Essex
Essex is a county in the south-east of England, north-east of London. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, London to the south-west; the county town is the only city in the county. For government statistical purposes Essex is placed in the East of England region. Essex occupies the eastern part of the ancient Kingdom of Essex, which united with the other Anglian and Saxon kingdoms to make England a single nation state; as well as rural areas, the county includes London Stansted Airport, the new towns of Basildon and Harlow, Lakeside Shopping Centre, the port of Tilbury and the borough of Southend-on-Sea. The name Essex originates in the Anglo-Saxon period of the Early Middle Ages and has its root in the Anglo-Saxon name Ēastseaxe, the eastern kingdom of the Saxons who had come from the continent and settled in Britain during the Heptarchy. Recorded in AD 527, Essex occupied territory to the north of the River Thames, incorporating all of what became Middlesex and most of what became Hertfordshire.
Its territory was restricted to lands east of the River Lea. Colchester in the north-east of the county is Britain's oldest recorded town, dating from before the Roman conquest, when it was known as Camulodunum and was sufficiently well-developed to have its own mint. In AD 824, following the Battle of Ellandun, the kingdoms of the East Saxons, the South Saxons and the Jutes of Kent were absorbed into the kingdom of the West Saxons, uniting Saxland under King Alfred's grandfather Ecgberht. Before the Norman conquest the East Saxons were subsumed into the Kingdom of England. After the Norman conquest, Essex became a county. During the medieval period, much of the area was designated a Royal forest, including the entire county in a period to 1204, when the area "north of the Stanestreet" was disafforested; the areas subject to forest law diminished, but at various times they included the forests of Becontree, Epping, Hatfield and Waltham. Essex County Council was formed in 1889. However, County Boroughs of West Ham, Southend-on-Sea and East Ham formed part of the county but were unitary authorities.
12 boroughs and districts provide more localised services such as rubbish and recycling collections and planning, as shown in the map on the right. A few Essex parishes have been transferred to other counties. Before 1889, small areas were transferred to Hertfordshire near Bishops Stortford and Sawbridgeworth. At the time of the main changes around 1900, parts of Helions Bumpstead, Sturmer and Ballingdon-with-Brundon were transferred to Suffolk. Part of Hadstock, part of Ashton and part of Chrishall were transferred to Cambridgeshire and part of Great Horkesley went to Suffolk; the boundary with Greater London was established in 1965, when East Ham and West Ham county boroughs and the Barking, Dagenham, Ilford, Romford and Wanstead and Woodford districts were transferred to form the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Newham and Waltham Forest. Essex became part of the East of England Government Office Region in 1994 and was statistically counted as part of that region from 1999, having been part of the South East England region.
In 1998, the boroughs of Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock were granted autonomy from the administrative county of Essex after successful requests to become unitary authorities. Essex Police covers the two unitary authorities; the county council chamber and main headquarters is at the County Hall in Chelmsford. Before 1938, the council met in London near Moorgate, which with significant parts of the county close to that point and the dominance of railway travel had been more convenient than any place in the county, it has 75 elected councillors. Before 1965, the number of councillors reached over 100; the County Hall, made a listed building in 2007, dates from the mid-1930s and is decorated with fine artworks of that period the gift of the family who owned the textile firm Courtaulds. The highest point of the county of Essex is Chrishall Common near the village of Langley, close to the Hertfordshire border, which reaches 482 feet; the ceremonial county of Essex is bounded to the south by its estuary.
The pattern of settlement in the county is diverse. The Metropolitan Green Belt has prevented the further sprawl of London into the county, although it contains the new towns of Basildon and Harlow developed to resettle Londoners after the destruction of London housing in the Second World War, since which they have been developed and expanded. Epping Forest prevents the further spread of the Greater London Urban Area; as it is not far from London with its economic magnetism, many of Essex's settlements those near or within short driving distance of railway stations, function as dormitory towns or villages where London workers raise their families. Part of the s
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner, known as J. M. W. Turner and contemporarily as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter and watercolourist, he is known for his expressive colourisations, imaginative landscapes and turbulent violent marine paintings. Turner was born in Covent Garden, London, to a modest lower middle-class family, he lived in London all his life, retaining his Cockney accent and assiduously avoiding the trappings of success and fame. A child prodigy, Turner studied at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1789, enrolling when he was 14, exhibited his first work there at 15. During this period, he served as an architectural draftsman, he earned a steady income from commissions and sales, which due to his troubled, contrary nature, were begrudgingly accepted. He opened his own gallery in 1804 and became professor of perspective at the academy in 1807, where he lectured until 1828, although he was viewed as profoundly inarticulate, he traveled to Europe from 1802 returning with voluminous sketchbooks.
Intensely private and reclusive, Turner was a controversial figure throughout his career. He did not marry, but fathered two daughters and Georgiana, by his housekeeper Sarah Danby, he became more pessimistic and morose as he got older after the death of his father, after which his outlook deteriorated, his gallery fell into disrepair and neglect, his art intensified. He lived in squalor and poor health from 1845, died in London in 1851 aged 76. Turner is buried in London, he left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, 30,000 works on paper. He had been championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840, is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Joseph Mallord William Turner was baptised on 14 May, he was born in Covent Garden, in London, England. His father, William Turner, was a wig maker, his mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. A younger sister, Mary Ann, was born in September 1778 but died in August 1783.
Turner's mother showed signs of mental disturbance from 1785 and was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in Old Street in 1799 and was moved in 1800 to Bethlem Hospital where she died in 1804. Turner was sent to his maternal uncle, Joseph Mallord William Marshall, in Brentford a small town on the banks of the River Thames west of London; the earliest known artistic exercise by Turner is from this period—a series of simple colourings of engraved plates from Henry Boswell's Picturesque View of the Antiquities of England and Wales. Around 1786, Turner was sent to Margate on the north-east Kent coast. There he produced a series of drawings of the town and surrounding area that foreshadowed his work. By this time, Turner's drawings were being exhibited in his father's shop window and sold for a few shillings, his father boasted to the artist Thomas Stothard that: "My son, sir, is going to be a painter". In 1789, Turner again stayed with his uncle. A whole sketchbook of work from this time in Berkshire survives as well as a watercolour of Oxford.
The use of pencil sketches on location, as the foundation for finished paintings, formed the basis of Turner's essential working style for his whole career. Many early sketches by Turner were architectural studies or exercises in perspective, it is known that, as a young man, he worked for several architects including Thomas Hardwick, James Wyatt and Joseph Bonomi the Elder. By the end of 1789, he had begun to study under the topographical draughtsman Thomas Malton, specialised in London views. Turner learned from him the basic tricks of the trade and colouring outline prints of British castles and abbeys, he would call Malton "My real master". Topography was a thriving industry. Turner entered the Royal Academy of Art in 1789, aged 14, was accepted into the academy a year by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Turner showed an early interest in architecture, but was advised by Thomas Hardwick to focus on painting, his first watercolour, A View of the Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth was accepted for the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1790 when Turner was 15.
As an academy probationer, Turner was taught drawing from plaster casts of antique sculptures. From July 1790 to October 1793, his name appears in the registry of the academy over a hundred times. In June 1792, he was admitted to the life class to learn to draw the human body from nude models. Turner exhibited watercolours each year at the academy while painting in the winter and travelling in the summer throughout Britain to Wales, where he produced a wide range of sketches for working up into studies and watercolours; these focused on architectural work, which used his skills as a draughtsman. In 1793, he showed the watercolour titled The Rising Squall – Hot Wells from St Vincent's Rock Bristol, which foreshadowed his climatic effects. Cunningham in his obituary of Turner wrote that it was: "recognised by the wiser few as a noble attempt at lifting landscape art out of the tame insipidities... evinced for the first time that mastery of effect for which he is now justly celebrated". In 1796, Turner exhibited Fishermen at Sea, his first oil painting for the academy, of a nocturnal moonlit scene of the Needles off the Isle of Wight, an image of boats in peril.
Wilton said that the image: "Is a summary of all, said about the sea by the artists of the 18th century." And shows strong influence
Gunpowder magazine
A gunpowder magazine is a magazine designed to store the explosive gunpowder in wooden barrels for safety. Gunpowder, until superseded, was a universal explosive used in the military and for civil engineering: both applications required storage magazines. Most magazines tended to be in remote and secure locations, they are the successor to the earlier powder towers and powder houses. Historic magazines were at the following locations, among others: Jack's Magazine, Saltwater River, Victoria Goat Island, Sydney Spectacle Island North Arm Powder Magazine Dry Creek explosives depot There are magazines at: Citadel Hill Citadel of Quebec, Quebec City, Quebec Parc de l'Esplanade, Quebec City, Quebec Cole Island, British Columbia Fort Lennox, Île-aux-Noix, Quebec Fort William Historical Park, Thunder Bay, Ontario Fort York, Toronto The Ballincollig gunpowder mills were first opened in the late 18th century and were bought, in 1804, by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland's Board of Ordnance to help defend the Kingdom against attack.
They were one of three royal gunpowder factories. They were sold off in a semi-derelict condition. Many buildings survive and, together with the associated canals, were incorporated into a regional park – Ballincollig Regional Park; the site contains a number of powder magazines, as well as Expense magazines. The No. 2 magazine is the oldest magazine. It is 29 foot long by 28 foot wide, it has a groin-vaulted roof. The magazine is protected by earthen banks on two sides; the No. 1 magazine is newer. It has solid walls, but is now roofless. There is a surviving Magazine at part of the defences of Cork Harbour. Rocky Island, midway between the mainland and Haulbowline Island, is dominated by a magazine complex dating from 1808. In 2007 it was converted into Ireland's first crematorium outside Dublin; the Order of Saint John built a number of gunpowder magazines in Malta during their rule of the islands. Until the end of the sixteenth century, echauguettes were used to store gunpowder; the Order built a magazine in Valletta, but this exploded in 1634, killing 22 people.
After the explosion, a new magazine was built in Floriana, sparsely populated, to avoid another disaster. Various other magazines were built over the years, their designs were influenced by French military architecture the style of Vauban; the British, who took over Malta in 1800 built a number of magazines on the islands. Gunpowder magazines in Malta include: Cittadella: A gunpowder magazine was built on St. John Demi-Bastion sometime between the 1620s and 1693. Two other magazines were built on St. Martin Cavalier and St. John Cavalier in 1701; the magazines at St. John Demi-Bastion and St. John Cavalier are still intact, while the one on St. Martin Cavalier collapsed in the nineteenth century. Fort St. Angelo: A magazine was built within the fort sometime after 1690 on the site of an older gunpowder factory, it still exists with some modifications made by the British. Mdina: A magazine on De Redin Bastion was proposed in the 1720s, but it was never built. Fort Manoel: Two magazines were built in 1727–29 on St Helen's Bastion and St Anthony's Bastion.
The latter was demolished in 1872 to make way for gun emplacements, but the one on St Helen's Bastion still survives and was restored in 2004. The British built smaller magazines in the fort as well. Fort St. Elmo: A magazine was built in Vendôme Bastion in 1745, it was converted into an armoury in the 19th century; until 2014 it housed the National War Museum. Ras Ħanżir: A magazine was built in 1756 outside the fortified settlements for safety, it still exists, although it was altered by the British when it was incorporated into the Corradino Lines. Fort Chambray: A magazine was built in around 1760 on Guardian Angel Bastion, it has an oval shape and a conical roof, it is still standing. Cottonera Lines: Magazines were built on some of the bastions. Fort Ricasoli: The fort's magazine was blown up during the Froberg mutiny in 1807; the British built a new magazine to replace it in 1829. Other smaller magazines were built by the British within the fort. In addition, some of the coastal fortifications had their own magazines or storage areas.
In the Netherlands three gunpowder magazines still exist. The Kruithuis in Delft, the Kruithuis in Den Bosch and one in Wierickerschans. Gunpowder magazines were called Bārūt-Khāneh in Persia. Gunpowder Manufacturing of Yusef Abad, the Gunpowder Magazine of Tehran, was a gunpowder magazine near Tehran, built during the Qajar dynasty. Nothing remains of this building today, its exact location is unknown; the Battle Box at Fort Canning Fort Sentosa Fort Siloso Fort Tanjong Katong A Magazine was erected in Bathurst, East Cape, by the British Military in 1821. It carried about 273 kg gunpowder, 7,000 ball cartridges and 60 rifles as stock. In 1870 the British Military build a power magazine in the Northern Cape town of Fraserburg still standing, in case of war with the neighbouring Griqua people and subsequently us
M25 motorway
The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is 117 miles long encircling all of Greater London, England. An ambitious concept to build four concentric ring roads around London was first mooted in the 1960s. A few sections of the outer two rings were constructed in the early 1970s, but the plan was abandoned and the sections were integrated to form a single ring which became the M25, aka London Ring Road completed in 1986, it is one of the busiest of the British motorway network: the stretch between Junctions 14 and 15 outside Heathrow Airport records the highest number of daily traffic counts on the British strategic road network with the average flow in 2017 of 211,059 counts. This compares to 197,219 counts measured on the M1 motorway between junction 7 and 8 outside Hemel Hempstead in 2014, 195,325 counts measured on the M60 motorway between junctions 12 and 13 in Western Manchester in 2014; the M25, plus the short non-motorway A282 which joins the two ends of the M25 across the River Thames using the Dartford Crossing, is Europe's second longest orbital road after the Berliner Ring, 122 miles.
Built wholly as a dual three-lane motorway, much of the motorway has been widened: to dual four lanes for half, to a dual five-lanes section between junctions 12 and 14 and a dual six-lane section between junctions 14 and 15. Further widening is in progress of minor sections with plans for managed motorways in many others. To the east of London the two ends of the M25 are joined to complete a loop by the non-motorway A282 Dartford Crossing of the River Thames between Thurrock and Dartford; this crossing, which consists of twin two-lane tunnels and the four-lane QE2 bridge, is named Canterbury Way. Passage across the bridge or through the tunnels is subject to a toll, its level depending on the kind of vehicle; this stretch being non-motorway, it allows traffic, including that not permitted to use motorways, to cross the River Thames east of the Woolwich Ferry. However, in 2017 Highways England published plans to build another motorway-grade Thames tunnel to the east of Gravesend and Grays, the Lower Thames Crossing, in order to relieve congestion on the A282 Dartford Crossing and connect the M25 at North Ockendon in Essex with the M2 in Kent.
At Junction 5, the clockwise carriageway of the M25 is routed off the main north–south dual carriageway onto the main east–west dual carriageway with the main north–south carriageway becoming the A21. In the opposite direction, to the east of the point where the M25 diverges from the main east–west carriageway, that carriageway become the M26 motorway; the radial distance from London varies from 12.5 miles in Potters Bar to 19.5 miles in Byfleet. Three Greater London boroughs have realigned their boundaries to the M25 for minor stretches. Major towns listed as destinations, in various counties, adjoin the M25. North Ockendon is the only settlement of Greater London situated outside the M25. In 2004, following an opinion poll, the London Assembly mooted for consultation alignment of the Greater London boundary with the M25. "Inside the M25" and "outside/beyond the M25" are colloquial, looser alternatives to "Greater London" sometimes used in haulage. The Communications Act 2003 explicitly uses the M25 as the boundary in requiring a proportion of television programmes to be made outside the London area.
Two motorway service areas are on the M25, two others are directly accessible from it. Those on the M25 are Clacket Lane between junctions 5 and 6 and Cobham between junctions 9 and 10; those directly accessible from it are South Mimms off junction 23 and Thurrock off junction 31. Cobham services opened on 13 September 2012; the M25 was unlit except for sections around Heathrow, major interchanges and Junctions 23–30. Low pressure sodium lighting was the most prominent technology used, but widening projects from the 1990s onwards have all used high-pressure sodium lighting and this has diminished the original installations. By 2014 only one significant stretch was still SOX-lit and the units were removed the same year; the motorway passes through five counties. Junctions 1A–5 are in Kent, 6–14 are in Surrey, 15–16 are in Buckinghamshire, 17–25 are in Hertfordshire, 26–31 are in Essex. Policing of the road is carried out by an integrated policing group made up of the Metropolitan, Thames Valley, Kent and Surrey forces.
The M25 is one of Europe's busiest motorways. In 2003, a maximum of 196,000 vehicles a day were recorded on the motorway just south of London Heathrow Airport between junctions 13 and 14; the idea of an orbital road around London was first proposed early in the 20th century. An outer orbital road around London had first been proposed in 1913, was re-examined as a motorway route in Sir Charles Bressey's and Sir Edwin Lutyens' The Highway Development Survey, 1937. Sir Patrick Abercrombie's County of London Plan, 1943 and Greater London Plan, 1944 proposed a series of five roads encircling the capital; the northern sections of the M25 follow a similar route to the World War II Outer London Defence Ring, a concentric series of tanks and pillboxes designed to slow down a potential Ger
East of England
The East of England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics from 1999, it includes the ceremonial counties of Bedfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Suffolk. Essex has the highest population in the region, its population at the 2011 census was 5,847,000. Bedford, Basildon, Southend-on-Sea, Ipswich, Colchester and Cambridge are the region's most populous towns; the southern part of the region lies in the London commuter belt. The region has the lowest elevation range in the UK. North Cambridgeshire and the Essex Coast have most of the around 5% of the region, below 10 metres above sea level; the Fens are in North Cambridgeshire, notable for the lowest point in the country in the land of the village of Holme 2.75 metres below mean sea level, once Whittlesey Mere. The highest point is at Clipper Down at 817 ft, in the far south-western corner of the region in the Ivinghoe Hills. Basildon and Harlow, with Stevenage and Hemel Hempstead, were main New Towns in the 1950s and 1960s, with much industry located there.
In the late 1960s, the Roskill Commission considered Thurleigh in Bedfordshire, Nuthampstead in Hertfordshire and Foulness in Essex as a possible third airport for London. The East of England succeeded the standard statistical region East Anglia; the East of England civil defence region was identical to today's region. England between the Wash and just south of the town of Colchester has since post-Roman times been and continues to be known as East Anglia, including the county traversing the west of this line, Cambridgeshire; the inclusion of Essex as part of East Anglia is open to debate, notably because it was a Saxon kingdom, separate from the kingdom of the East Angles. Essex, despite meaning East-Saxons formed part of the South East England, as did Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, a mixture of definite and debatable Home Counties; the earliest use of the term is from 1695. Charles Davenant, in An essay upon ways and means of supplying the war, wrote, "The Eleven Home Counties, which are thought in Land Taxes to pay more than their proportion..." cited a list including these four.
The term does not appear to have been used in taxation since the 18th century. East Anglia is one of the driest parts of the United Kingdom with average rainfall ranging from 450 mm to 750 mm; this is because low pressure systems and weather fronts from the Atlantic have lost a lot of their moisture over land by the time they reach Eastern England. However the Fens in Cambridgeshire are prone to flooding. Winter is cool but non-prevailing cold easterly winds can affect the area from the continent, these can bring heavy snowfall if the winds interact with a low pressure system over the Atlantic or France. Northerly winds can be cold but are not as cold as easterly winds. Westerly winds bring milder and wetter weather. Southerly winds bring mild air but chill if coming from further east than Spain. Spring is a transitional season that can be chilly to start with but is warm by late-April/May; the weather at this time is changeable and showery. Summer is warm and continental air from mainland Europe or the Azores High leads to at least a few weeks of hot, balmy weather with prolonged warm to hot weather.
The number of summer storms from the Atlantic, such as the remnants of a tropical storm coincides with the location of the jet stream. The East tends to receive much less of their rain than the other regions. Autumn is mild with some days being unsettled and rainy and others warm. At least part of September and early October in the East have warm and settled weather but only in rare years is there an Indian summer where fine weather marks the entire traditional harvest season; the most deprived districts, according to the Indices of deprivation 2007 in the region are, in descending order, Great Yarmouth, Luton and Ipswich. At county level, after Luton and Peterborough, which have a similar level of deprivation, in descending order there is Southend-on-Sea Thurrock; the least deprived districts, in descending order, are South Cambridgeshire, Mid Bedfordshire, East Hertfordshire, St Albans, Rochford, Huntingdonshire, Mid Suffolk, North Hertfordshire, Three Rivers, South Norfolk, East Cambridgeshire and Suffolk Coastal.
At county level, the least deprived areas in the region, in descending order, are Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, with all three having a similar level of deprivation Essex. The region has the lowest proportion of jobless households in the UK – 0.5%. In March 2011 the region's unemployment claimant count was 3.0%. Inside the region, the highest rate is Great Yarmouth with 6.2%, followed by Peterborough and Southend-on-Sea on 4.7%. In the 2015 general election, there was an overall swing of 0.25% from the Conservatives to Labour, the Liberal Democrats lost 16% of its vote. All of Hertfordshire and Suffolk is now Conservative; the region's electorate voted 49% Conservative, 22% Labour, 16% UKIP, 8% Liberal Democrat and 4% Green. Like other regions, the division of seats favours th
A13 road (England)
The A13 is a major road in England linking Central London with east London and south Essex. Its route is similar to that of the London and Southend Railway, runs the entire length of the northern Thames Gateway area, terminating on the Thames Estuary at Shoeburyness, it is a trunk road between London and the Tilbury junction, a primary route between there and Sadlers Hall Farm near South Benfleet, a non-primary route between there and Shoeburyness. Commercial Road and East India Dock Road The A13 used to start at Aldgate Pump. At the London end, Commercial Road and East India Dock Road form one of two main arteries through the historic East End; the A13 route is a recent addition to London's radial network, having been built at the beginning of the 19th century to connect the City with the newly expanding Docklands area. Commercial Road dates from 1802, while East India Dock Road was set out from 1806-1812; the first iron bridge across the River Lea was built in 1810. Today the route is still single carriageway, though notable is the junction with the A12 and A102 at the northern portal of the Blackwall Tunnel.
This section of A13 is used by the important London Bus routes 15 and 115. East Ham & Barking By-pass However, just east of Blackwall, at the crossing of the River Lea, there is a TOTSO with the A1261 East India Dock Link Tunnel, the road changes character becoming a dual three-lane expressway; this grade-separated route continues all the way to the Greater London Boundary. Notable junctions include Canning Town, the A406 junction near Beckton, as well as the single carriageway Lodge Avenue flyover near Barking, where the old A13 route merges with the new. Grade-separated in 2002-2004, the dual carriageway section through Newham is Newham Way, while through Barking it is Alfreds Way, both comprising the East Ham & Barking Bypass, dualled by the 1960s; this section is structurally sound and built to high standards, but was subject to a 40 mph speed limit. Prior to grade-separation, the speed limit was 50 mph. Works involved inserting new underpasses at Prince Regent and Movers Lane, a new flyover at Beckton Alps, expanding Canning Town flyover from two lanes either way to three.
Inserted was the free-flow link to the A1261 tunnel. London Bus route 173 is the only route to use the A13 here, between Ripple Road. However, the speed limit was increased back to 50 mph in 2011. Ripple Road and the Thames Gateway East of the Lodge Avenue junction near Barking, the route takes over the much older Ripple Road, with its last at-grade junction at Renwick Road, while the all-new grade-separated section east of the Goresbrook Interchange at Dagenham is termed the Thames Gateway, completed in 1999; this is notable for the award-winning viaduct over Fords works, opening in late 1999, the causeway over Rainham and Wennington Marshes, the latter structure causing some delay to the project due to necessary studies on its environmental impact, although this section opened first, in mid-1997. The contract included the Wennington to M25 motorway section, it has National Speed Limit from just east of Goresbrook Interchange. London Bus routes 173 and 287 are the only routes to use the A13 here, between Ripple Road and Goresbrook.
In 2005, Havering Council commissioned the Litmus Towers sculptures on the A13 junctions near Rainham which display local environmental data using large LED arrays. Wennington to Sadlers Hall Farm The Thames Gateway section of the A13 leaves London at Wennington on the border with Thurrock, still dual three lanes, intersecting with the M25 motorway at Junction 30, close to the Dartford Crossing and Lakeside Shopping Centre; the A13 here is a much older dual carriageway, dating to the 1980s, including the four-lane flyover above the M25, left incomplete for over 15 years. The Wennington to M25 section opened in late 1998; the next junction, the turn-off for Lakeside, has only west-facing slips, so there is no exit westbound. It is dual three lanes past the junction with the A1089, the road into Tilbury, loses its Trunk Road status to the latter; the A13 drops down to two lanes each way at the nearby A128 junction. It is dual for another 9 miles, bypassing Stanford-le-Hope and Basildon before it reaches the Sadlers Hall Farm roundabout.
Here the road loses its dual and Primary Route status. The main route into Southend is now the A127 Southend Arterial Road, accessible via the A130. A13/A130 Sadlers Farm Junction Improvements to the A13/A130 Sadlers Farm Junction were first given government approval in July 2006 following a 2005 public consultation; the project involved by-passing the roundabout by creating a new full-depth cutting link road between the A13 and A130, building slip roads connecting traffic to the Sadlers Farm roundabout and widening the A13 to dual four lane carriageway to Pitsea and the A130 to dual three lane carriageway to the Rayleigh Spur roundabout. The scheme is part of the Thames Gateway transport infrastructure plans which gave it an estimated cost of £63 million in 2007 and timelines it for 2012; the scheme was opened in 2012. Benfleet to Shoeburyness The A13 continues east of Sadlers Farm as single-carriageway through Thundersley, Leigh-on-Sea and Westcliff, before reaching the seaside resort of Southend-on-Sea.
This is the last major town
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or from a combination of fission and fusion reactions. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from small amounts of matter; the first test of a fission bomb released an amount of energy equal to 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear bomb test released energy equal to 10 million tons of TNT. A thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds can release energy equal to more than 1.2 million tons of TNT. A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate an entire city by blast and radiation. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in war, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, the U. S. Army Air Forces detonated a uranium gun-type fission bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
S. Army Air Forces detonated a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" over the Japanese city of Nagasaki; these bombings caused injuries that resulted in the deaths of 200,000 civilians and military personnel. The ethics of these bombings and their role in Japan's surrender are subjects of debate. Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated over two thousand times for testing and demonstration. Only a few nations are suspected of seeking them; the only countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and acknowledge possessing them—are the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, China, India and North Korea. Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, though, in a policy of deliberate ambiguity, it does not acknowledge having them. Germany, Turkey and the Netherlands are nuclear weapons sharing states. South Africa is the only country to have independently developed and renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons aims to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, but its effectiveness has been questioned, political tensions remained high in the 1970s and 1980s. Modernisation of weapons continues to this day. There are two basic types of nuclear weapons: those that derive the majority of their energy from nuclear fission reactions alone, those that use fission reactions to begin nuclear fusion reactions that produce a large amount of the total energy output. All existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is from fission reactions are referred to as atomic bombs or atom bombs; this has long been noted as something of a misnomer, as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom, just as it does with fusion weapons. In fission weapons, a mass of fissile material is forced into supercriticality—allowing an exponential growth of nuclear chain reactions—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another or by compression of a sub-critical sphere or cylinder of fissile material using chemically-fueled explosive lenses.
The latter approach, the "implosion" method, is more sophisticated than the former. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself; the amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons of TNT. All fission reactions generate the remains of the split atomic nuclei. Many fission products are either radioactive or moderately radioactive, as such, they are a serious form of radioactive contamination. Fission products are the principal radioactive component of nuclear fallout. Another source of radioactivity is the burst of free neutrons produced by the weapon; when they collide with other nuclei in surrounding material, the neutrons transmute those nuclei into other isotopes, altering their stability and making them radioactive. The most used fissile materials for nuclear weapons applications have been uranium-235 and plutonium-239.
Less used has been uranium-233. Neptunium-237 and some isotopes of americium may be usable for nuclear explosives as well, but it is not clear that this has been implemented, their plausible use in nuclear weapons is a matter of dispute; the other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large proportion of its energy in nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs, as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen. All such weapons derive a significant portion of their energy from fission reactions used to "trigger" fusion reactions, fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions. Only six countries—United States, United Kingdom, China and India—have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests. North Korea claims to have tested a fusion weapon as of January 2016. Thermonuclear weapons a
