1.
Seat of local government
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In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre, a guildhall, a Rathaus, or a municipal building, is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city or town council, its associated departments and it also usually functions as the base of the mayor of a city, town, borough, or county / shire. By convention, until the mid 19th-century, a large open chamber formed an integral part of the building housing the council. The hall may be used for meetings and other significant events. This large chamber, the hall, has become synonymous with the whole building. The terms council chambers, municipal building or variants may be used locally in preference to town hall if no such large hall is present within the building, the local government may endeavor to use the town hall building to promote and enhance the quality of life of the community. In many cases, town halls serve not only as buildings for government functions and these may include art shows, stage performances, exhibits and festivals. Modern town halls or civic centres are designed with a great variety and flexibility of purpose in mind. As symbols of government, city and town halls have distinctive architecture. City hall buildings may also serve as icons that symbolize their cities. The term town hall may be a one, often applied without regard to whether the building serves or served a town or a city. This is generally the case in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, english-speakers in some regions use the term city hall to designate the council offices of a municipality of city status. This is the case in North America, where a distinction is made between city halls and town halls, and is also the case with Brisbane City Hall in Australia. The great hall of the town-house or municipal building, now commonly applied to the whole building city hall. Conversely, cities that have subdivisions with their own councils may have borough halls, in Scotland, local government in larger cities operates from the City Chambers, otherwise the Town House. Elsewhere in English-speaking countries, other names are occasionally used, in London, the official headquarters of administration of the City of London retains its Anglo-Saxon name, the Guildhall, signifying a place where taxes were paid. In a small number of English cities the preferred term is Council House, this was also the case in Bristol until 2012, when the building was renamed City Hall. In Birmingham, there is a distinction between the Council House, the seat of government, and the Town Hall, a concert
2.
Italianate architecture
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The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. The style of architecture that was created, though also characterised as Neo-Renaissance, was essentially of its own time. The Italianate style was first developed in Britain about 1802 by John Nash and this small country house is generally accepted to be the first Italianate villa in England, from which is derived the Italianate architecture of the late Regency and early Victorian eras. The Italianate style was developed and popularised by the architect Sir Charles Barry in the 1830s. Barrys Italianate style drew heavily for its motifs on the buildings of the Italian Renaissance, the style was not confined to England and was employed in varying forms, long after its decline in popularity in Britain, throughout Northern Europe and the British Empire. From the late 1840s to 1890 it achieved popularity in the United States. A late intimation of Nashs development of the Italianate style was his 1805 design of Sandridge Park at Stoke Gabriel in Devon. Later examples of the Italianate style in England tend to take the form of Palladian-style building often enhanced by a belvedere complete with Renaissance-type balustrading at the roof level. Sir Charles Barry, most notable for his works on the Tudor, unlike Nash he found his inspiration in Italy itself. Barry drew heavily on the designs of the original Renaissance villas of Rome, the Lazio and his most defining work in this style was the large Neo-Renaissance mansion Cliveden. Thomas Cubitt, a London building contractor, incorporated simple classical lines of the Italianate style as defined by Sir Charles Barry into many of his London terraces. Following the completion of Osborne House in 1851, the became a popular choice of design for the small mansions built by the new. These were mostly built in cities surrounded by large but not extensive gardens, on occasions very similar, if not identical, designs to these Italianate villas would be topped by mansard roofs, and then termed chateauesque. However, after a modest spate of Italianate villas, and French chateaux by 1855 the most favoured style of an English country house was Gothic, the Italianate style came to the small town of Newton Abbot in Devon, with Isambard Brunels atmospheric railway pumping houses. An example that is not very known, but a clear example of Italianate architecture, is St. Christophers Anglican church in Hinchley Wood, Surrey. When the Ottomans exiled Fakhreddine to Tuscany in 1613, he entered an alliance with the Medicis, upon his return to Lebanon in 1618, he began modernising Lebanon. He developed an industry, upgraded olive-oil production, and brought with him numerous Italian engineers who began the construction of mansions. The cities of Beirut and Sidon were especially built in the Italianate style, the influence of these buildings, such as the ones in Deir el Qamar, influenced building in Lebanon for many centuries and continues to the present time
3.
Reading, Berkshire
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Reading is a large, historically important town in Berkshire, England, of which it is the county town. The 19th century saw the coming of the Great Western Railway, Today Reading is a major commercial centre, with involvement in information technology and insurance, and, despite its proximity to London, has a net inward commuter flow. The first evidence for Reading as a settlement dates from the 8th century, by 1525, Reading was the largest town in Berkshire, and tax returns show that Reading was the 10th largest town in England when measured by taxable wealth. By 1611, it had a population of over 5000 and had grown rich on its trade in cloth, the 18th century saw the beginning of a major iron works in the town and the growth of the brewing trade for which Reading was to become famous. During the 19th century, the town rapidly as a manufacturing centre. It is ranked the UKs top economic area for economic success and wellbeing, according to such as employment, health, income. Reading is also a regional retail centre serving a large area of the Thames Valley. Every year it hosts the Reading Festival, one of Englands biggest music festivals, sporting teams based in Reading include Reading Football Club and the London Irish rugby union team, and over 15,000 runners annually compete in the Reading Half Marathon. In 2015, Reading had an population of 232,662. The town is represented in Parliament by two members, and has been continuously represented there since 1295, for ceremonial purposes the town is in the county of Berkshire and has served as its county town since 1867, previously sharing this status with Abingdon-on-Thames. It is in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway. Reading is 75 miles east of Bristol,25 miles south of Oxford,42 miles west of London,17 miles north of Basingstoke,13 miles south-west of Maidenhead and 20 miles east of Newbury. Reading may date back to the Roman occupation of Britain, possibly as a port for Calleva Atrebatum. However the first clear evidence for Reading as a settlement dates from the 8th century, the name probably comes from the Readingas, an Anglo-Saxon tribe whose name means Readas People in Old English, or less probably the Celtic Rhydd-Inge, meaning Ford over the River. In late 870, an army of Danes invaded the kingdom of Wessex, on 4 January 871, in the first Battle of Reading, King Ethelred and his brother Alfred the Great attempted unsuccessfully to breach the Danes defences. The battle is described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and that account provides the earliest known record of the existence of Reading. The Danes remained in Reading until late in 871, when they retreated to their quarters in London. After the Battle of Hastings and the Norman conquest of England, William the Conqueror gave land in, in its 1086 Domesday Book listing, the town was explicitly described as a borough
4.
Alfred Waterhouse
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Alfred Waterhouse RA was an English architect, particularly associated with the Victorian Gothic Revival architecture. He is perhaps best known for his design for Manchester Town Hall, financially speaking, Waterhouse was probably the most successful of all Victorian architects. Though expert within Neo-Gothic, Renaissance revival and Romanesque revival styles, Waterhouse was born on 19 July 1830 in Aigburth, Liverpool, Lancashire, the son of wealthy mill-owning Quaker parents. Alfred Waterhouse was educated at the Quaker Grove House School in Tottenham and he studied architecture under Richard Lane in Manchester, and spent much of his youth travelling in Europe and studying in France, Italy and Germany. On his return to Britain, Alfred set up his own practice in Manchester. Waterhouse continued to practise in Manchester for 12 years, until moving his practice to London in 1865 and his earliest commissions were for domestic buildings. His success as a designer of buildings was assured in 1859 when he won the open competition for the Manchester Assize Courts. This work not only showed his ability to plan a building on a large scale. In 1860, he married Elizabeth Hodgkin, daughter of John Hodgkin, Elizabeth was herself the author of several books, including a collection of verse and some anthologies. Her best known work was The Island of Anarchy, a Utopian story set in the late 20th century, first published in 1887, Waterhouse had connections with wealthy Quaker industrialist through schooling, marriage and religious affiliation. Many of these Quaker connections commissioned him to design and build country houses, several were built for members of the Backhouse family, founders of Backhouses Bank, a forerunner of Barclays Bank. For Alfred Backhouse, Waterhouse built Pilmore Hall, now known as Rockliffe Hall, in the same village he built the Grange, now the Hurworth Grange Community Centre, which Alfred Backhouse had commissioned as a wedding gift for his nephew, James E. Backhouse. Another Backhouse family mansion designed and built by Waterhouse was Dryderdale Hall, near Hamsterley, in 1865, Waterhouse was one of the architects selected to compete for the Royal Courts of Justice. The University Club of New York was undertaken in 1866, girton College, Cambridge, a building of simpler type, dates originally from the same period, but has been periodically enlarged by further buildings. From the late 1860s, Waterhouse lived in Reading, Berkshire and these included his own residences of Foxhill House and Yattendon Court, together with Reading Town Hall, Grove House, a boarding house at Leighton Park School and Reading School. Foxhill House is still in use by the University of Reading, as are his Whiteknights House, for the Prudential Assurance Company, Waterhouse designed many offices, including their Holborn Bars head office in Holborn and branch offices in Southampton, Nottingham and Leeds. He also designed offices for the National Provincial Bank in Piccadilly, Liverpool Infirmary was Waterhouses largest hospital, and St Marys Hospital, Manchester, the Alexandra Hospital in Rhyl, and extensive additions at the Nottingham General Hospital, also involved him. He was involved in a series of works for the Victoria University of Manchester, St Marys Church in Twyford, Hampshire shows interestingly similar patterning to the Natural History Museum and was designed at the same time
5.
Berkshire
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Berkshire is a county in south east England, west of London. It was recognised as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of Windsor Castle by the Queen in 1957, Berkshire is a county of historic origin and is a home county, a ceremonial county and a non-metropolitan county without a county council. Berkshire County Council was the main county governance from 1889 to 1998 except for the separately administered County Borough of Reading, in 1974, significant alterations were made to the countys administrative boundaries although the traditional boundaries of Berkshire were not changed. The towns of Abingdon, Didcot and Wantage were transferred to Oxfordshire, Slough was gained from Buckinghamshire, since 1998, Berkshire has been governed by the six unitary authorities of Bracknell Forest, Reading, Slough, West Berkshire, Windsor and Maidenhead and Wokingham. It borders the counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Greater London, Surrey, according to Asser, it takes its name from a large forest of box trees that was called Bearroc. Berkshire has been the scene of notable battles through its history. Alfred the Greats campaign against the Danes included the Battles of Englefield, Ashdown, Newbury was the site of two English Civil War battles, the First Battle of Newbury in 1643 and the Second Battle of Newbury in 1644. The nearby Donnington Castle was reduced to a ruin in the aftermath of the second battle, another Battle of Reading took place on 9 December 1688. It was the only military action in England during the Glorious Revolution. Reading became the new county town in 1867, taking over from Abingdon, boundary alterations in the early part of the 20th century were minor, with Caversham from Oxfordshire becoming part of the Reading county borough, and cessions in the Oxford area. On 1 April 1974 Berkshires boundaries changed under the Local Government Act 1972, Berkshire took over administration of Slough and Eton and part of the former Eton Rural District from Buckinghamshire. 94 Signal Squadron still keep the Uffington White Horse in their insignia, the original Local Government White Paper would have transferred Henley-on-Thames from Oxfordshire to Berkshire, this proposal did not make it into the Bill as introduced. On 1 April 1998 Berkshire County Council was abolished under a recommendation of the Banham Commission, unlike similar reforms elsewhere at the same time, the non-metropolitan county was not abolished. Berkshire divides into two distinct sections with the boundary lying roughly on a north-south line through the centre of Reading. The eastern section of Berkshire lies largely to the south of the River Thames, in two places the county now includes land to the north of the river. Tributaries of the Thames, including the Loddon and Blackwater, increase the amount of low lying land in the area. Beyond the flood plains, the land rises gently to the county boundaries with Surrey, much of this area is still well wooded, especially around Bracknell and Windsor Great Park. In the west of the county and heading upstream, the Thames veers away to the north of the county boundary, leaving the county behind at the Goring Gap
6.
Reading Abbey
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Reading Abbey is a large, ruined abbey in the centre of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. Reading Abbey is currently the focus of a major £3 million project called Reading Abbey Revealed and this project is conserving the ruins so that they can be re-opened to the public. Alongside the conservation, new interpretation of the Reading Abbey Quarter will be installed, Abbey Ward of Reading Borough Council takes its name from Reading Abbey, which lies within its boundaries. The abbey was founded by Henry I in 1121, as part of his endowments, he gave the abbey his lands within Reading, along with land at Cholsey. He also arranged for land in Reading, previously given to Battle Abbey by William the Conqueror, to be transferred to Reading Abbey. Following its royal foundation, the abbey was established by a party of monks from Cluny Abbey in Burgundy, the abbey was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St John the Evangelist. The first abbot, in 1123, was Hugh of Amiens who became archbishop of Rouen and was buried in Rouen Cathedral, the adjacent rivers provided convenient transport, and the abbey established wharves on the River Kennet. The Kennet also provided power for the water mills, most of which were established on the Holy Brook. When Henry I died in Lyons-la-Forêt, Normandy in 1135 his body was returned to Reading, other royal persons buried in the abbey include parts of Matilda of Scotland, William of Poitiers, and Constance of York. The abbey also held over 230 relics including the hand of St James, a shrivelled human hand was found in the ruins during demolition work in 1786 and is now in St Peters RC Church, Marlow. The song Sumer is icumen in, which was first written down in the abbey about 1240, is the earliest known six part harmony from Britain, the original document is held in the British Library. Reading Abbey was frequently visited by kings and others, most especially by Henry III who often visited three or four times a year staying several weeks on each visit, the abbey was largely destroyed in 1538 during Henry VIIIs Dissolution of the Monasteries. The last abbot, Hugh Cook Faringdon, was tried and convicted of high treason and hanged, drawn. After this, the buildings of the abbey were extensively robbed, with lead, glass, some twenty years after the dissolution, Reading town council created a new town hall by inserting an upper floor into the former refectory of the hospitium of the abbey. The lower floor of this continued to be used by Reading School. For the next 200 years, the old building continued to serve as Readings town hall. Between 1785 and 1786, the old hall was dismantled and replaced on the site by the first of several phases of building that were to make up todays Reading Town Hall. St Jamess Church and School was built on a portion of the site of the abbey between 1837 and 1840 and its founder was James Wheble, who owned land in the area at that time
7.
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
8.
River Kennet
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The Kennet is a river in the south of England, and a tributary of the River Thames. The lower reaches of the river are navigable to craft and are known as the Kennet Navigation. This, together with the Avon Navigation, the Kennet and Avon Canal, the former local government district of Kennet in Wiltshire was named after it. The River Kennet has been assigned as a Site of Special Scientific Interest from near its sources west of Marlborough down to Woolhampton and this is primarily because it has an extensive range of rare plants and animals that are unique to chalk watercourses. In these early stages it passes close by many sites including Avebury Henge, West Kennet Long Barrow. From there the river flows through Marlborough, Hungerford and Newbury before flowing into the Thames on the reach above Sonning Lock at Reading in Berkshire. The upper reaches of the River Kennet have two tributaries, the River Og which flows into the Kennet at Marlborough and the River Dun which enters at Hungerford, the Kennets principal tributaries below Marlborough are the River Lambourn, the River Enborne and the Foudry Brook. For six miles to the west of, and through, Reading, the Kennet supports a secondary channel, the Holy Brook, the Horseshoe Bridge at Kennet Mouth, a timber-clad iron-truss structure, was built in 1891 as a way for horses towing barges to cross the river. Originally this short stretch of river was under the control of the Abbey, today, including Blakes Lock. From High Bridge through to Newbury, the river was navigable between 1718 and 1723 under the supervision of the engineer John Hore of Newbury. Known as the Kennet Navigation, this stretch of the river is now administered by the Canal & River Trust as part of the Kennet, the River Kennet is a haven for various plants and animals. Its course takes it through the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the protection that this status affords the Kennet means that many endangered species of plants and animals can be found here. Animal species such as the vole, grass snake, reed bunting, brown trout. Crayfish are very common in parts of the river, and not forgetting the foundation to supporting this varied wildlife food chain, there are the insects, many hundreds of species, common and rare, that can be found in and around the River Kennet. There are large hatches of mayflies, whose long-tailed, short-lived adults are a food of trout, many species of water beetle. Caddisflies are also numerous, especially in the late summer. Alongside the river, the beds, grasses and other vegetation support many other insect species, including the scarlet tiger moth, poplar hawk moths. Throughout its history, water mills on the Kennet have been a source of power for various pre-industrial and industrial activities, in places the river has been built up to provide an additional head of water to drive the mills
9.
Dissolution of the Monasteries
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Although the policy was originally envisaged as increasing the regular income of the Crown, much former monastic property was sold off to fund Henrys military campaigns in the 1540s. Professor George W. Bernard argues, The dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. one adult man in fifty was in religious orders. Very few English houses had been founded later than the end of the 13th century, there was a Medieval proverb in England that said if the Abbot of Glastonbury married the Abbess of Shaftesbury, the heir would have more land than the King of England. The 200 houses of friars in England and Wales constituted a distinct wave of foundations almost all occurring in the 13th century. Friaries, for the most part, were concentrated in urban areas, however, the religious changes in England under Henry VIII and Edward VI were of a different nature from those taking place in Germany, Bohemia, France, Scotland and Geneva. Bernard says there was concern in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries about the condition of the monasteries. Pastoral care was seen as more important and vital than the monastic focus on contemplation, prayer. English monasticism in the 1530s may have faced grave and urgent problems, Henry wanted to change this, and in November 1529 Parliament passed Acts reforming apparent abuses in the English Church. These Acts sought to demonstrate that establishing royal jurisdiction over the Church would ensure progress in religious reformation where papal authority had been insufficient, the monasteries were next in line. The stories of monastic impropriety, vice and excess that were to be collected by Thomas Cromwells visitors may have been biased and exaggerated. Levels of monastic debt were increasing, and average numbers of professed religious were falling, only a minority of houses could now support the twelve or thirteen professed religious usually regarded as the minimum necessary to maintain the full canonical hours of the Divine Office. Extensive monastic complexes dominated English towns of any size, but most were less than half full, renaissance princes throughout Europe were facing severe financial difficulties due to sharply rising expenditures, especially to pay for armies, fighting ships and fortifications. Most tended, sooner or later, to resort to plundering monastic wealth, protestant princes would justify this by claiming divine authority, Catholic princes would obtain the agreement and connivance of the Papacy. Monastic wealth, regarded everywhere as excessive and idle, offered a standing temptation for cash-strapped secular, in terms of popular esteem however, the balance tilted the other way. By the time Henry VIII turned his mind to the business of monastery reform, the first case was that of the so-called Alien Priories. As a result of the Norman Conquest some French religious orders held substantial property through their daughter monasteries in England, some of these were merely granges, agricultural estates with a single foreign monk in residence to supervise things, others were rich foundations in their own right. Such estates were a source of income for the Crown in its French wars. If the property with which a house had been endowed by its founder were to be confiscated or surrendered, then the house ceased to exist, whether its members continued in the religious life or not
10.
Reading School
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Reading School is a grammar school with academy status for boys in the English town of Reading, the county town of Berkshire. It traces its history back to the school of Reading Abbey, there are no tuition fees for day pupils, and boarders only pay for food and lodging. Reading School was founded as part of Reading Abbey, in 1486, the school was refounded as a Free Grammar School by Henry VII on the urging of the then Abbot, John Thorne. From at least this time, the School was housed in the former Hospitium of St John, the main building of the hospitium still exists, but the refectory, which once housed the schoolroom, was demolished in 1785 and Reading Town Hall now stands on the site. After the dissolution of Reading Abbey in 1539, the school fell under the control of the corporation of Reading, there were interruptions to schooling in 1665, when Parliament, forced out of London by the Great Plague, took over the schoolhouse. The civil war also interrupted, with the school being used as a garrison by royalist forces, the school soon restarted, however, with the Reading School Act setting out its administration and funding. The foundation stone for new buildings, designed by Alfred Waterhouse, was laid by the Prince of Wales in 1870, the 1944 Education Act saw the abolition of fees, with the cost of education now being met by the local authority. The 1960s saw the rise of education, which threatened Readings status. However, Reading was exempted in 1973 after a petition of over 30,000 local people was handed to the government, in 1986 the school celebrated the quincentenary of its refounding, and was graced by a visit by Queen Elizabeth II. A history of the school by Michael Naxton was published that year by Reading School Parents Association, previously, seriously injured or ill patients from the Reading area had to be flown either to Wexham Park Hospital near Slough, or to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for treatment. The new arrangement means that the field can now be used for emergency touchdowns. Patients are transported by ambulance from the school to the hospitals accident. While this arrangement was made official in 2007, the school field had been unofficially used on several occasions by the Thames Valley. In 2016, it was confirmed that a new house would be introduced to cater for a form in year 7. Laud house, named after William Laud, will have the light blue. The current school consists of a main block, a Science block, the Page building, the John Kendrick building, South House, Music School. The main school building, the chapel, South House and the building to the east of South House have all been designated as Grade II listed buildings by English Heritage, the main block consists of 11 teaching rooms, as well as most of the schools administrative rooms. The classrooms here are used to teach English, Economics, Business Studies, Classics, Latin and Ancient Greek
11.
Organ (music)
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In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions, each played with its own keyboard, played either with the hands on a keyboard or with the feet using pedals. The organ is an old musical instrument, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria. It was played throughout the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman world, subsequently it re-emerged as a secular and recital instrument in the Classical music tradition. Pipe organs use air moving through pipes to produce sounds, since the 16th century, pipe organs have used various materials for pipes, which can vary widely in timbre and volume. The pipes are divided into ranks and controlled by the use of hand stops, although the keyboard is not expressive as on a piano and does not affect dynamics, some divisions may be enclosed in a swell box, allowing the dynamics to be controlled by shutters. Some organs are enclosed, meaning that all the divisions can be controlled by one set of shutters. Some special registers with free reed pipes are expressive and these instruments vary greatly in size, ranging from a cubic yard to a height reaching five floors, and are built in churches, synagogues, concert halls, and homes. Small organs are called positive or portative, increasingly hybrid organs are appearing in which pipes are augmented with electronic additions. Great economies of space and cost are possible especially when the lowest of the pipes can be replaced, non-piped organs include the reed organ or harmonium, which like the accordion and harmonica use air to excite free reeds. Electronic organs or digital organs, notably the Hammond organ, generate electronically produced sound through one or more loudspeakers, mechanical organs include the barrel organ, water organ, and Orchestrion. These are controlled by means such as pinned barrels or book music. Little barrel organs dispense with the hands of an organist and bigger organs are powered in most cases by a grinder or today by other means such as an electric motor. The pipe organ is the grandest musical instrument in size and scope, along with the clock, it was considered one of the most complex human-made mechanical creations before the Industrial Revolution. Pipe organs range in size from a short keyboard to huge instruments with over 10,000 pipes. A large modern organ typically has three or four keyboards with five each, and a two-and-a-half octave pedal board. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart called the organ the King of instruments, some of the biggest instruments have 64-foot pipes, and it sounds to an 8 Hz frequency fundamental tone. For instance, the Wanamaker organ, located in Philadelphia, USA, has sonic resources comparable with three simultaneous symphony orchestras, most organs in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia can be found in Christian churches. The introduction of organs is traditionally attributed to Pope Vitalian in the 7th century
12.
Gothic Revival architecture
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Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. Gothic Revival draws features from the original Gothic style, including decorative patterns, finials, scalloping, lancet windows, hood mouldings, the Gothic Revival movement emerged in 19th-century England. Its roots were intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of High Church or Anglo-Catholic belief concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism, ultimately, the Anglo-Catholicism tradition of religious belief and style became widespread for its intrinsic appeal in the third quarter of the 19th century. The Gothic Revival was paralleled and supported by medievalism, which had its roots in antiquarian concerns with survivals, as industrialisation progressed, a reaction against machine production and the appearance of factories also grew. Proponents of the such as Thomas Carlyle and Augustus Pugin took a critical view of industrial society. To Pugin, Gothic architecture was infused with the Christian values that had been supplanted by classicism and were being destroyed by industrialisation, poems such as Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson recast specifically modern themes in medieval settings of Arthurian romance. In German literature, the Gothic Revival also had a grounding in literary fashions, guarino Guarini, a 17th-century Theatine monk active primarily in Turin, recognized the Gothic order as one of the primary systems of architecture and made use of it in his practice. Some of the earliest evidence of a revival in Gothic architecture is from Scotland, inveraray Castle, constructed from 1746, with design input from William Adam, displays the incorporation of turrets. These were largely conventional Palladian style houses that incorporated some features of the Scots baronial style. The eccentric landscape designer Batty Langley even attempted to improve Gothic forms by giving them classical proportions, a younger generation, taking Gothic architecture more seriously, provided the readership for J. Brittens series of Cathedral Antiquities, which began appearing in 1814. In 1817, Thomas Rickman wrote an Attempt. to name and define the sequence of Gothic styles in English ecclesiastical architecture, the categories he used were Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. It went through numerous editions and was still being republished by 1881. The largest and most famous Gothic cathedrals in the U. S. A. are St. Patricks Cathedral in New York City and Washington National Cathedral on Mount St. Alban in northwest Washington, D. C. One of the biggest churches in Gothic Revival style in Canada is Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate in Ontario, Gothic Revival architecture was to remain one of the most popular and long-lived of the Gothic Revival styles of architecture. The revived Gothic style was not limited to architecture, classical Gothic buildings of the 12th to 16th Centuries were a source of inspiration to 19th-century designers in numerous fields of work. Architectural elements such as pointed arches, steep-sloping roofs and fancy carvings like lace ant lattice work were applied to a range of Gothic Revival objects. Sir Walter Scotts Abbotsford exemplifies in its furnishings the Regency Gothic style, parties in medieval historical dress and entertainment were popular among the wealthy in the 1800s but has spread in the late 20th century to the well-educated middle class as well. By the mid-19th century, Gothic traceries and niches could be inexpensively re-created in wallpaper, the illustrated catalogue for the Great Exhibition of 1851 is replete with Gothic detail, from lacemaking and carpet designs to heavy machinery
