Pub
A pub, or public house, is an establishment licensed to sell alcoholic drinks, which traditionally include beer and cider. It is a relaxed, social drinking establishment and a prominent part of British, Breton, New Zealand, South African and Australian cultures. In many places in villages, a pub is the focal point of the community. In his 17th-century diary Samuel Pepys described the pub as "the heart of England". Pubs can be traced back to Roman taverns, through the Anglo-Saxon alehouse to the development of the tied house system in the 19th century. In 1393, King Richard II of England introduced legislation that pubs had to display a sign outdoors to make them visible for passing ale tasters, who would assess the quality of ale sold. Most pubs focus on offering beers and similar drinks; as well, pubs sell wines and soft drinks and snacks. The owner, tenant or manager is known as the pub landlord or landlady, or publican. Referred to as their "local" by regulars, pubs are chosen for their proximity to home or work, the availability of a particular beer or ale or a good selection, good food, a social atmosphere, the presence of friends and acquaintances, the availability of recreational activities such as a darts team, a skittles team, a pool or snooker table.
The pub quiz was established in the UK in the 1970s. The inhabitants of the British Isles have been drinking ale since the Bronze Age, but it was with the arrival of the Roman Empire on its shores in the 1st century, the construction of the Roman road networks that the first inns, called tabernae, in which travellers could obtain refreshment, began to appear. After the departure of Roman authority in the 5th century and the fall of the Romano-British kingdoms, the Anglo-Saxons established alehouses that grew out of domestic dwellings; the Anglo-Saxon alewife would put a green bush up on a pole to let. These alehouses evolved into meeting houses for the folk to congregate and arrange mutual help within their communities. Herein lies "pub" as it is colloquially called in England, they spread across the kingdom, becoming so commonplace that in 965 King Edgar decreed that there should be no more than one alehouse per village. A traveller in the early Middle Ages could obtain overnight accommodation in monasteries, but a demand for hostelries grew with the popularity of pilgrimages and travel.
The Hostellers of London were granted guild status in 1446 and in 1514 the guild became the Worshipful Company of Innholders. A survey in 1577 of drinking establishment in England and Wales for taxation purposes recorded 14,202 alehouses, 1,631 inns, 329 taverns, representing one pub for every 187 people. Inns are buildings where travellers can seek lodging and food and drink, they are located in the country or along a highway. In Europe, they first sprang up when the Romans built a system of roads two millennia ago; some inns in Europe are several centuries old. In addition to providing for the needs of travellers, inns traditionally acted as community gathering places. In Europe, it is the provision of accommodation, if anything, that now distinguishes inns from taverns and pubs; the latter tend to provide alcohol, but less accommodation. Inns tend to be older and grander establishments: they provided not only food and lodging, but stabling and fodder for the traveller's horse and on some roads fresh horses for the mail coach.
Famous London inns include The George and The Tabard. There is, other kinds of establishment. Many pubs use "Inn" in their name, either because they are long established former coaching inns, or to summon up a particular kind of image, or in many cases as a pun on the word "in", as in "The Welcome Inn", the name of many pubs in Scotland; the original services of an inn are now available at other establishments, such as hotels and motels, which focus more on lodging customers than on other services, although they provide meals. In North America, the lodging aspect of the word "inn" lives on in hotel brand names like Holiday Inn, in some state laws that refer to lodging operators as innkeepers; the Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery in London started as ordinary inns where barristers met to do business, but became institutions of the legal profession in England and Wales. The 18th century saw a huge growth in the number of drinking establishments due to the introduction of gin. Brought to England by the Dutch after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, gin became popular after the government created a market for "cuckoo grain" or "cuckoo malt" by allowing unlicensed gin and beer production while imposing a heavy duty on all imported spirits.
As thousands of gin-shops sprang up all over England, brewers fought back by increasing the number of alehouses. By 1740 the production of gin had increased to six times that of beer and, because of its cheapness, it became popular with the poor, leading to the so-called Gin Craze. Over half of the 15,000 drinking establishments in London were gin shops; the drunkenness and lawlessness created by gin was seen to lead to the ruination and degradation of the working classes. The different effects of beer and gin were illustrated by William Hogarth in his engravings Beer Street and Gin Lane; the Gin Act 1736 imposed high taxes on retailers and led to riots in the streets
Leicester Abbey
The Abbey of Saint Mary de Pratis, more known as Leicester Abbey, was an Augustinian religious house in the city of Leicester, in the East Midlands of England. The abbey was founded in the 12th century by the Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester, grew to become the wealthiest religious establishment within Leicestershire. Through patronage and donations the abbey gained the advowsons of countless churches throughout England, acquired a considerable amount of land, several manorial lordships. Leicester Abbey maintained a cell at Cockerham Priory, in Lancashire; the Abbey's prosperity was boosted though the passage of special privileges by both the English Kings and the Pope. These included an exemption from sending representatives to parliament and from paying tithe on certain land and livestock. Despite its privileges and sizeable landed estates, from the late 14th century the abbey began to suffer financially and was forced to lease out its estates; the worsening financial situation was exacerbated throughout the 15th century and early 16th century by a series of incompetent and extravagant abbots.
By 1535 the abbey's considerable income was exceeded by more considerable debts. The abbey provided a home to an average of 30 to 40 canons, sometimes known as Black Canons, because of their dress. One of these canons, Henry Knighton, is notable for his Chronicle, written during his time at the abbey in the 14th century. In 1530 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey died at the abbey. A few years in 1538, the abbey was dissolved, was demolished, with the building materials reused in various structures across Leicester, including a mansion, built on the site; the house passed through several aristocratic families, became known as Cavendish House after it was acquired by the 1st Earl of Devonshire, in 1613. The house was looted and destroyed by fire in 1645, following the capture of Leicester during the English Civil War. Part of the former abbey precinct was donated to Leicester Town Council by the 8th Earl of Dysart. In 1882 it became known as Abbey Park; the remaining 32 acres, which included the abbey's site and the ruins of Cavendish House, were donated to the council by the 9th Earl of Dysart in 1925 and, following archaeological excavations, opened to the public in the 1930s.
Following its demolition, the exact location of the abbey was lost. The abbey has been extensively excavated and was used for training archaeology students at the University of Leicester. Leicester Abbey is Grade I Listed. Leicester Abbey was founded during a wave of monastic enthusiasm that swept through western Christendom in the 11th and 12th centuries; this wave was responsible for the foundation of the majority of England's monasteries, few were founded after the 13th century. These monasteries were founded by a wealthy aristocratic benefactor who endowed and patronised the establishments in return for prayers for their soul, the right to be buried within the monastic church. Leicester Abbey was founded in the Augustinian tradition; the monks at the abbey were known as canons, followed the monastic rules set down by Saint Augustine of Hippo. Sometimes known as Black Canons, because of their dress, Augustinian Canons lived a clerical life engaged in public ministry. Leicester Abbey was founded in 1143 by Robert le Bossu, 2nd Earl of Leicester, was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
It was not the first abbey Robert had established, having founded Garendon Abbey in Leicestershire, in 1133. Robert's father, Robert de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Leicester, had founded a college of secular canons in Leicester, known as The College of St Mary de Castro; the new abbey assumed control of the college and its possessions, which included all of the churches in Leicester. Robert added to this with the gift of numerous churches in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire; the abbey gained the manor of Asfordby from its merger with the college, the manor of Knighton from its founder. The earls of Leicester continued to patronise the abbey: Petronilla de Grandmesnil, wife of the founder's son, Robert de Beaumont, 3rd Earl of Leicester, financed the construction of the abbey's Great Choir. In 1148, Pope Eugene III granted the abbey an exemption on paying tithe for their newly acquired land and livestock; this was granted on the condition that there was to be no impropriety or violence when electing an abbot, that those who donated money to the abbey could be buried within it, regardless of whether they had been excommunicated.
Though the abbey was a religious house, it was attacked in 1326 by the Earl of Lancaster's soldiers, who seized property belonging to Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester, being kept there. Under the Abbotship of William Clowne the abbey prospered, increasing their lands and endowments with acquisitions such as the manors of Ingarsby and Kirkby Mallory. Clowne is described as having "friendly relations" with King Edward III, used this to gain further privileges for the abbey, including being exempted from having to send representatives to Parliament. However, by the late 14th century, the abbey had e
Derby
Derby is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, of which it was traditionally the county town. At the 2011 census, the population was 248,700. Derby gained city status in 1977. Derby was settled by Romans – who established the town of Derventio – Saxons and Vikings, who made Derby one of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw. A market town, Derby grew in the industrial era. Home to Lombe's Mill, an early British factory, Derby has a claim to be one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution, it contains the southern part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. With the arrival of the railways in the 19th century, Derby became a centre of the British rail industry. Derby is a centre for advanced transport manufacturing, home to the world's second largest aero-engine manufacturer, Rolls-Royce. Bombardier Transportation are based at the Derby Litchurch Lane Works and were for many years the UK's only train manufacturer.
Toyota Manufacturing UK's automobile headquarters is south west of the city at Burnaston. The Roman camp of'Derventio' is considered to have been located at Little Chester/Chester Green, the site of the old Roman fort; the town was one of the'Five Boroughs' of the Danelaw, until it was captured by Lady Aethelflaed of Mercia in July 917, subsequent to which the town was annexed into the Kingdom of Mercia. The Viking name Djúra-bý, recorded in Old English as Deoraby, means "Village of the Deer". However, the origin of the name'Derby' has had multiple influences; the town name does appear as'Darbye' in early maps, such as that of John Speed, 1610. Modern research into the history and archaeology of Derby has provided evidence that the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons would have co-existed, occupying two areas of land surrounded by water; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that "Derby is divided by water". These areas of land were known as Norþworþig and Deoraby, were at the "Irongate" side of Derby. During the Civil War of 1642–1646, Derby was garrisoned by Parliamentary troops commanded by Sir John Gell, 1st Baronet, appointed Governor of Derby in 1643.
These troops took part in the defence of nearby Nottingham, the Siege of Lichfield, the Battle of Hopton Heath and many other engagements in Nottinghamshire and Cheshire, as well as defending Derbyshire against Royalist armies. A hundred years Bonnie Prince Charlie set up camp at Derby on 4 December 1745, whilst on his way south to seize the British crown; the prince called at The George Inn on Irongate, where the Duke of Devonshire had set up his headquarters, demanded billets for his 9,000 troops. He stayed at Exeter House, Full Street where he held his "council of war". A replica of the room is on display at Derby Museum in the city centre, he had received misleading information about an army coming to meet him south of Derby. Although he wished to continue with his quest, he was over-ruled by his fellow officers, he abandoned his invasion at Swarkestone Bridge on the River Trent just a few miles south of Derby. As a testament to his belief in his cause, the prince – who on the march from Scotland had walked at the front of the column – made the return journey on horseback at the rear of the bedraggled and tired army.
Derby and Derbyshire were among the centres of Britain's Industrial Revolution. In 1717, Derby was the site of the first water-powered silk mill in Britain, built by John Lombe and George Sorocold, after Lombe had reputedly stolen the secrets of silk-throwing from Piedmont in Italy. In 1759, Jedediah Strutt patented and built a machine called the Derby Rib Attachment that revolutionised the manufacture of hose; this attachment was used on the Rev. Lee's Framework Knitting Machine; the partners were William Woollatt. The patent was obtained in January 1759. After three years and Stafford were paid off, Samuel Need – a hosier of Nottingham – joined the partnership; the firm was known as Need and Woollatt. The patent expired in 1773. Messrs Wright, the bankers of Nottingham, recommended that Richard Arkwright apply to Strutt and Need for finance for his cotton spinning mill; the first mill was driven by horses. In 1771 Richard Arkwright, Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt built the world's first commercially successful water-powered cotton spinning mill at Cromford, developing a form of power, to be a catalyst for the Industrial Revolution.
This was followed in Derbyshire by Jedediah Strutt's cotton spinning mills at Belper. They were: South Mill, the first, 1775; the Belper and Milford mills were not built in partnership with Arkwright. These mills were all Strutt financed. Oth
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and other animals, including cashmere and mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, from hide and fur clothing from bison, angora from rabbits, other types of wool from camelids. Wool consists of protein together with a few percent lipids. In this regard it is chemically quite distinct from the more dominant textile, cellulose. Wool is produced by follicles; these follicles are located in the upper layer of the skin called the epidermis and push down into the second skin layer called the dermis as the wool fibers grow. Follicles can be classed as either secondary follicles. Primary follicles produce three types of fiber: kemp, medullated fibers, true wool fibers. Secondary follicles only produce true wool fibers. Medullated fibers share nearly identical characteristics to hair and are long but lack crimp and elasticity. Kemp fibers are coarse and shed out. Wool's scaling and crimp make it easier to spin the fleece by helping the individual fibers attach to each other, so they stay together.
Because of the crimp, wool fabrics have greater bulk than other textiles, they hold air, which causes the fabric to retain heat. Wool has a high specific thermal resistance, so it impedes heat transfer in general; this effect has benefited desert peoples, as Tuaregs use wool clothes for insulation. Felting of wool occurs upon hammering or other mechanical agitation as the microscopic barbs on the surface of wool fibers hook together. Wool has several qualities that distinguish it from hair/fur: it is crimped and elastic; the amount of crimp corresponds to the fineness of the wool fibers. A fine wool like Merino may have up to 100 crimps per inch, while coarser wool like karakul may have as few as one or two. In contrast, hair has little if any scale and no crimp, little ability to bind into yarn. On sheep, the hair part of the fleece is called kemp; the relative amounts of kemp to wool vary from breed to breed and make some fleeces more desirable for spinning, felting, or carding into batts for quilts or other insulating products, including the famous tweed cloth of Scotland.
Wool fibers absorb moisture, but are not hollow. Wool can absorb one-third of its own weight in water. Wool absorbs sound like many other fabrics, it is a creamy white color, although some breeds of sheep produce natural colors, such as black, brown and random mixes. Wool ignites at a higher temperature than some synthetic fibers, it has a lower rate of flame spread, a lower rate of heat release, a lower heat of combustion, does not melt or drip. Wool carpets are specified for high safety environments, such as trains and aircraft. Wool is specified for garments for firefighters and others in occupations where they are exposed to the likelihood of fire. Wool causes an allergic reaction in some people. Sheep shearing is the process. After shearing, the wool is separated into four main categories: fleece, broken and locks; the quality of fleeces is determined by a technique known as wool classing, whereby a qualified person, called a wool classer, groups wools of similar gradings together to maximize the return for the farmer or sheep owner.
In Australia before being auctioned, all Merino fleece wool is objectively measured for micron, staple length, staple strength, sometimes color and comfort factor. Wool straight off a sheep, known as "greasy wool" or "wool in the grease", contains a high level of valuable lanolin, as well as the sheep's dead skin and sweat residue, also contains pesticides and vegetable matter from the animal's environment. Before the wool can be used for commercial purposes, it must be scoured, a process of cleaning the greasy wool. Scouring may be as simple as a bath in warm water or as complicated as an industrial process using detergent and alkali in specialized equipment. In north west England, special potash pits were constructed to produce potash used in the manufacture of a soft soap for scouring locally produced white wool. In commercial wool, vegetable matter is removed by chemical carbonization. In less-processed wools, vegetable matter may be removed by hand and some of the lanolin left intact through the use of gentler detergents.
This semigrease wool can be worked into yarn and knitted into water-resistant mittens or sweaters, such as those of the Aran Island fishermen. Lanolin removed from wool is used in cosmetic products, such as hand creams. Raw wool has many impurities; the sheep's body yields many types of wool with differing strengths, length of staple and impurities. The raw wool is processed into'top'.'Worsted top' requires strong straight and parallel fibres. The quality of wool is determined by its fiber diameter, yield and staple strength. Fiber diameter is the single most important wool characteristic determining price. Merino wool is 3–5 inches in length and is fine; the finest and most valuable wool comes from Merino hoggets. Wool taken from sheep produced for meat is more coarse, has fibers 1.5 to 6 in in length. Damage or breaks in the wool can occur if the sheep is stressed whil
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland 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 and Northern Ireland. 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 Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
East Midlands
The East Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It consists of Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland; the region has an area of 15,627 km2, with a population over 4.5 million in 2011. There are five main urban centres, Leicester, Lincoln and Nottingham. Others include Boston, Chesterfield, Grantham, Kettering, Mansfield, Newark-on-Trent and Wellingborough. Relative proximity to London and its position on the national motorway and trunk road networks help the East Midlands to thrive as an economic hub. Nottingham and Leicester are each classified as a sufficiency-level world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network; the region is served by East Midlands Airport, which lies between Derby and Nottingham. The high point at 636 m is Kinder Scout, in the Peak District of the southern Pennines in northwest Derbyshire near Glossop. Other upland, hilly areas of 95 to 280 m in altitude, together with lakes and reservoirs, rise in and around the Charnwood Forest north of Leicester, in the Lincolnshire Wolds.
The region's major rivers, the Nene, the Soar, the Trent and the Welland, flow in a northeasterly direction towards the Humber and the Wash. The Derwent, rises in the High Peak before flowing south to join the Trent some 2 miles before its conflux with the Soar; the centre of the East Midlands area lies between Bingham and Bottesford, Leicestershire. The geographical centre of England lies in Higham on the Hill in west Leicestershire, close to the boundary between the Leicestershire and Warwickshire; some 88 per cent of the land is rural in character, although agriculture accounts for less than three per cent of the region's jobs. Lincolnshire is the only maritime county of the six, with a true North Sea coastline of about 30 miles due to the protection afforded by Spurn Head and the North Norfolk foreshore. Church Flatts Farm in Coton in the Elms, South Derbyshire, is the furthest place from the sea in the UK. In April 1936 the first Ordnance Survey trig point was sited at Cold Ashby in Northamptonshire.
The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and The Wildlife Trusts are based next to the River Trent and Newark Castle railway station. The National Centre for Earth Observation is at the University of Leicester; the region is home to large quantities of limestone, the East Midlands Oil Province. Charnwood Forest is noted for its abundant levels of volcanic rock, estimated to be 600 million years old. A quarter of the UK's cement is manufactured in the region, at three sites in Hope and Tunstead in Derbyshire, Ketton Cement Works in Rutland. Of the aggregates produced in the region, 25 per cent are from Derbyshire and four per cent from Leicestershire. Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire each produce around 30 per cent of the region's sand and gravel output. Barwell in Leicestershire was the site of Britain's largest meteorite on 24 December 1965; the 2008 Lincolnshire earthquake was 5.2 in magnitude. Areas of the East Midlands designated by the East Midlands Biodiversity Partnership as Biodiversity Conservation Areas include: Charnwood Forest Coversand Heaths Derbyshire Peak Fringe and Lower Derwent Humberhead Levels Leighland Forest The Lincolnshire Limewoods and Heaths The Lincolnshire coast The Peak District Rockingham Forest Sherwood Forest Rutland, SW Lincolnshire and N Northamptonshire The Wash Areas of the East Midlands designated by the East Midlands Biodiversity Partnership as Biodiversity Enhancement Areas include: The Coalfields The Daventry Grasslands The Fens The Lincolnshire Coastal Grazing Marshes The Lincolnshire Wolds The National Forest The Yardley-Whittlewood RidgeTwo of the nationally designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty are: The Peak District The Lincolnshire Wolds Several towns in the southern part of the region, including Market Harborough, Rothwell, Kettering, Thrapston and Stamford, lie within the boundaries of what was once Rockingham Forest – designated a royal forest by William the Conqueror and was long hunted by English kings and queens.
The National Forest is an environmental project in central England run by The National Forest Company. Areas of north Leicestershire, south Derbyshire and south-east Staffordshire covering around 200 square miles are being planted in an attempt to blend ancient woodland with new plantings, it stretches from the western outskirts of Leicester in the east to Burton upon Trent in the west, is planned to link the ancient forests of Needwood and Charnwood. Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire attracts many visitors, is best known for its ties with the legend of Robin Hood. Regional financial funding decisions for the East Midlands are taken by East Midlands Councils, based in Melton Mowbray. East Midlands Councils is an unelected body made up of representatives of local government in the region; the defunct East Midlands Development Agency was headquartered next to the BBC's East Midlands office in Nottingham and made financial decisions regarding economic development in the region. Since the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government launched its austerity programme after the 2010 general election, regional bodies such as those have been devolved to smaller groups now on a county level.
As a region today, there is no overriding body with significant financial or planning powers for the East Midlands. The East Midlands' largest settlements are Leicester, Derby, Chesterfield, Mansfield and Kettering. Leicester is the largest
Domont, Val-d'Oise, Île-de-France, France
