lane cemetery was to become the burial ground for several airmen of the RAF and Commonwealth Air Forces. Three Polish airmen were buried here, one of them being Stanisław Grodzicki. In 1971 the St Mary Cray Action Group was founded and it erected a new village sign, at Sandway, in 1992. John Horam, then the MP for Orpington, recorded in 1999, The Crays are truly a slice of Kent, on the edge of London, once rural, now full of housing and commerce. Forever Amber - Cray Wanderers FCs history website St Mary Cray was the cradle of football in London, St Mary Cray has the largest settled Romani groups and Irish Traveller community in the UK. In the past, hop and soft fruit farms in the area employed large numbers of itinerant workers, Orpington and the surrounding area was rural, with many farms
35.
Hops
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Hops are the flowers of the hop plant Humulus lupulus. The hop plant is a vigorous, climbing, herbaceous perennial, usually trained to grow up strings in a called a hopfield, hop garden. Many different varieties of hops are grown by farmers around the world, the first documented use of hops in beer is from the 9th century, though Hildegard of Bingen,300 years later, is often cited as the earliest documented source. Before this period, brewers used gruit, composed of a variety of bitter herbs and flowers, including dandelion, burdock root, marigold, horehound, ground ivy. Early documents include mention of a hop garden in the will of Charlemagnes father, historically, traditional herb combinations for beers were believed to have been abandoned when beers made with hops were noticed to be less prone to spoilage. The first documented hop cultivation was in 736, in the Hallertau region of present-day Germany, however, in a will of Pepin the Short, the father of Charlemagne,768 hop gardens were left to the Cloister of Saint-Denis. Not until the 13th century did hops begin to start threatening the use of gruit for flavoring, gruit was used when taxes were levied by the nobility on hops. Whichever was taxed made the then quickly switch to the other. In Britain, hopped beer was first imported from Holland around 1400, yet hops were condemned as late as 1519 as a wicked, in 1471, Norwich, England, banned use of the plant in the brewing of ale. In Germany, using hops was also a religious and political choice in the early 16th century, there was no tax on hops to be paid on the Catholic church, unlike on gruit, for which the Protestant preferred hopped beer. Therefore, in the hop industry there are words which originally were Dutch words. Hops were then grown as far north as Aberdeen, near breweries for infrastructure convenience, in England there were many complaints over the quality of imported hops, the sacks of which were often contaminated by stalks, sand or straw to increase their weight. Hop cultivation was begun in the present-day United States in 1629 by English, before national alcohol prohibition, cultivation was mainly centered around New York, California, Oregon, and Washington. Problems with powdery mildew and downy mildew devastated New Yorks production by the 1920s, Hops production is concentrated in moist temperate climates, with much of the worlds production occurring near the 48th parallel north. Historically, hops were not grown in Ireland, but were imported from England, in 1752 more than 500 tons of English hops were imported through Dublin alone. Important production centers today are the Hallertau in Germany, the Yakima and Willamette valleys, the principal production centers in the UK are in Kent which produces Kent Goldings hops, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Essentially all of the hops are used in beer making. Although hops are grown in most of the continental United States and Canada, as hops are a climbing plant, they are trained to grow up trellises made from strings or wires that support the plants and allow them significantly greater growth with the same sunlight profile
36.
Romani people
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The Romani are widely known among English-speaking people by the exonym Gypsies, which some people consider pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity. Romani are dispersed, with their populations in Europe – especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe including Turkey, Spain. Since the 19th century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas, there are an estimated one million Roma in the United States, and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the nineteenth century from eastern Europe. Brazil also includes some Romani descended from people deported by the government of Portugal during the Inquisition in the colonial era, in migrations since the late nineteenth century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada. In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora, the Romani language is divided into several dialects, which add up to an estimated number of speakers larger than two million. The total number of Romani people is at least twice as large, many Romani are native speakers of the language current in their country of residence, or of mixed languages combining the two, those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani. French bohème, bohémien, from the Kingdom of Bohemia, whence they came, Rom means man or husband in the Romani, it has the variants dom and lom, related with the Sanskrit words dam-pati, dama, lom, lomaka loman, roman. Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम doma, Sanskrit सिनधु is a river or stream of water in general. In particular, it denotes the river Indus and the country around it, in the Romani language, Rom is a masculine noun, meaning man of the Roma ethnic group or man, husband, with the plural Roma. The feminine of Rom in the Romani language is Romni, however, in most cases, in other languages Rom is now used for people of all genders. Romani is the adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as a name, while others do not use this term as a self-ascription for the entire ethnic group. Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a r, i. e. rrom. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme /ʀ/, the rr spelling is common in certain institutions, or used in certain countries, e. g. Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians. In the English language, Rom is a noun and an adjective, while Romani is also a noun, both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy. Romani was initially spelled Rommany, then Romany, while today the Romani spelling is the most popular spelling, occasionally, the double r spelling mentioned above is also encountered in English texts. The term Roma is increasingly encountered during recent decades, as a term for the Romani people
37.
Eric Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury
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Eric Reginald Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury, was an English politician. He served as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Orpington from 1962 to 1970 and he then served in the House of Lords, having inherited the title of Baron Avebury in 1971, until his death. In 1999, when most hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords, when he died, he was the longest serving Liberal Democrat peer. Lubbock was educated at Upper Canada College, a private school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and at Harrow School. He read Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford and he served as a Lieutenant in the Welsh Guards and joined Rolls-Royce in 1951. At the company, he was employed as a production manager and this election victory, with a swing of nearly 22% from the Conservatives, was seen as a revival of the Liberal Party at the time. And brought the number of Liberal MPs to seven, subsequently, Lubbock was dubbed Orpington Man. However, the party did not make the recovery, it was hampered by organisational difficulties and progress was slow, with a loss of votes. As the MP for Orpington, he was appointed Chief Whip by Jo Grimond in 1963, when the party leader Jo Grimond resigned in 1967, Eric Lubbock was one of the three Liberal MPs who stood for the position. Jeremy Thorpe, however, won six votes to Emlyn Hoosons. In the Commons, Lubbock was on the Speakers Commission on Electoral Law and he also proposed reducing the voting age to 18, on which two Labour Members supported him. Orpington reverted to being a Conservative seat at the 1970 general election, on losing the seat Lubbock said, In 1962 the wise, far-seeing people of Orpington elected me as their Member, in 1970 the fools threw me out. The following year, John Lubbock, 3rd Baron Avebury died without a heir and Eric Lubbock, his cousin. Now Baron Avebury, he sat on the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life, throughout his time in politics he was involved in human rights activism, both in and beyond Parliament. In 1976, he founded the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, which he chaired for the next 21 years and he continued as Vice-Chair after standing down. In 1987, as a jocular protest against the cost of cremation, on being advised that the dogs would probably accept but the homes management wouldnt, he made the same offer to the cats. He was a member of the Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Team, speaking on conflict resolution, Eric was a keen advocate of human rights and the separation of church and state. Lord Avebury was a Co-Chair of the CHT Commission, which monitors the implementation of the CHT Peace Accord by the Bangladesh Government, and he frequently raised matters related to British nationality law in Parliament
38.
Liberal Party (UK)
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The Liberal Party was a liberal political party which was one of the two major parties in the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th century. The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free-trade Peelites and Radicals favourable to the ideals of the American, by the end of the nineteenth century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite splitting over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to power in 1906 with a landslide victory, by the end of the 1920s, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberals as the Conservatives main rival. The party went into decline and by the 1950s won no more than six seats at general elections, apart from notable by-election victories, the partys fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party in 1981. At the 1983 General Election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, at the 1987 General Election, its vote fell below 23% and the Liberal and Social Democratic parties merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989 and it was formed by party members opposed to the merger who saw the Lib Dems diluting Liberal ideals. Prominent intellectuals associated with the Liberal Party include the philosopher John Stuart Mill, the economist John Maynard Keynes, the Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II, and the early 19th century Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown, although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox and his disciple, after decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832. The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it brought about the Whigs demise. As early as 1839 Russell had adopted the name of Liberals, the leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden, who represented the manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England, avoidance of war and foreign alliances, for a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all Liberals. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston, and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of the 1850s and 1860s, a leading Peelite was William Ewart Gladstone, who was a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 and this was brought about by Palmerstons death in 1865 and Russells retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government Gladstone won a victory at the 1868 election. The establishment of the party as a membership organisation came with the foundation of the National Liberal Federation in 1877. John Stuart Mill was a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868, for the next thirty years Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. William Ewart Gladstone served as prime minister four times, called the Grand Old Man later in life, Gladstone was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to the working class and to the lower middle class
39.
World Romani Congress
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The World Romani Congress is a series of forums for discussion of issues relating to Roma people around the world. There have been eight World Romani Congresses to date, the first World Romani Congress was organized in 1971 in Orpington near London, England, United Kingdom, funded in part by the World Council of Churches and the Government of India. It was attended by 23 representatives from nine nations and observers from Belgium, Canada, India, five sub-commissions were created to examine social affairs, education, war crimes, language, and culture. Usage of the word Roma was also accepted by a majority of attendees, as a result, the second Congress in April 1978, was held in Geneva, Switzerland and attended by 120 delegates from 26 countries. Attendees helped transform the International Rom Committee into the International Romani Union, the third Congress was held in Göttingen, West Germany in May 1981, with 600 delegates and observers from 28 different countries. Attendees supported the call for Roma to be recognized as a minority of Indian origin. The Porajmos was a topic of discussion. In 1990, the fourth Congress was held in Serock, Poland with 250 delegates attending, discussion topics included World War II reparations, education, culture, public relations, language, and a Romani language encyclopedia. The International Day of the Roma was also declared as April 8. The fifth World Romani Congress was held in Prague, Czech Republic in July,2000, emil Ščuka was elected as president of the International Romani Union. The Congress produced the official Declaration of the Romany non-territorial nation, the sixth Congress was held in Lanciano, Italy on October 8 &9,2004, with participation from over 200 delegates from 39 countries of world. Delegates chose a new president for the International Romani Union and a new president of the World Parliament of the IRU, a new committee was set up to examine issues surrounding women, families and children. The seventh Congress was held in Zagreb, Croatia in October 2008, esma Redžepova performed the Romani anthem. The eighth Congress was held in Sibiu, Romania in April 2013, approximately 250 delegates from 34 different countries attended the meeting. Florin Cioabǎ was elected as the new president of the International Romani Union
40.
International Romani Union
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The International Romani Union is an organization active for the rights of the Romani people. The IRU was officially established at the second World Romani Congress in 1978 and its presidents have included Stanislav Stankiewicz, Emil Ščuka, and before him, Rajko Đurić who held this office for many years. The Spanish organisation Union Romani is affiliated with the International Romani Union, the IRU has member organizations in the following countries, The IRU consists of four bodies, Congress, Parliament, Presidium, Court of Justice. The IRU Congress of the IRU includes delegates from member organizations, delegates can make individual recommendation for the IRU, and together, they may choose whether to accept the IRU programme. Unlike the Congress, the Parliament is made up of a representative from each member country. Parliament accepts reports on the situation of Romani peoples around the world, delegates must also approve each years budget. It may request studies and reports on a variety of topics, members of the Court of Justice are independent judges, elected for their personal integrity, regardless of their membership in the IRU. The Court is tasked with observing all bodies of the IRU and ensuring their observance of the organizations rules, Roma Virtual Network is a public, non-partisan, non-profit grass-roots organization under the umbrella of ERIO and of IRU. It provides the international Romany community and friendly non-Romany organizations and individuals with information on Roma issues in a variety of languages via the Internet. It contains 32 electronic mailing lists in 15 languages with a membership of over 22000 e-mail addresses. It offers also on-line support, besides for IRU, also for various other Gypsy organizations, like Domari, The Society of Gypsies in Israel, RomNews Network, in 1959, Ionel Rotaru founded The World Gypsy Community in France. While members were mostly French, the organization made contacts in Poland, Canada, Turkey, when the French government dissolved the CMG in 1965, a breakaway group formed the International Gypsy Committee under the leadership of Vanko Rouda. When the 1971 World Romani Congress adopted the self-appellation of Roma rather than gypsy, the IGC was renamed the Komiteto Lumniako Romano, the Committee became a member of the Council of Europe the following year. The Committee was changed again at the 1978 World Romani Congress and it was given consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council the following year. The Union became a registered NGO with UNICEF in 1986, in 1993, it was promoted to Category II, Special Consultative Status at the United Nations. More recently, the IRU has also sought recognition for its own passports The main source of income is the membership fees of the individual members, the IRU has institutional links with, - the Council of Europe. The Romani Voice In World Politics, The United Nations and Non-state actors, the Roma – a Nation without a State. In, Burszta, Wojciech, Tomasz Kamusella and Sebastian Wojciechowski, nationalismus Across the Globe, An Overview of the Nationalism of State-endowed and Stateless Nations
Orpington
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