1.
St George's Square
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St Georges Square is a long narrow garden square in Pimlico, London. At the northern end is Lupus Street, with Pimlico tube station close by, at the southern end is Grosvenor Road running along the River Thames. Pimlicos development was started in 1835 by the landowner, the Marquess of Westminster, the first residents moved in in 1854. Until 1874 the square had its own pier for steamers, St Georges Square was in the parish of George Hanover Square and was named after the patron saint of England. The statue, originally designed for the Royal Exchange, was placed in the gardens in 1915, the statue was described by Sir Osbert Sitwell as boredom rising from the bath. The Church of St Saviour stands at the end of the square, it was designed by Thomas Cundy the Younger. The square has had many notable residents, much of Cubitts original square remains and is predominantly four and five storey white stucco townhouses, although these have now been divided into flats. A survey in 2007 showed that 34% of residents are aged between 30 and 45 years old and that the dominant ethnic group self-identifies as White British, St George´s Sq Pimlico Facebook page 5 Fields Pimlico Community Network Media related to St Georges Square at Wikimedia Commons
2.
Greater London
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London, or Greater London, is a region of England which forms the administrative boundaries of London. It is organised into 33 local government districts, the 32 London boroughs, the Greater London Authority, based in Southwark, is responsible for strategic local government across the region and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The county of Greater London was created on 1 April 1965 through the London Government Act 1963, administratively, Greater London was first established as a sui generis council area under the Greater London Council between 1963 and 1986. The area was re-established as a region in 1994, and the Greater London Authority formed in 2000, the region covers 1,572 km2 and had a population of 8,174,000 at the 2011 census. In 2012, it had the highest GVA per capita in the United Kingdom at £37,232, the Greater London Built-up Area—used in some national statistics—is a measure of the continuous urban area of London, and therefore includes areas outside of the administrative region. The term Greater London has been and still is used to different areas in governance, statistics, history. In terms of ceremonial counties, London is divided into the small City of London, outside the limited boundaries of the City, a variety of arrangements has governed the wider area since 1855, culminating in the creation of the Greater London administrative area in 1965. The Greater London Arterial Road Programme was devised between 1913 and 1916, one of the larger early forms was the Greater London Planning Region, devised in 1927, which occupied 1,856 square miles and included 9 million people. The LCC pressed for an alteration in its boundaries soon after the end of the First World War, noting that within the Metropolitan, a Royal Commission on London Government was set up to consider the issue. The LCC proposed a vast new area for Greater London, with a boundary somewhere between the Metropolitan Police District and the home counties, protests were made at the possibility of including Windsor, Slough and Eton in the authority. The Commission made its report in 1923, rejecting the LCCs scheme, two minority reports favoured change beyond the amalgamation of smaller urban districts, including both smaller borough councils and a central authority for strategic functions. The London Traffic Act 1924 was a result of the Commission, Greater London originally had a two-tier system of local government, with the Greater London Council sharing power with the City of London Corporation and the 32 London Borough councils. The GLC was abolished in 1986 by the Local Government Act 1985 and its functions were devolved to the City Corporation and the London Boroughs, with some functions transferred to central government and joint boards. Greater London was used to form the London region of England in 1994, a referendum held in 1998 established a public will to recreate an upper tier of government to cover the region. The Greater London Authority, London Assembly and the directly elected Mayor of London were created in 2000 by the Greater London Authority Act 1999, in 2000, the outer boundary of the Metropolitan Police District was re-aligned to the Greater London boundary. The 2000 and 2004 mayoral elections were won by Ken Livingstone, the 2008 and 2012 elections were won by Boris Johnson. The 2016 election was won by Sadiq Khan, Greater London continues to include the most closely associated parts of the Greater London Urban Area and their historic buffers. Thus it includes, in five boroughs, significant parts of the Metropolitan Green Belt which protects designated greenfield land in a way to the citys parks
3.
Ordnance Survey National Grid
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The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using Latitude and Longitude. It is often called British National Grid, the Ordnance Survey devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps based on those surveys. Grid references are commonly quoted in other publications and data sources. The Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system is used to provide references for worldwide locations. European-wide agencies also use UTM when mapping locations, or may use the Military Grid Reference System system, the grid is based on the OSGB36 datum, and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962. It replaced the previously used Cassini Grid which, up to the end of World War Two, had issued only to the military. The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain, more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS, the British maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W. Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly, the distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W. 2° 0′ 5″ W. OSGB36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS84 has been used, a geodetic transformation between OSGB36 and other terrestrial reference systems can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true, the definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy, the difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB36 are the same as for WGS84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall, the WGS84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB36 equivalents, the smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent. But Great Britain has not shrunk by 100+ metres, a point near Lands End now computes to be 27.6 metres closer to a point near Duncansby Head than it did under OSGB36. For the first letter, the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km, there are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain, S, T, N and H. The O square contains an area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide
4.
Districts of England
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The districts of England are a level of subnational division of England used for the purposes of local government. As the structure of government in England is not uniform. Some districts are styled as boroughs, cities, or royal boroughs, these are purely honorific titles, prior to the establishment of districts in the 1890s, the basic unit of local government in England was the parish overseen by the parish church vestry committee. Vestries dealt with the administraction of both parochial and secular governmental matters, parishes were the successors of the manorial system and historically had been grouped into hundreds. Hundreds once exercised some supervising administrative function, however, these powers ebbed away as more and more civic and judicial powers were centred on county towns. From 1834 these parishes were grouped into Poor Law Unions, creating areas for administration of the Poor Law and these areas were later used for census registration and as the basis for sanitary provision. In 1894, based on these earlier subdivisions, the Local Government Act 1894 created urban districts and rural districts as sub-divisions of administrative counties, another reform in 1900 created 28 metropolitan boroughs as sub-divisions of the County of London. Meanwhile, from this date parish-level local government administration was transferred to civil parishes, the setting-down of the current structure of districts in England began in 1965, when Greater London and its 32 London boroughs were created. They are the oldest type of still in use. In 1974, metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan counties were created across the rest of England and were split into metropolitan districts, in London power is now shared again, albeit on a different basis, with the Greater London Authority. During the 1990s a further kind of district was created, the unitary authority, metropolitan boroughs are a subdivision of a metropolitan county. These are similar to unitary authorities, as the county councils were abolished in 1986. Most of the powers of the county councils were devolved to the districts but some services are run by joint boards, the districts typically have populations of 174,000 to 1.1 million. Non-metropolitan districts are second-tier authorities, which share power with county councils and they are subdivisions of shire counties and the most common type of district. These districts typically have populations of 25,000 to 200,000, the number of non-metropolitan districts has varied over time. Initially there were 296, after the creation of unitary authorities in the 1990s and late 2000s and these are single-tier districts which are responsible for running all local services in their areas, combining both county and district functions. They were created in the out of non-metropolitan districts, and often cover large towns. In addition, some of the smaller such as Rutland, Herefordshire
5.
City of Westminster
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The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough which also holds city status. It occupies much of the area of Greater London including most of the West End. It is to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and it was created with the 1965 establishment of Greater London. Upon creation, Westminster was awarded city status, which had previously held by the smaller Metropolitan Borough of Westminster. Aside from a number of parks and open spaces, the population density of the district is high. Many sites commonly associated with London are in the borough, including St. Jamess Palace, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, much of the borough is residential, and in 2008 it was estimated to have a population of 236,000. The local authority is Westminster City Council, the current Westminster coat of arms were given to the city by an official grant on September 2,1964. Westminster had other arms before, which had an identical to the chief in the present arms. The symbols in the two thirds of the shield stand for former municipalities now merged with the city, Paddington. The original arms had a portcullis as the charge, which now forms the crest. The origins of the City of Westminster pre-date the Norman Conquest of England, in the mid-11th Century king Edward the Confessor began the construction of an abbey at Westminster, only the foundations of which survive today. For centuries Westminster and the City of London were geographically quite distinct, Westminster briefly became a city in 1540 when Henry VIII created the short-lived Diocese of Westminster. Following the dissolution of Westminster Abbey, a court of burgesses was formed in 1585 to govern the Westminster area, Jamess, Strand, Westminster, Pimlico, Belgravia, and Hyde Park. The Westminster Metropolitan Borough was itself the result of an amalgamation which took place in 1900. Sir John Hunt O. B. E was the First Town Clerk of the City of Westminster, the boundaries of the City of Westminster today, as well as those of the other London boroughs, have remained more or less unchanged since the Act of 1963. On 22 March 2017, a terrorist attack took place on Westminster Bridge, Bridge Street and Old Palace Yard, five people - three pedestrians, one police officer, and the attacker - died as a result of the incident. More than 50 people were injured, an investigation is ongoing by the Metropolitan Police. The city is divided into 20 wards, each electing three councillors, Westminster City Council is currently composed of 44 Conservative Party members and 16 Labour Party members
6.
Ceremonial counties of England
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The ceremonial counties, also referred to as the lieutenancy areas of England, are areas of England to which a Lord Lieutenant is appointed. The Local Government Act 1888 established county councils to assume the functions of Quarter Sessions in the counties. It created new entities called administrative counties, the Act further stipulated that areas that were part of an administrative county would be part of the county for all purposes. The greatest change was the creation of the County of London, which was both an administrative county and a county, it included parts of the historic counties of Middlesex, Kent. Other differences were small and resulted from the constraint that urban sanitary districts were not permitted to straddle county boundaries, apart from Yorkshire, counties that were subdivided nevertheless continued to exist as ceremonial counties. In 1974, administrative counties and county boroughs were abolished, at this time, Lieutenancy was redefined to use the new metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties directly. Following a further rearrangement in 1996, Avon, Cleveland, Hereford and Worcester, Cleveland was partitioned between North Yorkshire and Durham. Hereford and Worcester was divided into the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Humberside was split between Lincolnshire and a new county of East Riding of Yorkshire. Rutland was restored as a ceremonial county, many county boroughs were re-established as unitary authorities, this involved establishing the area as an administrative county, but usually not as a ceremonial county. Most ceremonial counties are therefore entities comprising local authority areas, as they were from 1889 to 1974, the Association of British Counties, a traditional counties lobbying organisation, has suggested that ceremonial counties be restored to their ancient boundaries, as nearly as practicable. In present-day England, the ceremonial counties correspond to the shrieval counties, the Lieutenancies Act 1997 defines counties for the purposes of lieutenancies in terms of metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties as well as Greater London and the Isles of Scilly. Although the term is not used in the Act, these counties are known as ceremonial counties. gov. uk
7.
Regions of England
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The regions are the highest tier of sub-national division in England. Between 1994 and 2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within Government, while they no longer fulfil this role, they continue to be used for statistical and some administrative purposes. They define areas for the purposes of elections to the European Parliament, Eurostat also uses them to demarcate first level Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics regions within the European Union. The regions generally follow the boundaries of the former standard regions, the London region has a directly elected Mayor and Assembly. Six regions have local authority leaders boards to assist with correlating the headline policies of local authorities, the remaining two regions no longer have any administrative functions, having abolished their regional local authority leaders boards. In 1998, regional chambers were established in the eight regions outside of London, the regions also had an associated Government Office with some responsibility for coordinating policy, and, from 2007, a part-time regional minister within the Government. House of Commons regional Select Committees were established in 2009, Regional ministers were not reappointed by the incoming Coalition Government, and the Government Offices were abolished in 2011. Regional development agencies were public bodies established in all nine regions in 1998 to promote economic development and they had certain delegated functions, including administering European Union regional development funds, and received funding the central government as well. After about 500 AD, England comprised seven Anglo-Saxon territories – Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, the boundaries of some of these, which later unified as the Kingdom of England, roughly coincide with those of modern regions. During Oliver Cromwells Protectorate in the 1650s, the rule of the Major-Generals created 10 regions in England, proposals for administrative regions within England were mooted by the British government prior to the First World War. In 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill was passing through parliament, the Bill was expected to introduce a devolved parliament for Ireland, and as a consequence calls were made for similar structures to be introduced in Great Britain or Home Rule All Round. On 12 September the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, within England, he suggested that London, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands would make natural regions. While the creation of regional parliaments never became official policy, it was for a widely anticipated. In 1946 nine standard regions were set up, in central government bodies, statutory undertakings. However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s, creation of some form of provinces or regions for England was an intermittent theme of post-Second World War British governments. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed the creation of eight provinces in England, one-fifth of the advisory councils would be nominees from central government. The boundaries suggested were the eight now existing for economic planning purposes, a minority report by Lord Crowther-Hunt and Alan T. Peacock suggested instead seven regional assemblies and governments within Great Britain, some elements of regional development and economic planning began to be established in England from the mid-1960s onwards
8.
Countries of the United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom comprises four countries, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within the United Kingdom, a sovereign state, Northern Ireland, Scotland. England, comprising the majority of the population and area of the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are not themselves listed in the International Organization for Standardization list of countries. However the ISO list of the subdivisions of the UK, compiled by British Standards, Northern Ireland, in contrast, is described as a province in the same lists. Each has separate governing bodies for sports and compete separately in many international sporting competitions. Northern Ireland also forms joint All-Island sporting bodies with the Republic of Ireland for most sports, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are dependencies of the Crown and are not part of the UK. Similarly, the British overseas territories, remnants of the British Empire, are not part of the UK, southern Ireland left the United Kingdom under the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922. * Figures for GVA do not include oil and gas revenues generated beyond the UKs territorial waters, various terms have been used to describe England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Wales was described as the country, principality, and dominion of Wales, outside Wales, England was not given a specific name or term. The Laws in Wales Acts have subsequently been repealed, the Acts of Union 1707 refer to both England and Scotland as a part of a united kingdom of Great Britain The Acts of Union 1800 use part in the same way to refer to England and Scotland. The Northern Ireland Act 1998, which repealed the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the Interpretation Act 1978 provides statutory definitions of the terms England, Wales and the United Kingdom, but neither that Act nor any other current statute defines Scotland or Northern Ireland. Use of the first three terms in other legislation is interpreted following the definitions in the 1978 Act and this definition applies from 1 April 1974. United Kingdom means Great Britain and Northern Ireland and this definition applies from 12 April 1927. In 1996 these 8 new counties were redistributed into the current 22 unitary authorities, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are regions in their own right while England has been divided into nine regions. The official term rest of the UK is used in Scotland, for example in export statistics and this term is also used in the context of potential Scottish independence to mean the UK without Scotland. The alternative term Home Nations is sometimes used in sporting contexts, the second, or civic group, contained the items about feeling British, respecting laws and institutions, speaking English, and having British citizenship. Contrariwise, in Scotland and Wales there was a much stronger identification with each country than with Britain, studies and surveys have reported that the majority of the Scots and Welsh see themselves as both Scottish/Welsh and British though with some differences in emphasis. The propensity for nationalistic feeling varies greatly across the UK, and can rise and it reported that 37% of people identified as British, whilst 29% identified as Irish and 24% identified as Northern Irish
9.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
10.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
11.
London postal district
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The London postal district is the area in England of 241 square miles to which mail addressed to the LONDON post town is delivered. It was integrated by the Post Office into the national system of the United Kingdom during the early 1970s and corresponds to the N, NW, SW, SE, W, WC, E. The postal district has also known as the London postal area. The County of London was much smaller at 117 square miles, by the 1850s, the rapid growth of the metropolitan area meant it became too large to operate efficiently as a single post town. A Post Office inquiry into the problem had been set up in 1837, in 1854 Charles Canning, the Postmaster General, set up a committee at the Post Office in St. Martins Le Grand to investigate how London could best be divided for the purposes of directing mail. In 1856, of the 470 million items of mail sent in the United Kingdom during the year, approximately one fifth were for delivery in London, the General Post Office thus at the control of the Postmaster General devised the area in 1856 project-managed by Sir Rowland Hill. Hill produced an almost perfectly circular area of 12 miles radius from the central post office at St. Martins Le Grand, within the district it was divided into two central areas and eight compass points which operated much like separate post towns. Each was constituted London with a suffix indicating the area it covered, the system was introduced during 1857 and completed on 1 January 1858. The remaining eight letter prefixes have not changed, at the same time, the London postal district boundary was retracted in the east, removing places such as Ilford for good. In 1868 the S district was split between SE and SW, the NE and S codes have been re-used in the national postcode system and now refer to the NE postcode area around Newcastle upon Tyne and the S postcode area around Sheffield. In 1917, as a measure to improve efficiency, the districts were further subdivided with a number applied to each sub-district. Exceptionally and esoterically, W2 and SW11 are also head districts, the numbered sub-districts became the outward code of the postcode system as expanded into longer codes during the 1970s. Ad hoc changes have taken place to the organisation of the districts, subdivisions of postcode sub-districts Owing to heavier demand, seven high-density postcode districts in central London have been subdivided to create new, smaller postcode districts. This is achieved by adding a letter after the postcode district. Where such sub-districts are used such as on street signs and maps. The districts subdivided are E1, N1, EC SW1, W1, WC1, similarly, there are solely non-geographic suffixed sub-districts for PO boxes in NW1 and SE1. The London postal district has never been aligned with the London boundary, when the initial system was designed, the London boundary was restricted to the square mile of the small, ancient City of London. The wider metropolitan area covered parts of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex
12.
Postcodes in the United Kingdom
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Postal codes used in the United Kingdom are known as postcodes. They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been devised by the GPO, a full postcode is known as a postcode unit and designates an area with a number of addresses or a single major delivery point. For example, the postcode of the University of Roehampton in London is SW15 5PU, the postcode of GCHQ is GL51 0EX, where GL signifies the postal town of Gloucester. The postal town refers to an area and does not relate to a specific town. GL51 is one of the postcodes for the town of Cheltenham which is where GCHQ is located, the London post town covers 40% of Greater London. On inception it was divided into ten districts, EC, WC, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W. The S and NE sectors were later abolished and these divisions changed little, usually only changed for operational efficiency. Some older road signs in Hackney still indicate the North East sector/district, following the successful introduction of postal districts in London, the system was extended to other large towns and cities. Liverpool was divided into Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western districts in 1864/65, in 1917 Dublin – then still part of the United Kingdom – was divided into numbered postal districts. These continue in use in a form by An Post. In 1923 Glasgow was divided in a way to London. In January 1932 the Postmaster General approved the designation of some urban areas into numbered districts. In November 1934 the Post Office announced the introduction of numbered districts in every town in the United Kingdom large enough to justify it. Pamphlets were issued to each householder and business in ten areas notifying them of the number of the district in which their premises lay, the pamphlets included a map of the districts, and copies were made available at local head post offices. The public were invited to include the district number in the address at the head of letters. A publicity campaign in the following year encouraged the use of the district numbers, the slogan for the campaign was For speed and certainty always use a postal district number on your letters and notepaper. A poster was fixed to every box in the affected areas bearing the number of the district. Every post office in the district was also to display this information
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
14.
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Central London
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Central London is the innermost part of London, UK. Over time a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of central London for statistics, urban planning and local government. From 2004 to 2008, the London Plan included a sub-region called Central London comprising Camden, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth and it had a 2001 population of 1,525,000. The sub-region was replaced in 2008 with a new structure which amalgamated inner and outer boroughs together and this was altered in 2011 when a new Central London sub region was created, now including the City of London and excluding Wandsworth. However, districts at the edge of this subregion such as Streatham, Dulwich. During the Herbert Commission and the subsequent passage of the London Government Bill, the first two were detailed in the 1959 Memorandum of Evidence of the Greater London Group of the London School of Economics. It had an population of 350,000 and occupied 7,000 acres. The area had an population of 400,000 and occupied 8,000 acres. During the passage of the London Government Bill an amendment was put forward to create a central borough corresponding to the used at the 1961 census. The population was estimated to be 270,000
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Belgravia
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Belgravia is a district in West London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its very expensive residential properties and is one of the wealthiest districts in the world, much of it, known as the Grosvenor Estate, is still owned by a family property company, the Duke of Westminsters Grosvenor Group. The area takes its name one of the Dukes subsidiary titles. Owing to the Leasehold Reform Act 1967, the estate has been forced to sell many freeholds to its erstwhile tenants, the area takes its name from one of the Duke of Westminsters subsidiary titles, Viscount Belgrave. The village of Belgrave, Cheshire is two miles from the Grosvenor familys main seat of Eaton Hall. Most of the area was owned by Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster. Thomas Cubitt was the main contractor, Belgravia is characterised by grand terraces of white stucco houses, and is focused on Belgrave Square and Eaton Square. It was one of Londons most fashionable residential districts from its beginnings, fashion design houses that have their retail flagship stores and studios within the area include Philip Treacy, Donna Ida, Jenny Packham and HEMYCA. On the southern edge of Belgravia is Pimlico Road, renowned for its antique shops and high-end furniture. It is a quiet district in the heart of London, contrasting with neighbouring districts. Many embassies are located in the area, especially in Belgrave Square and this phenomenon has diminished social relations in the neighbourhood. Belgrave Square, one of the grandest and largest 19th century squares, is the centrepiece of Belgravia and it was laid out by the property contractor Thomas Cubitt for the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, later to be the 1st Marquess of Westminster, in the 1820s. Most of the houses were occupied by 1840, the numbering is anti-clockwise from the north, NW terrace Nos.1 to 11, west corner mansion No. 12, SW terrace 13–23, south corner mansion No,24, SE terrace Nos. 25–36, east corner mansion No. There is also a later detached house at the northern corner. 49, which was built in by Cubitt for Sidney Herbert in 1851, the terraces were designed by George Basevi and are possibly the grandest houses ever built in London on a speculative basis. The largest of the mansions, Seaford House in the east corner, was designed by Philip Hardwick. Eaton Square is larger but less grand than the feature of the district, Belgrave Square
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Regency architecture
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The period coincides with the Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Federal style in the United States and the French Empire style. The style is strictly the late phase of Georgian architecture, and follows closely on from the Neo-classical style of the preceding years, the Georgian period takes its name from the four Kings George of the period 1714–1830, including King George IV. After the decisive victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 ended the wars for good, most Regency architecture comes from this period. Many buildings of the Regency style have a painted stucco facade. In town centres the dominance of the house continued. Elegant wrought iron balconies and bow windows came into fashion as part of this style, further out of town the suburban villa detached house was popular in a range of sizes. For large country houses a range of styles were available. Ashridge, Belvoir Castle and Fonthill Abbey, were all by James Wyatt, sezincote House, designed by Samuel Pepys Cockerell, is a Neo-Mughal country house for a nabob returned from British India. Brighton Pavilion by John Nash, the home of the Prince Regent, is Indian on the exterior. Until the Church Building Act of 1818, church building had been at a low ebb for over 50 years. The Act allocated some money for new churches required to reflect changes in population. Building of Commissioners churches gathered pace in the 1820s, and continued until the 1850s, the early churches, falling into the Regency period, show a high proportion of Gothic Revival buildings, along with the classically inspired. Strict Greek Revival buildings were mixed with those continuing the modified Baroque, the period saw a great increase in public buildings, at both the national and local level. In London, three bridges were built over the Thames between 1813 and 1819, Vauxhall Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge, all financed by toll charges. Shops began to be included systematically into newly planned developments, and he had many pupils who disseminated his style, or in the case of Pugin rebelled against it. In London itself there are streets in the style in the areas around Victoria, Pimlico, Mayfair. John Soane was more individualistic, one of a number of European experimenters in Neoclassicism, the public buildings of George Dance the Younger, City Architect of London from 1768, were precursors of the Regency style, though he designed little himself after 1798. Robert Smirke could produce both classical and Gothic designs, and also worked on public buildings
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London Victoria station
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Victoria station is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Victoria, in the City of Westminster. It is near to Victoria Street, which along with the area and it is in Travelcard Zone 1. From the main lines, trains can connect to the Catford Loop Line, Dartford Loop Line, Southern operates the majority of commuter and regional services to south London, Sussex and parts of east Surrey, while Southeastern operates trains to south east London and Kent. Gatwick Express trains run direct from Victoria to Gatwick Airport, the Underground station is on the Circle and District lines between Sloane Square and St. Jamess Park, and the Victoria line between Pimlico and Green Park. With over 81 million passenger entries and exits in 2015/16, Victoria is the second-busiest station in London after Waterloo, combined with the Underground Station and interchanges in the national rail station, London Victoria handled about 170 million passengers in the 2015/2016 period. It is one of 19 stations managed by Network Rail, the area around the station is an important interchange for other forms of transport, a local bus station is in the forecourt and Victoria Coach Station is nearby. Victoria Station came about in a fashion to help address this problem for the London Brighton and South Coast Railway. It consisted of two adjacent main line railway stations which, from the viewpoint of passengers, were unconnected, the London and Brighton Railway terminus at London Bridge provided reasonable access to the City of London but was most inconvenient for travellers to and from Westminster. As early as 1842 John Urpeth Rastrick had proposed that the railway should build a branch to serve the West End, but his proposal came to nothing. During the summer of 1857 a scheme for an independent Grosvenor Basin Terminus in the West End of London, the station was originally referred to as the Grosvenor Terminus but later renamed Victoria as it was sited at the end of Victoria Street. Three other railway companies were seeking a terminus in Westminster, the Great Western, the London & North Western. The first two already had access to Battersea through their joint ownership of the West London Line with the LB&SCR. The new line followed part of the route of the Grosvenor Canal with Victoria station on the canal basin. It required the construction of a new bridge over the Thames, originally known as Victoria Bridge and it was of mixed gauge to cater for GWR trains. The LB&SCR had hoped to amalgamate with the VS&PR, and introduced a Parliamentary Bill to allow it to do so in 1860 and this was opposed by the GWR and LC&DR and rejected. By way of compromise the LB&SCR was permitted to lease Victoria station from the VS&PR, Victoria station proved to be unexpectedly popular for both the main companies, and by 1862 there were frequent delays due to congestion at Stewarts Lane Junction. In March 1863 the LB&SCR and the LC&DR jointly funded a new route into Victoria, avoiding Stewarts Lane. The work was completed during 1867/8, the LB&SCR side of Victoria station opened on 1 October 1860, the temporary terminus in Battersea having closed the day before
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River Thames
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The River Thames is a river that flows through southern England, most notably through London. At 215 miles, it is the longest river entirely in England and it also flows through Oxford, Reading, Henley-on-Thames and Windsor. The lower reaches of the river are called the Tideway, derived from its tidal reach up to Teddington Lock. It rises at Thames Head in Gloucestershire, and flows into the North Sea via the Thames Estuary, the Thames drains the whole of Greater London. Its tidal section, reaching up to Teddington Lock, includes most of its London stretch and has a rise, in Scotland, the Tay achieves more than double the average discharge from a drainage basin that is 60% smaller. Along its course are 45 navigation locks with accompanying weirs and its catchment area covers a large part of South Eastern and a small part of Western England and the river is fed by 38 named tributaries. The river contains over 80 islands, in 2010, the Thames won the largest environmental award in the world – the $350,000 International Riverprize. The Thames, from Middle English Temese, is derived from the Brittonic Celtic name for the river, Tamesas, recorded in Latin as Tamesis and yielding modern Welsh Tafwys Thames. It has also suggested that it is not of Celtic origin. A place by the river, rather than the river itself, indirect evidence for the antiquity of the name Thames is provided by a Roman potsherd found at Oxford, bearing the inscription Tamesubugus fecit. It is believed that Tamesubugus name was derived from that of the river, tamese was referred to as a place, not a river in the Ravenna Cosmography. The rivers name has always pronounced with a simple t /t/, the Middle English spelling was typically Temese. A similar spelling from 1210, Tamisiam, is found in the Magna Carta, the Thames through Oxford is sometimes called the Isis. Ordnance Survey maps still label the Thames as River Thames or Isis down to Dorchester, richard Coates suggests that while the river was as a whole called the Thames, part of it, where it was too wide to ford, was called *lowonida. An alternative, and simpler proposal, is that London may also be a Germanic word, for merchant seamen, the Thames has long been just the London River. Londoners often refer to it simply as the river in such as south of the river. Thames Valley Police is a body that takes its name from the river. The marks of human activity, in cases dating back to Pre-Roman Britain, are visible at various points along the river
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London Inner Ring Road
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The London Inner Ring Road is a 12-mile route formed from a number of major roads that encircle Central London. The ring road forms the boundary of the London congestion charge zone, the route is described as the Inner Ring Road because there are two further sets of roads that have been described as London ring roads. The North and South Circular Roads together form the ring road around London. The M25 motorway is the outermost road encircling the metropolis, at a diameter of 40–50 miles. Plans for an Inner Ring Road were put forward by Patrick Abercrombie in the 1940s, the route is signed as Ring Road and is made up of the following roads, A100 A1202 A1210/A1211 A201 A202 A302 A3204 A4202 A5 A501. It formed part of the historical New Road, construction of the New Road from Paddington to Islington began in 1756 to relieve congestion in the built-up area of London. At that time the districts of Marylebone, Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury were on the edge of the city. The New Road ran through the fields to the north of three neighbourhoods. The road is now one of the busiest main roads in the city and it runs from Edgware Road in the west to Angel, in the east. City Road was constructed in 1761 to continue the route eastwards to the edge of the City of London. Pentonville Road runs west to east from Kings Cross to City Road and it acquired its present name in 1857. There are several halls of residence located on Pentonville Road, these being Dinwiddy House, Paul Robeson House, there are two green spaces along the road – Joseph Grimaldi Park and Claremont Square, the latter however is not open to the public. This street is distinguished by the set back housing lines originally intended to provide an atmosphere of spaciousness along the thoroughfare and it is one of the locations on the UK version of the Monopoly board game, which features areas native to London. Pentonville Road is one of the many London placenames mentioned the song Transmetropolitan by The Pogues and it runs from Aldgate southwards to the Tower of London. The northern part, north of the junction with Goodmans Yard and Prescot Street, has one way northbound traffic and it also links to Long Lane. The road has an abundance of shops along part of its length. There is also Bermondsey Square which holds a market every Friday morning, usually known as Bermondsey Market. Towards its southern end are a collection of shops, pubs, Kennington Lane is an A-road running between the Elephant & Castle to the east and Vauxhall to the west
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Grosvenor Canal
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Grosvenor Canal was a canal in the Pimlico area of London, opened in 1824. It was progressively shortened, as first the railways to Victoria Station and it remained in use until 1995, enabling barges to be loaded with refuse for removal from the city, making it the last canal in London to operate commercially. A small part of it remains among the Grosvenor Waterside development, in the early eighteenth century, there were marshes and a tidal creek on the north bank of the Thames near Pimlico. The Chelsea Waterworks Company obtained an Act of Parliament in 1722 and these fed the water into the marshes, and a tide mill was used to pump the water to reservoirs at Hyde Park and St Jamess Park as the tide ebbed. The reservoirs supplied west London with drinking water, the land between the river and the later site of Victoria Station was owned by Sir Richard Grosvenor, who leased it to the company in 1724. They enlarged the existing creek and built the mill, which continued to work until 1775. The company were able to take water directly from the Thames following the granting of another Act of Parliament in 1809 and they continued to lease the land until 1823, when the lease expired. In the following year, the Earl of Grosvenor then decided to turn the creek into a canal, building a lock near the junction with the Thames, most of the commercial traffic appears to have been coal, to supply the neighbourhood. The resident engineer for the construction of the lock and upper basin was John Armstrong. It was one of the few times he worked independently as a civil engineer and they moved to Seething Wells, Surbiton in 1856. The canal originally stretched from the Thames near Chelsea Bridge to Grosvenor Basin on the current site of Victoria station. It is difficult to tell all of the clear area marked Grosvenor Basin on the 1850 map was actually water. The station opened on 1 October 1860 and this took place around 1902, resulting in the canal being half its original length. Since 1866, an authority called the Vestry of St George. They were based close to the end of the canal at Ebury Bridge, following the cutback of the canal to this point, the Duke of Westminster sold what was left of the canal to Westminster City Council, and its primary function became rubbish removal. Around 1925 it was halved in length again to allow Ebury Bridge Estate to be built by Westminster City Council, the lower portion of the canal was kept as a dock, allowing the council to continue loading barges with rubbish. In July 1928, the canal closed for nearly a year, at its peak,8,000 tons of refuse were loaded onto barges each week, and the barge traffic lasted until 1995, making it the last canal in commercial operation in London. The area has since redeveloped as Grosvenor Waterside
28.
Thomas Cubitt
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Thomas Cubitt was an English master builder in the second quarter of the 19th century who mostly worked in London but also carried out several projects in other parts of England. Cubitts first major building was the London Institution in Finsbury Circus, after this he worked primarily on speculative housing at Camden Town, Islington, and especially at Highbury Park, Stoke Newington. His development of areas of Bloomsbury, including Gordon Square and Tavistock Square, began in 1820, notable amongst this development are the north and west sides of Eaton Square, which exemplify Cubitts style of building and design. After Cubitts workshops in Thames Bank were destroyed by fire, he remarked Tell the men they shall be at work within a week, Cubitt was also responsible for the east front of Buckingham Palace. He also built and personally funded nearly a kilometre of the Thames Embankment and he was employed in the large development of Kemp Town in Brighton, and Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, completed in 1851. Cubitts public works included the provision of parks, including being an organiser of the Battersea Park Scheme. Cubitt had two brothers, the contractor and politician William and the civil engineer Lewis who designed many of the built by Thomas. His son by his wife Mary Anne Warner, George, who was created Baron Ashcombe in 1892, was the great-great-grandfather of Camilla and he died in 1855 and was taken from Dorking for burial at West Norwood Cemetery on 27 December 1855. After his death, Queen Victoria said, In his sphere of life, with the business he had in hand. A better, kindhearted or more simple, unassuming man never breathed, another statue of Cubitt can be seen in Dorking, opposite the Dorking Halls, as he was favoured there for his architecture on his Denbies estate. In 1883 the business was acquired by Holland & Hannen, a competitor. Restaurants, pubs and other places have been named in honour of him
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Protected area
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Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the laws of each country or the regulations of the international organisations involved. There are over 161,000 protected areas in the world with more added daily, by contrast, only 1. 17% of the worlds oceans is included in the worlds ~6,800 Marine Protected Areas. Protected areas are essential for biodiversity conservation, often providing habitat, Protection helps maintain ecological processes that cannot survive in most intensely managed landscapes and seascapes. Generally, protected areas are understood to be those in human occupation or at least the exploitation of resources is limited. As a result, Protected Areas can encompass a range of governance types. Indeed, governance of protected areas has emerged a critical factor in their success, subsequently, the range of natural resources that any one protected area may guard is vast. Of all global terrestrial carbon stock,15. 2% is contained within protected areas, Protected areas in South America hold 27% of the worlds carbon stock, which is the highest percentage of any country in both absolute terms and as a proportion of the total stock. Rainforests,18. 8% of the worlds forest is covered by protected areas, of the 670 ecoregions with forest cover, 54% have 10% or more of their forest cover protected under IUCN Categories I – VI. Mountain protected area coverage has increased globally by 21% since 1990, the categories provide international standards for defining protected areas and encourage conservation planning according to their management aims. Protecting places and resources is by no means a modern concept, over 2000 years ago, royal decrees in India protected certain areas. In Europe, rich and powerful people protected hunting grounds for a thousand years, moreover, the idea of protection of special places is universal, for example, it occurs among the communities in the Pacific and in parts of Africa. However, the protected areas movement doesnt begin until late nineteenth-century in North America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. While the idea of protected areas spread around the world in the twentieth century, thus, in North America, protected areas were about safeguarding dramatic and sublime scenery, in Africa, the concern was with game parks, in Europe, landscape protection was more common. The spectrum of benefits and values of protected areas is recognised not only ecologically, international programmes for the protection of representative ecosystems remain relatively progressive, with less advances in marine and freshwater biomes. There is increasing pressure to take account of human needs when setting up protected areas. Such negotiations are never easy but usually stronger and longer-lasting results for both conservation and people. In some countries, protected areas can be assigned without the infrastructure and networking needed to substitute consumable resources, one of the main concerns regarding protected areas on land and sea is their effectiveness at preventing the ongoing loss of biodiversity
30.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
31.
Dolphin Square
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Dolphin Square is a block of private flats and business complex built near the River Thames at Pimlico in London, between 1935 and 1937. At one time, the development was home to more than 70 MPs. The Dolphin Square development is situated on the works of the developer and builder Thomas Cubitt. An Army clothing factory was built on the site after Cubitts death, standing until 1933, an American company, the Frederick French Corporation, bought the freehold for the site from the Duke, with plans to build a large residential development, Ormonde Court. The precarious financial situation of the Frederick French Corporation resulted in the sale of the site to Richard Rylands Costain, a little drudgery is good for wives, perhaps. The Dolphin lady may be spoiled and this promotional booklet was produced for Costains. On purchasing the site, Costain remarked to a colleague, ‘in two or three years well either drive up to spot in a Rolls-Royce, or well be standing here selling matches’. Dolphin Square, as it was now known, was sold by Costains to Sir Maxwell Joseph who bought the complex in 1958 for £2.4 million, selling it to Lintang Investments in 1959 for £3.1 million. In January 2006, the Dolphin Square Trust and Westminster City Council sold Dolphin Square to the American Westbrook Holdings group for £200 million, accommodation is provided in 13 houses each named after a famous navigator or admiral. At the south side of the Square the houses are Grenville, Drake, Raleigh, moving from the river up the west side, there are Nelson, Howard, Beatty, and Duncan. A hotel and administration offices, situated at the side of the Square, is in Dolphin House. Heading south from the hotel there is Keyes, Hood, Collingwood, the estate contains a swimming pool, bar, brasserie, gymnasium, and shopping arcade. In the basement are a launderette and car park, a tennis court and croquet lawn overlook the River Thames. Until 21 January 1970, London Transport bus route 134 showed PIMLICO Dolphin Square as a destination, John Vassall, the Soviet spy, was arrested at apartment 807 in the squares Hood House in 1962. Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana Mitford, Lady Mosley, left their apartment at Dolphin Square for internment in 1940 during the Second World War. In November 2014 the Metropolitan Police Service opened an inquiry under Operation Fairbank into allegations that prominent MPs used the block of flats as a venue for child abuse. One alleged abuse survivor, named only as Nick, claims that he was taken to Dolphin Square regularly as a young boy, exaro and the BBC News both carried interviews with Nick about the abuse he says he faced at Dolphin Square. The Metropolitan Police simultaneously launched a murder inquiry under the name Operation Midland
32.
Churchill Gardens
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Churchill Gardens is a large housing estate in the Pimlico area of Westminster, London. The estate was developed between 1946 and 1962 to a design by the architects Powell and Moya, replacing Victorian terraced houses extensively damaged during the Blitz. Comprising 1,600 homes in 32 blocks, the estate is notable as the housing project completed under the ambitious Abercrombie Plan to redevelop the capital on more efficient lines. Tall slabs of between nine and eleven storeys are enclosed by seven storey blocks and interspersed with maisonettes and terraces. Many of the tall buildings are accessible using lifts leading directly onto the street. The estate is notable for its early and rare example of district heating in the UK. The system was upgraded in 2006 to allow it to supply an additional 1400 homes, Churchill Gardens was designated a conservation area in 1990, and in 1998 six blocks and the accumulator tower were listed Grade II listed. The social housing in Churchill Gardens is managed by CityWest Homes
33.
Lillington and Longmoore Gardens
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Lillington Gardens is an estate in the Pimlico area of the City of Westminster, London, constructed in phases between 1961 and 1980 to a plan by Darbourne & Darke. The estate is now owned and managed by CityWest Homes, the estate was among the last of the high-density public housing schemes built in London during the postwar period, and is referred to as one of the most distinguished. It emphasised individuality in the grouping of dwellings, and provided for private gardens at ground, the estates high build quality, and particularly the planted gardens of its wide roof streets, blend sympathetically with the surrounding Victorian terraces. The estates high quality design was acknowledged by a Housing Design Award, Ministry of Housing and Local Government Award for Good Design, RIBA Award, nikolaus Pevsner described it in 1973 as the most interesting recent housing scheme in London. The site surrounds the Grade I listed Church of St James the Less, the entire estate, including the church, was designated a conservation area in 1990. Lillington and Longmoore Gardens Conservation Area Audit, Westminster City Council,7 February 2012
34.
Listed building
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A listed building or listed structure, in the United Kingdom, is one that has been placed on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. The statutory bodies maintaining the list are Historic England in England, Cadw in Wales, Historic Scotland in Scotland, however, the preferred term in Ireland is protected structure. In England and Wales, an amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Owners of listed buildings are, in circumstances, compelled to repair and maintain them. When alterations are permitted, or when listed buildings are repaired or maintained, slightly different systems operate in each area of the United Kingdom, though the basic principles of the listing remain the same. It was the damage to caused by German bombing during World War II that prompted the first listing of buildings that were deemed to be of particular architectural merit. The listings were used as a means of determining whether a building should be rebuilt if it was damaged by bombing. Listing was first introduced into Northern Ireland under the Planning Order 1972, the listing process has since developed slightly differently in each part of the UK. In the UK, the process of protecting the historic environment is called ‘designation’. A heritage asset is a part of the environment that is valued because of its historic. Only some of these are judged to be important enough to have legal protection through designation. However, buildings that are not formally listed but still judged as being of heritage interest are still regarded as being a consideration in the planning process. Almost anything can be listed – it does not have to be a building, Buildings and structures of special historic interest come in a wide variety of forms and types, ranging from telephone boxes and road signs, to castles. Historic England has created twenty broad categories of structures, and published selection guides for each one to aid with assessing buildings and these include historical overviews and describe the special considerations for listing each category. Both Historic Scotland and Cadw produce guidance for owners, in England, to have a building considered for listing or delisting, the process is to apply to the secretary of state, this can be done by submitting an application form online to Historic England. The applicant does not need to be the owner of the building to apply for it to be listed, full information including application form guidance notes are on the Historic England website. Historic England assesses buildings put forward for listing or delisting and provides advice to the Secretary of State on the architectural, the Secretary of State, who may seek additional advice from others, then decides whether or not to list or delist the building. In England and Wales the authority for listing is granted to the Secretary of State by the Planning Act 1990, Listed buildings in danger of decay are listed on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register
35.
Winston Churchill
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Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill KG OM CH TD PC DL FRS RA was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his overall, in 1963, he was the first of only eight people to be made an honorary citizen of the United States. Churchill was born into the family of the Dukes of Marlborough and his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young officer, he saw action in British India, the Anglo–Sudan War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns, at the forefront of politics for fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, during the war, he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from government. He then briefly resumed active service on the Western Front as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned to government under Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister and he led Britain as Prime Minister until victory over Nazi Germany had been secured. After the Conservative Party suffered a defeat in the 1945 general election. He publicly warned of an Iron Curtain of Soviet influence in Europe, after winning the 1951 election, Churchill again became Prime Minister. His second term was preoccupied by foreign affairs, including the Malayan Emergency, Mau Mau Uprising, Korean War, domestically his government laid great emphasis on house-building. Churchill suffered a stroke in 1953 and retired as Prime Minister in 1955. Upon his death aged ninety in 1965, Elizabeth II granted him the honour of a state funeral and his highly complex legacy continues to stimulate intense debate amongst writers and historians. Born into the family of the Dukes of Marlborough, a branch of the noble Spencer family, Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, like his father. His ancestor George Spencer had changed his surname to Spencer-Churchill in 1817 when he became Duke of Marlborough, to highlight his descent from John Churchill, Churchill was born on 30 November 1874, two months prematurely, in a bedroom in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire. From age two to six, he lived in Dublin, where his grandfather had been appointed Viceroy, Churchills brother, John Strange Spencer-Churchill, was born during this time in Ireland
36.
Laura Ashley
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Laura Ashley was a Welsh fashion designer and businesswoman. She originally made furnishing materials in the 1950s, expanding the business into clothing design, the Laura Ashley style is characterised by Romantic English designs — often with a 19th-century rural feel — and the use of natural fabrics. Although her Welsh parents lived in London, her mother returned home to allow Laura Mountney to be born in Wales at her grandmothers home,31 Station Terrace, in Dowlais and she was raised in a civil service family as a Strict Baptist. The chapel she attended in Dowlais was Welsh language and although she could not understand it, she loved it, educated at Marshalls School in Merthyr Tydfil until 1932, she was then sent to the Elmwood School, Croydon. She was evacuated back to Wales aged 13, but with so many World War II evacuees there were no school places left, in 1942, at age 16, she left school and served in the Womens Royal Naval Service. During this period she met engineer Bernard Ashley at a club in Wallington. After the war, Bernard was posted to India with the Gurkhas, from 1945 to 1952 she worked as a secretary for the National Federation of Womens Institutes in London, marrying Bernard in 1949. While working as a secretary and raising her first two children, Ashley undertook some development work for the Womens Institute on quilting, the couple had invested £10 in wood for the screen frame, dyes and a few yards of linen. Ashleys inspiration to start producing printed fabric came from a Womens Institute display of traditional handicrafts at the Victoria & Albert Museum, when Ashley looked for small patches carrying Victorian designs to help her make patchworks, she found no such thing existed. Here was an opportunity, and she started to print Victorian style headscarves in 1953, the scarves quickly became successful – retailing both via mail order and at high street chains such as John Lewis – and Bernard left his City job to print fabrics full-time. The company was registered as Ashley Mountney, but Bernard changed the name to Laura Ashley because he felt a womans name was more appropriate for the type of products they were producing. The new company moved to Kent in 1955, but when the third of their four children was born, Laura Ashleys first shop was opened at 35 Maengwyn Street, Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire, in 1961. The Laura Ashley association is commemorated by a small plaque, the shop sold locally produced honey, walking sticks as well as the couples own products. Here Laura worked with a seamstress to introduce their first forays into fashion, producing smock like shirts, the family lived above the shop until moving to Carno, Montgomeryshire. They first set up in the vacant social club, but moved in 1967 to the railway station. In 1975, Laura Ashley turned down the offer of an OBE, the addition of a home in France enabled Laura to go back to her roots of fabric design and the company launched its home furnishings collections. Laura and Bernard Ashley had four children who were all involved with the business. David, the eldest son, designed the shops, one of the daughters, Jane, was the photographer, another daughter, Emma
37.
Swami Vivekananda
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Swami Vivekananda Bengali, Shāmi Bibekānondo,12 January 1863 –4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta, was an Indian Hindu monk, a chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a force in the revival of Hinduism in India. Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission and he is perhaps best known for his speech which began, Sisters and brothers of America. In which he introduced Hinduism at the Parliament of the Worlds Religions in Chicago in 1893, born into an aristocratic Bengali family of Calcutta, Vivekananda was inclined towards spirituality. He was influenced by his Guru, Ramakrishna Deva, from whom he learnt that all living beings were an embodiment of the self, therefore. After Ramakrishnas death, Vivekananda toured the Indian subcontinent extensively and acquired knowledge of the conditions prevailing in British India. He later travelled to the United States, representing India at the 1893 Parliament of the World Religions, Vivekananda conducted hundreds of public and private lectures and classes, disseminating tenets of Hindu philosophy in the United States, England and Europe. In India, Vivekananda is regarded as a saint and his birthday is celebrated there as National Youth Day. Vivekananda was born Narendranath Datta at his home at 3 Gourmohan Mukherjee Street in Calcutta. He belonged to a traditional Bengali Kayastha family and was one of nine siblings and his father, Vishwanath Datta, was an attorney at the Calcutta High Court. Durgacharan Datta, Narendras grandfather was a Sanskrit and Persian scholar who left his family and his mother, Bhubaneswari Devi, was a devout housewife. The progressive, rational attitude of Narendras father and the temperament of his mother helped shape his thinking. Narendranath was interested spiritually from an age, and used to meditate before the images of deities such as Shiva, Rama, Sita. He was fascinated by wandering ascetics and monks, naren was naughty and restless as a child, and his parents often had difficulty controlling him. His mother said, I prayed to Shiva for a son, in 1871, at the age of eight, Narendranath enrolled at Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagars Metropolitan Institution, where he went to school until his family moved to Raipur in 1877. In 1879, after his familys return to Calcutta, he was the student to receive first-division marks in the Presidency College entrance examination. He was a reader in a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, religion, history, social science, art. He was also interested in Hindu scriptures, including the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Narendra was trained in Indian classical music, and regularly participated in physical exercise, sports and organised activities
38.
Laurence Olivier
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Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM, was an English actor who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles, late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles. His family had no connections, but Oliviers father, a clergyman. After attending a school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Cowards Private Lives, in 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, there his most celebrated roles included Shakespeares Richard III and Sophocless Oedipus. From 1963 to 1973 he was the director of Britains National Theatre. His own parts there included the role in Othello and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Among Oliviers films are Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and a trilogy of Shakespeare films as actor-director, Henry V, Hamlet and his later films included Sleuth, Marathon Man, and The Boys from Brazil. His television appearances included an adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence, Long Days Journey into Night, Love Among the Ruins, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brideshead Revisited, Oliviers honours included a knighthood, a life peerage and the Order of Merit. For his on-screen work he received four Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, five Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. The National Theatres largest auditorium is named in his honour, and he is commemorated in the Laurence Olivier Awards, given annually by the Society of London Theatre. He was married three times, to the actresses Jill Esmond from 1930 to 1940, Vivien Leigh from 1940 to 1960, Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest of the three children of the Revd Gerard Kerr Olivier and his wife Agnes Louise, née Crookenden. Their elder children were Sybille and Gerard Dacres Dickie and his great-great-grandfather was of French Huguenot descent, and Olivier came from a long line of Protestant clergymen. Gerard Olivier had begun a career as a schoolmaster, but in his thirties he discovered a strong religious vocation and was ordained as a priest of the Church of England and he practised extremely high church, ritualist Anglicanism and liked to be addressed as Father Olivier. This made him unacceptable to most Anglican congregations, and the church posts he was offered were temporary. This meant a nomadic existence, and for Laurences first few years, in 1912, when Olivier was five, his father secured a permanent appointment as assistant priest at St Saviours, Pimlico. He held the post for six years, and a family life was at last possible
39.
Aubrey Beardsley
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Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings in ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent. He was a figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde. Beardsleys contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, Beardsley was born in Brighton, England, on 21 August 1872, and christened on 24 October 1872. Vincents wife, Ellen Agnus Pitt, was the daughter of Surgeon-Major William Pitt of the Indian Army, the Pitts were a well-established and respected family in Brighton, and Beardsleys mother married a man of lesser social status than might have been expected. Soon after their wedding, Vincent was obliged to sell some of his property in order to settle a claim for his breach of promise from another woman who claimed that he had promised to marry her. At the time of his birth, Beardsleys family, which included his sister Mabel who was one year older, were living in Ellens familial home at 12 Buckingham Road. The number of the house in Buckingham Road was 12, but the numbers were changed years ago, in 1883 his family settled in London, and in the following year he appeared in public as an infant musical phenomenon, playing at several concerts with his sister. In January 1885 he began to attend Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School and his first poems, drawings and cartoons appeared in print in Past and Present, the schools magazine. In 1888 he obtained a post in an office, and afterwards one in the Guardian Life. In 1891, under the advice of Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, in 1892 he attended the classes at the Westminster School of Art, then under Professor Fred Brown. Beardsleys first commission was Le Morte dArthur by Thomas Malory, which he illustrated for the publishing house J. M. Dent and his six years of major creative output can be divided into several periods, identified by the form of his signature. In the early period his work is mostly unsigned, during 1891 and 1892 he progressed to using his initials, A. V. B. In mid-1892, the period of Le Morte dArthur and The Bon Mots he used a Japanese-influenced mark which became progressively more graceful, sometimes accompanied by A. B. in block capitals. He co-founded The Yellow Book with American writer Henry Harland, and for the first four editions he served as Art Editor and produced the cover designs and he was also closely aligned with Aestheticism, the British counterpart of Decadence and Symbolism. Most of his images are done in ink, and feature large dark areas contrasted with blank ones. Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and grotesque erotica and his illustrations were in black and white, against a white background. Some of his drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga artwork, featured enormous genitalia, other major illustration projects included an 1896 edition of The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, and the collection A Book of Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley
40.
Jomo Kenyatta
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Jomo Kenyatta was a Kenyan politician who governed the Republic of Kenya as Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as President from 1964 to 1978. He was the first person to hold that latter post and he led the Kenya African National Union party. Kenyatta was born to Kikuyu parents in Kiambu, then part of British East Africa, in youth he worked as a carpenter, and later became politically engaged through the Kikuyu Central Association. In 1929 he travelled to London to lobby for Kikuyu tribal land affairs, in 1933-34 he studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow before returning to London and studying at University College London and the London School of Economics. He remained in England during the Second World War, working as a farm labourer, in 1946 he returned to East Africa and became a teacher. In 1947 he was elected President of the Kenya African Union, in 1952, he was among the Kapenguria Six arrested and charged with involvement in the Mau Mau Uprising against the British. He then led the KANU delegation at the negotiations which secured Kenyas independence, in the 1963 general election, Kenyatta led KANU to victory. As Prime Minister, he supported the government in transforming Kenya into a republic, centralising power in his party, he prohibited KANUs only rival, Kenya Peoples Union, from competing in elections, Kenya thus became a de facto one-party state. His regime faced border conflicts with Somalia and a mutiny in Nairobi. His economic policies were conservative and capitalist, and he espoused a pro-Western, following Kenyattas death, he was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi. Kenyatta is considered the father of the Kenyan nation. Kenyatta was an intellectual who authored several books, and is remembered as a Pan-Africanist. He was criticised as authoritarian and for overseeing a growth in corruption, many places have been named after him. He is also the father of Kenyas fourth and current President, Jomo Kenyatta was born in Kiambu to parents Muigai wa Kungu and Wambui in the village of Gatundu, in British East Africa, a member of the Kikuyu. His date of birth, sometime in the early to mid-1890s, was even to him. However, at least one biography gives his date of birth as 20 October 1891, a date so precise as to likely be apocryphal. His father died while Kamau was very young, after which, as was the custom, he was adopted by his uncle Ngengi, who also inherited his mother, to become Kamau wa Ngengi. When his mother died during childbirth, young Kamau moved from Ngenda to Muthiga to live with his medicine man grandfather Kũngũ wa Magana, to whom he became very close
41.
Walter Clopton Wingfield
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Major Walter Clopton Wingfield MVO was a Welsh inventor and a British Army officer who was one of the pioneers of lawn tennis. Wingfield was born on 16 October 1833 in Ruabon, Denbighshire, Wales, the son of Clopton Lewis Wingfield, major in the 66th Foot Regiment and he was of an English family traceable back to before the Norman conquest. His mother died in 1836 after the birth of her second child, Walter was brought up by his uncle and great uncle. He was educated at Rossall School, and in 1851 entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and he was commissioned a Cornet in the 1st Dragoon Guards and served in India. In 1858 Wingfield became a captain and in 1860 he took part in the campaign in China and was present at the capture of Peking and he returned to England in 1861 and retired from the Dragoon Guards a year later. During the decade he was based at his estate, Rhysnant, Llandrinio, in Montgomeryshire, Wales. He was a Justice of the Peace for the county and served in the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry, joining as Lieutenant in 1864, appointed adjutant of the regiment in 1868, and promoted Major in 1874. In 1870 he was appointed to the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, giving him some employment at the courts of Queen Victoria and he was made MVO in 1902, retiring from the Corps in 1909. In the late 1860s Wingfield was one of the persons experimenting with a version of tennis. The precise date that Wingfield brought it to the public is uncertain, lord Lansdowne claimed that in 1869 Major Wingfield gave a demonstration of the game to him in the garden of his Berkeley Square house, although in that year Wingfield was not a major. Another attribution was to a party held at Nantclwyd Hall in Denbighshire, Wales, nor was Wingfield the only exponent. At the same time, Harry Gem and Augurio Perera were demonstrating their game of Pelota in Leamington Spa, the sets were available from Wingfields agent, French and Co. in Pimlico and cost between five and ten guineas. In his version the game was played on an hour-glass shaped court, the service had to be made from a diamond-shaped box at one end only and the service had to bounce beyond the service line instead of in front of it. He adopted the Rackets-based system of scoring where games consisted of 15 points, in order to differentiate his game, he named it Sphairistikè Between July 1874 and June 18751,050 tennis sets were sold, mainly to the aristocracy. Lawn tennis was becoming an important adjunct to cricket at the Marylebone Cricket Club and was played at Lords Cricket Ground, in 1875 John Moyer Heathcote instigated a meeting at the MCC to establish a universal set of rules and Wingfield was invited to participate. Wingfields hourglass court and scoring method were adopted and Wingfield considered his sport was now entrusted to the MCC, during this time he suffered personal tragedies including the developing mental illness of his wife and the death of his three young sons and he lost all interest in the game. Wingfield authored two tennis works, The Book of the Game and The Majors Game of Lawn Tennis, Wingfield became vice-president of The Universal Cookery and Food Association. In around 1890 he founded a society called Le Cordon Rouge which was intended to further the development of the science of cookery
42.
Sheila Scott
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Sheila Scott OBE, was an English aviator. On this flight, she became the first person to fly over the North Pole in a small aircraft, born Sheila Christine Hopkins, she had a turbulent childhood in Worcester and did not do well at school, nearly being expelled several times. During World War II, she joined the services as a nurse in a naval hospital, in 1943, she started a career as an actress as Sheila Scott, a name she maintained long after she stopped acting. She had a marriage from 1945 to 1950 to Rupert Bellamy. In 1958 she learned to fly going solo at Thruxton Aerodome after nine months of training and her first aircraft was a Thruxton Jackaroo G-APAM which she owned from 1959 to 1964. In April 1966 she bought her Piper Comanche 260B G-ATOY named Myth Too in which she set ninety world records. Her first solo round the world flight commenced at London Heathrow on 18 May 1966 and returned on 20 June 1966, in 1969-70 she flew solo around the world in the same aircraft a second time. This aircraft was damaged in 1979 and the remains are on display in the collection of the National Museum of Flight, East Fortune, East Lothian. She later used a borrowed Piper Comanche 400 N8515P to set more records, on 20 November 1966, she appeared as a contestant on the American panel show Whats My Line. In 1971 she bought a twin-engined Piper Aztec 250 G-AYTO named Mythre in which she completed her third round the world flight in the same year. This aircraft was destroyed in a flood at the Piper factory in Lock Haven in 1974 and she was the founder, and the first governor, of the British branch of the Ninety Nines, an association for licensed women pilots, which had been created by Amelia Earhart. She was a member of the International Association of Licensed Women Pilots, and of the Whirly Girls and she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1968. One of the buildings at the University of Worcester is named after her. She received the Brabazon of Tara Award in 1965,1967,1968 and she received the Britannia Trophy of the Royal Aero Club of Britain in 1968. She received the Royal Aero Clubs Gold Medal, before her death, Scott lived in a bedsit in Pimlico in poverty. She was diagnosed cancer and died at age 66 at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London
43.
Millbank
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Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico, Millbank is known as the location of major government offices, the Millbank Tower and prominent art institutions such as Tate Britain and the Chelsea College of Art and Design. The area derives its name from a watermill owned by Westminster Abbey that once stood at a close to present day College Green. Described as a place of plague pits and a low, marshy locality suitable for shooting snipe in the nearby bogs, facilities at the prison camp on the marshy ground were so poor that 1,200 prisoners were recorded as having died in the primitive conditions. Baltic Wharf, a site just to the north of Vauxhall Bridge, was for much of the 19th century the location of a Henry Castle & Son, a ship breaking and timber merchant. Numerous wooden ships of the line of the Royal Navy were dismantled at this location, their ornate figureheads often displayed on the gates and perimeter of the yard walls. Millbank shares the name of the road along the north bank of the River Thames, extending northwards from Vauxhall Bridge to Abingdon Street. There are parliamentary offices situated across this road, notably No.7, the road was created as part of the Thames Embankment in the mid 19th century and lies above a large interceptor sewer. The listed site has since been renovated as a purpose built arts college for the Chelsea College of Art, the Tate Britain art gallery is directly opposite near the end of Vauxhall Bridge, providing a distinct arts presence in the area. The headquarters of the British chemicals giant ICI was originally located at Imperial Chemical House on Millbank before it relocated to Manchester Square, the headquarters for the Northern Ireland Office, MI5 and Thames House are also nearby. On 18 December 1973, the Provisional Irish Republican Army exploded a bomb on Thorney Street at 8, the bomb resulted in over 50 people injured, including two seriously. Millbank Studios reside in the area as an independent broadcast company, the studio is situated opposite the Houses of Parliament. The BBC Parliament broadcasting channel is situated nearby. No.4 is the commonly used by broadcasters for producing coverage of the Westminster area, including the BBC, Sky News. RTÉ News and Current Affairs also have their London bureau at the same location, neighbouring College Green is used as a setting for interviewing politicians outdoors. Millbank Estate is a large but highly regarded Grade II-listed red-brick housing estate that gives the area behind Tate Britain a distinct character, the estate was built between 1897 and 1902, the bricks being recycled from Millbank Prison, which had closed in 1890. The 17 buildings, comprising one of Londons earliest social housing schemes, are named after distinguished painters such as Turner, Gainsborough, Millais, the estate has 562 flats, all managed on behalf of Westminster City Council by MEMO, the largest tenant management organisation in Westminster. The estates management board is elected annually from the resident population, half of the estates flats are private leaseholds, the other half are rented from Westminster City Council
44.
James VI and I
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James VI and I was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death. The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, though both were ruled by James in personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, James succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother Mary was compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, in 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known after him as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58. After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617 and he was a major advocate of a single parliament for England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonization of the Americas began, at 57 years and 246 days, Jamess reign in Scotland was longer than those of any of his predecessors. He achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. James himself was a scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie, The True Law of Free Monarchies. He sponsored the translation of the Bible that would later be named after him, Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed the wisest fool in Christendom, an epithet associated with his character ever since. Since the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise Jamess reputation and treat him as a serious, James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Both Mary and Darnley were great-grandchildren of Henry VII of England through Margaret Tudor, Marys rule over Scotland was insecure, and she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by Protestant noblemen. James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and he was baptised Charles James or James Charles on 17 December 1566 in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle. His godparents were Charles IX of France, Elizabeth I of England, Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, whom she referred to as a pocky priest, spit in the childs mouth, as was then the custom. The subsequent entertainment, devised by Frenchman Bastian Pagez, featured men dressed as satyrs and sporting tails, Jamess father, Darnley, was murdered on 10 February 1567 at Kirk o Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for Rizzios death. James inherited his fathers titles of Duke of Albany and Earl of Ross, Mary was already unpopular, and her marriage on 15 May 1567 to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Darnley, heightened widespread bad feeling towards her. In June 1567, Protestant rebels arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Loch Leven Castle and she was forced to abdicate on 24 July 1567 in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as regent. The care of James was entrusted to the Earl and Countess of Mar, to be conserved, nursed, and upbrought in the security of Stirling Castle
Pimlico
