1.
Millbank
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Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico, Millbank is known as the location of major government offices, the Millbank Tower and prominent art institutions such as Tate Britain and the Chelsea College of Art and Design. The area derives its name from a watermill owned by Westminster Abbey that once stood at a close to present day College Green. Described as a place of plague pits and a low, marshy locality suitable for shooting snipe in the nearby bogs, facilities at the prison camp on the marshy ground were so poor that 1,200 prisoners were recorded as having died in the primitive conditions. Baltic Wharf, a site just to the north of Vauxhall Bridge, was for much of the 19th century the location of a Henry Castle & Son, a ship breaking and timber merchant. Numerous wooden ships of the line of the Royal Navy were dismantled at this location, their ornate figureheads often displayed on the gates and perimeter of the yard walls. Millbank shares the name of the road along the north bank of the River Thames, extending northwards from Vauxhall Bridge to Abingdon Street. There are parliamentary offices situated across this road, notably No.7, the road was created as part of the Thames Embankment in the mid 19th century and lies above a large interceptor sewer. The listed site has since been renovated as a purpose built arts college for the Chelsea College of Art, the Tate Britain art gallery is directly opposite near the end of Vauxhall Bridge, providing a distinct arts presence in the area. The headquarters of the British chemicals giant ICI was originally located at Imperial Chemical House on Millbank before it relocated to Manchester Square, the headquarters for the Northern Ireland Office, MI5 and Thames House are also nearby. On 18 December 1973, the Provisional Irish Republican Army exploded a bomb on Thorney Street at 8, the bomb resulted in over 50 people injured, including two seriously. Millbank Studios reside in the area as an independent broadcast company, the studio is situated opposite the Houses of Parliament. The BBC Parliament broadcasting channel is situated nearby. No.4 is the commonly used by broadcasters for producing coverage of the Westminster area, including the BBC, Sky News. RTÉ News and Current Affairs also have their London bureau at the same location, neighbouring College Green is used as a setting for interviewing politicians outdoors. Millbank Estate is a large but highly regarded Grade II-listed red-brick housing estate that gives the area behind Tate Britain a distinct character, the estate was built between 1897 and 1902, the bricks being recycled from Millbank Prison, which had closed in 1890. The 17 buildings, comprising one of Londons earliest social housing schemes, are named after distinguished painters such as Turner, Gainsborough, Millais, the estate has 562 flats, all managed on behalf of Westminster City Council by MEMO, the largest tenant management organisation in Westminster. The estates management board is elected annually from the resident population, half of the estates flats are private leaseholds, the other half are rented from Westminster City Council
2.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
3.
London Underground
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The London Underground is a public rapid transit system serving London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. The network has expanded to 11 lines, and in 2015–16 carried 1.34 billion passengers, the 11 lines collectively handle approximately 4.8 million passengers a day. The system has 270 stations and 250 miles of track, despite its name, only 45% of the system is actually underground in tunnels, with much of the network in the outer environs of London being on the surface. In addition, the Underground does not cover most southern parts of Greater London, the current operator, London Underground Limited, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Transport for London, the statutory corporation responsible for the transport network in Greater London. As of 2015, 92% of operational expenditure is covered by passenger fares, the Travelcard ticket was introduced in 1983 and Oyster, a contactless ticketing system, in 2003. Contactless card payments were introduced in 2014, the LPTB was a prominent patron of art and design, commissioning many new station buildings, posters and public artworks in a modernist style. Other famous London Underground branding includes the roundel and Johnston typeface, to prepare construction, a short test tunnel was built in 1855 in Kibblesworth, a small town with geological properties similar to London. This test tunnel was used for two years in the development of the first underground train, and was later, in 1861, the worlds first underground railway, it opened in January 1863 between Paddington and Farringdon using gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives. It was hailed as a success, carrying 38,000 passengers on the opening day, the Metropolitan District Railway opened in December 1868 from South Kensington to Westminster as part of a plan for an underground inner circle connecting Londons main-line termini. The Metropolitan and District railways completed the Circle line in 1884, built using the cut and this opened in 1890 with electric locomotives that hauled carriages with small opaque windows, nicknamed padded cells. The Waterloo and City Railway opened in 1898, followed by the Central London Railway in 1900, the Metropolitan Railway protested about the change of plan, but after arbitration by the Board of Trade, the DC system was adopted. When the Bakerloo was so named in July 1906, The Railway Magazine called it an undignified gutter title, by 1907 the District and Metropolitan Railways had electrified the underground sections of their lines. In January 1913, the UERL acquired the Central London Railway, the Bakerloo line was extended north to Queens Park to join a new electric line from Euston to Watford, but World War I delayed construction and trains reached Watford Junction in 1917. During air raids in 1915 people used the stations as shelters. An extension of the Central line west to Ealing was also delayed by the war, the Metropolitan promoted housing estates near the railway with the Metro-land brand and nine housing estates were built near stations on the line. Electrification was extended north from Harrow to Rickmansworth, and branches opened from Rickmansworth to Watford in 1925, the Piccadilly line was extended north to Cockfosters and took over District line branches to Harrow and Hounslow. In 1933, most of Londons underground railways, tramway and bus services were merged to form the London Passenger Transport Board, the Waterloo & City Railway, which was by then in the ownership of the main line Southern Railway, remained with its existing owners. In the same year that the London Passenger Transport Board was formed, in the following years, the outlying lines of the former Metropolitan Railway closed, the Brill Tramway in 1935, and the line from Quainton Road to Verney Junction in 1936
4.
Pimlico tube station
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Pimlico is a London Underground station in Pimlico, City of Westminster. It is on the Victoria line between Victoria and Vauxhall in Zone 1, the station opened on 14 September 1972 – more than a year after the rest of the line had become fully operational. It is the station to be served exclusively by the Victoria line making it the least used station on the line. Pimlico was an addition to the final section of the Victoria line between Victoria and Brixton. It is the station on the line which does not have an interchange with another Underground and/or National Rail line. Pimlico was the last Underground station to open until the first section of the Piccadilly lines Heathrow extension was opened to Hatton Cross in 1975. In March 2015, the station was chosen to be the test for Wayfindr, the main entrance is on the corner of Bessborough Street and Rampayne Street. It is part of a block that until 2006 was entirely occupied by the Office for National Statistics apart from the station. There are two entrances, in Lupus Street and on the other side of Bessborough Street. These others have ramps as well as stairs, facilitating wheelchair access, however, there are still a few steps to walk down to enter the ticket hall. London Buses routes 2,24,36,87,88,185,360,436 and C10 and night route N2 serve the station
5.
Tate Modern
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Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London. It is Britains national gallery of modern art and forms part of the Tate group. It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of the London Borough of Southwark, Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1900 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art. Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world and it is directly across the river from St Pauls Cathedral. The power station closed in 1981, prior to redevelopment, the power station was a 200 m long, steel framed, brick clad building with a substantial central chimney standing 99 m. The structure was divided into three main areas each running east-west - the huge main turbine hall in the centre, with the boiler house to the north. For many years after closure Bankside Power station was at risk of being demolished by developers, many people campaigned for the building to be saved and put forward suggestions for possible new uses. An application to list the building was refused, in April 1994 the Tate Gallery announced that Bankside would be the home for the new Tate Modern. In July of the year, an international competition was launched to select an architect for the new gallery. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron were announced as the architects in January 1995. The £134 million conversion to the Tate Modern started in June 1995, the most obvious external change was the two-story glass extension on one half of the roof. Much of the internal structure remained, including the cavernous main turbine hall. The history of the site as well as information about the conversion was the basis for a 2008 documentary Architects Herzog and de Meuron and this challenging conversion work was carried by Carillion. Tate Modern was opened by the Queen on 11 May 2000, Tate Modern received 5.25 million visitors in its first year. The previous year the three existing Tate galleries galleries had received 2.5 million visitors combined, Tate Modern had attracted more visitors than originally expected and plans to expand it had been in preparation since 2004. These plans focused on the south west of the building with the intention of providing 5, 000m2 of new display space, the southern third of the building was retained by the French power company EDF Energy as an electrical substation. In 2006, the released the western half of this holding and plans were made to replace the structure with a tower extension to the museum. The tower was to be built over the old oil storage tanks, structural, geotechnical, civil, and façade engineering and environmental consultancy was undertaken by Ramboll between 2008 and 2016
6.
City of Westminster
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The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough which also holds city status. It occupies much of the area of Greater London including most of the West End. It is to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and it was created with the 1965 establishment of Greater London. Upon creation, Westminster was awarded city status, which had previously held by the smaller Metropolitan Borough of Westminster. Aside from a number of parks and open spaces, the population density of the district is high. Many sites commonly associated with London are in the borough, including St. Jamess Palace, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, much of the borough is residential, and in 2008 it was estimated to have a population of 236,000. The local authority is Westminster City Council, the current Westminster coat of arms were given to the city by an official grant on September 2,1964. Westminster had other arms before, which had an identical to the chief in the present arms. The symbols in the two thirds of the shield stand for former municipalities now merged with the city, Paddington. The original arms had a portcullis as the charge, which now forms the crest. The origins of the City of Westminster pre-date the Norman Conquest of England, in the mid-11th Century king Edward the Confessor began the construction of an abbey at Westminster, only the foundations of which survive today. For centuries Westminster and the City of London were geographically quite distinct, Westminster briefly became a city in 1540 when Henry VIII created the short-lived Diocese of Westminster. Following the dissolution of Westminster Abbey, a court of burgesses was formed in 1585 to govern the Westminster area, Jamess, Strand, Westminster, Pimlico, Belgravia, and Hyde Park. The Westminster Metropolitan Borough was itself the result of an amalgamation which took place in 1900. Sir John Hunt O. B. E was the First Town Clerk of the City of Westminster, the boundaries of the City of Westminster today, as well as those of the other London boroughs, have remained more or less unchanged since the Act of 1963. On 22 March 2017, a terrorist attack took place on Westminster Bridge, Bridge Street and Old Palace Yard, five people - three pedestrians, one police officer, and the attacker - died as a result of the incident. More than 50 people were injured, an investigation is ongoing by the Metropolitan Police. The city is divided into 20 wards, each electing three councillors, Westminster City Council is currently composed of 44 Conservative Party members and 16 Labour Party members
7.
Art of the United Kingdom
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The Art of the United Kingdom refers to all forms of visual art in or associated with the United Kingdom since the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. For earlier periods, and some more detailed information on the period, see English art, Scottish art, Welsh art. Increasing British prosperity led to an increased production of both fine art and the decorative arts, the latter often being exported. The Romantic period produced the diverse talents of William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable. The Victorian period saw a great diversity of art, and a far larger quantity created than before, much Victorian art is now out of critical favour, with interest concentrated on the Pre-Raphaelites and the innovative movements at the end of the 18th century. The oldest surviving British art includes Stonehenge from around 2600 BC and this had a brief but spectacular flowering in all the countries that now form the United Kingdom in the 7th and 8th centuries, in works such as the Book of Kells and Book of Lindisfarne. The Insular style was influential across Northern Europe, and especially so in later Anglo-Saxon art, the Protestant Reformations of England and Scotland were especially destructive of existing religious art, and the production of new work virtually ceased. The Artists of the Tudor Court were mostly imported from Europe, the portraiture of Elizabeth I ignored contemporary European Renaissance models to create iconic images that border on naive art. His counterpart in Edinburgh, Sir John Baptist Medina, born in Brussels to Spanish parents, had died just before the Union took place, and was one of the last batch of Scottish knights to be created. Medina had first worked in London, but in mid-career moved to the competitive environment of Edinburgh. Richardson also trained the most notable Irish portraitist of the period and his best-known work is at Greenwich Hospital, Blenheim Palace and the cupola of Saint Pauls Cathedral, London. From 1714 the new Hanoverian dynasty conducted a far less ostentatious court, fortunately, the booming British economy was able to supply aristocratic and mercantile wealth to replace the court, above all in London. Other subjects were only issued as prints, and Hogarth was both the first significant British printmaker, and still the best known. Many works were series of four or more scenes, of which the best known are, A Harlots Progress and A Rakes Progress from the 1730s and Marriage à-la-mode from the mid-1740s. Like many later painters Hogarth wanted above all to achieve success at history painting in the Grand Manner, the academy was taken over by Thornhill in 1716, but seems to have become inactive by the time John Vanderbank and Louis Chéron set up their own academy in 1720. This did not last long, and in 1724/5 Thornhill tried again in his own house, with little success. Hogarth inherited the equipment for this, and used it to start the St. Martins Lane Academy in 1735, Hogarth also helped solve the problem of a lack of exhibition venues in London, arranging for shows at the Foundling Hospital from 1746. The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay worked in Edinburgh before moving to London by 1739 and his main London rival in the mid-century, until Reynolds made his reputation, was Reynolds master, the stodgy Thomas Hudson
8.
J. M. W. Turner
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA was an English Romanticist landscape painter. Turner was considered a figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting and he is commonly known as the painter of light. Joseph Mallord William Turner was baptised on 14 May 1775, and it is generally believed he was born between late April and early May. Turner himself claimed he was born on 23 April, but there is no proof and he was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in London, England. His father, William Turner, was a barber and wig maker and his mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. A younger sister, Mary Ann, was born in September 1778, the earliest known artistic exercise by Turner is from this period—a series of simple colourings of engraved plates from Henry Boswells Picturesque View of the Antiquities of England and Wales. Around 1786, Turner was sent to Margate on the north-east Kent coast, here he produced a series of drawings of the town and surrounding area foreshadowing his later work. Turner returned to Margate many times in later life, by this time, Turners drawings were being exhibited in his fathers shop window and sold for a few shillings. His father boasted to the artist Thomas Stothard that, My son, in 1789, Turner again stayed with his uncle who had retired to Sunningwell in Berkshire. A whole sketchbook of work from time in Berkshire survives as well as a watercolour of Oxford. The use of sketches on location, as the foundation for later finished paintings. By the end of 1789, he had begun to study under the topographical draughtsman Thomas Malton. Turner learned from him the tricks of the trade, copying and colouring outline prints of British castles. He would later call Malton My real master, topography was a thriving industry by which a young artist could pay for his studies. In the same year of 1789 he entered the Royal Academy of Art schools, when he was 14 years old, Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy, chaired the panel that admitted him. At first Turner showed a keen interest in architecture, but was advised by the architect Thomas Hardwick to continue painting and his first watercolour painting A View of the Archbishops Palace, Lambeth was accepted for the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1790 when Turner was 15. As a probationer in the academy, he was drawing from plaster casts of antique sculptures
9.
Millbank Prison
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It was opened in 1816 and closed in 1890. After various changes in circumstance, the Panopticon plan was abandoned in 1812, an architectural competition was then held for a new penitentiary design. It attracted 43 entrants, the winner being William Williams, drawing master at the Royal Military College, Williams basic design was adapted by a practising architect, Thomas Hardwick, who began construction in the same year. Hardwick resigned in 1813, and John Harvey took over the role, Harvey was dismissed in turn in 1815, and replaced by Robert Smirke, who brought the project to completion in 1821. The marshy site on which the prison stood meant that the builders experienced problems of subsidence from the outset, Smirke finally resolved the difficulty by introducing a highly innovative concrete raft to provide a secure foundation. However, this added considerably to the costs, which eventually totalled £500,000, more than twice the original estimate. The first prisoners, all women, were admitted on 26 June 1816, the prison held 103 men and 109 women by the end of 1817, and 452 men and 326 women by late 1822. Sentences of five to ten years in the National Penitentiary were offered as an alternative to transportation to those thought most likely to reform. In addition to the problems of construction, the marshy site fostered disease, in 1818 they employed a Medical Supervisor, in the form of Dr Alexander Copland Hutchison of Westminster Dispensary, to oversee the health issues of the occupants. In 1822–23 an epidemic swept through the prison, which seems to have comprised a mixture of dysentery, scurvy, depression and other disorders. The decision was taken to evacuate the buildings for several months, the female prisoners were released. The design also turned out to be unsatisfactory, the network of corridors was so labyrinthine that even the warders got lost, and the ventilation system allowed sound to carry, so that prisoners could communicate between cells. The annual running costs turned out to be an unsupportable £16,000, in view of these problems, the decision was eventually taken to build a new model prison at Pentonville, which opened in 1842 and took over Millbanks role as the National Penitentiary. By an Act of Parliament of 1843, Millbanks status was downgraded, every person sentenced to transportation was sent to Millbank first, where they were held for three months before their final destination was decided. By 1850, around 4,000 people convicted of crimes were being transported annually from the UK, prisoners awaiting transportation were kept in solitary confinement and restricted to silence for the first half of their sentence. Large-scale transportation ended in 1853, and Millbank then became a local prison. By 1886 it had ceased to hold inmates, and it closed in 1890, demolition began in 1892, and continued sporadically until 1903. The buildings of each pentagon were set around a cluster of five courtyards used as airing-yards, the third and fourth pentagons were used to house female prisoners, and the remaining four for male prisoners
10.
Portico
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A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was used in Ancient Greece and has influenced many cultures. Some noteworthy examples of porticos are the East Portico of the United States Capitol, the portico adorning the Pantheon in Rome, porticos are sometimes topped with pediments. Bologna, Italy, is famous for its porticos, in total, there are over 45 km of arcades, some 38 in the city center. The longest portico in the world, about 3.5 km, in Bologna, Italy, porticos stretch for 18 km. Palladio was a pioneer of using temple-fronts for secular buildings, in the UK, the temple-front applied to The Vyne, Hampshire was the first portico applied to an English country house. A pronaos is the area of the portico of a Greek or Roman temple. Roman temples commonly had an open pronaos, usually with only columns and no walls, the word pronaos is Greek for before a temple. In Latin, a pronaos is also referred to as an anticum or prodomus, the different variants of porticos are named by the number of columns they have. The style suffix comes from the Greek στῦλος, column, the tetrastyle has four columns, it was commonly employed by the Greeks and the Etruscans for small structures such as public buildings and amphiprostyles. Roman provincial capitals also manifested tetrastyle construction, such as the Capitoline Temple in Volubilis, the North Portico of the White House is perhaps the most notable four-columned portico in the United States. Hexastyle buildings had six columns and were the standard façade in canonical Greek Doric architecture between the archaic period 600–550 BC up to the Age of Pericles 450–430 BC. With the colonization by the Greeks of Southern Italy, hexastyle was adopted by the Etruscans, Roman taste favoured narrow pseudoperipteral and amphiprostyle buildings with tall columns, raised on podiums for the added pomp and grandeur conferred by considerable height. The Maison Carrée at Nîmes, France, is the best-preserved Roman hexastyle temple surviving from antiquity, octastyle buildings had eight columns, they were considerably rarer than the hexastyle ones in the classical Greek architectural canon. The best-known octastyle buildings surviving from antiquity are the Parthenon in Athens, built during the Age of Pericles, and the Pantheon in Rome. The destroyed Temple of Divus Augustus in Rome, the centre of the Augustan cult, is shown on Roman coins of the 2nd century AD as having built in octastyle. The decastyle has ten columns, as in the temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus, the temple of Venus and Rome, built by Hadrian in Rome about 130 A. D. was decastyle, the only known example in Roman architecture. Classical architecture List of classical architecture terms Hypostyle Loggia Stoa Greek architecture, Encyclopædia Britannica,1968 Stierlin, Greece, From Mycenae to the Parthenon, TASCHEN,2004, Editor-in-chief Angelika Taschen, Cologne, ISBN 3-8228-1225-0 Stierlin, Henri
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