1.
Castle
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A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. Usage of the term has varied over time and has applied to structures as diverse as hill forts. Over the approximately 900 years that castles were built, they took on a great many forms with different features, although some, such as curtain walls. A European innovation, castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. Although their military origins are often emphasised in castle studies, the structures served as centres of administration. Many castles were built from earth and timber, but had their defences replaced later by stone. Early castles often exploited natural defences, lacking features such as towers and arrowslits, in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, a scientific approach to castle defence emerged. This led to the proliferation of towers, with an emphasis on flanking fire, many new castles were polygonal or relied on concentric defence – several stages of defence within each other that could all function at the same time to maximise the castles firepower. These changes in defence have been attributed to a mixture of castle technology from the Crusades, such as concentric fortification, not all the elements of castle architecture were military in nature, so that devices such as moats evolved from their original purpose of defence into symbols of power. Some grand castles had long winding approaches intended to impress and dominate their landscape, while castles continued to be built well into the 16th century, new techniques to deal with improved cannon fire made them uncomfortable and undesirable places to live. As a result, true castles went into decline and were replaced by artillery forts with no role in civil administration, and country houses that were indefensible. From the 18th century onwards, there was a renewed interest in castles with the construction of castles, part of a romantic revival of Gothic architecture. The word castle is derived from the Latin word castellum, which is a diminutive of the word castrum, meaning fortified place. The Old English castel, Old French castel or chastel, French château, Spanish castillo, Italian castello, the word castle was introduced into English shortly before the Norman Conquest to denote this type of building, which was then new to England. In its simplest terms, the definition of a castle accepted amongst academics is a fortified residence. Feudalism was the link between a lord and his vassal where, in return for service and the expectation of loyalty. Castles served a range of purposes, the most important of which were military, administrative, as well as defensive structures, castles were also offensive tools which could be used as a base of operations in enemy territory
2.
Tattershall
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Tattershall is a village and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated on the A153 Horncastle to Sleaford road,1 mile east from the point where that road crosses the River Witham, at its eastern end, Tattershall adjoins the village of Coningsby, with the two being separated by the River Bain. In the same parish is the hamlet of Tattershall Thorpe, the 2011 census recorded a Tattershall civil parish population as 2,834, with the combined Tattershall and Coningsby area having a population of 6,698. Local public houses are the Black Horse on the High Street, the Fortesque Arms dates from the 15th century and is a Grade II listed building. Barnes Wallis Academy is a modern school on Butts Lane for pupils aged from 11 to 16. The school also serves Coningsby and Woodhall Spa, the remaining wreckage of the Boeing jumbo jet that was blown-up on 21 December 1988 over Lockerbie in Scotland is stored at a scrapyard near Tattershall. The remains include the nose and cockpit. Tattershall Carrs forms the last remaining remnants of ancient wet woodland, bomb shelters on a former RAF site at Woodhall Spa have been converted into bat roosts. Village historic sites include the church of the Holy Trinity, a buttercross, Tattershall Castle, Collegiate College, an octagonal 15th-century buttercross stands in the Market Place. It is both a Grade I listed structure and an ancient scheduled monument, a charter to hold a weekly market was granted by King John in 1201 in return for an annual fee of a trained goshawk. Markets are no longer held but the remains at the centre of a shopping area. Tattershall railway station was a station on the line between Boston and Lincoln until closure, the Old Station House, a stationmasters house and ticket office, is a Grade II listed building as is the former Goods Shed. The former railway line has been converted into a path at a cost of £2 million. The path was opened in October 2008. Adjacent to the castle is the Grade I listed Perpendicular-style Holy Trinity Collegiate Church, endowed by Ralph de Cromwell, 3rd Baron Cromwell and it received its charter from Henry VI in 1439 but building was not begun until 1472, reaching completion around 1500. The church has stained glass, a collection of brasses. It was restored between 1893 and 1897, near the font is a plaque marking the grave of the Tattershall resident Tom Thumb, reputedly 18.5 inches tall, who died in 1620 aged 101. Tom Thumbs small house can be seen on the roof of a house in the Market Place
3.
Lincolnshire
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Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It also borders Northamptonshire in the south for just 20 yards, Englands shortest county boundary, the county town is Lincoln, where the county council has its headquarters. The ceremonial county of Lincolnshire is composed of the county of Lincolnshire. Therefore, part of the county is in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. The county is the second-largest of the English ceremonial counties and one that is predominantly agricultural in land use, the county is fifth largest of the two-tier counties, as the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire are not included. The county can be broken down into a number of geographical sub-regions including, Lincolnshire derived from the merging of the territory of the ancient Kingdom of Lindsey with that controlled by the Danelaw borough of Stamford. For some time the county was called Lindsey, and it is recorded as such in the 11th-century Domesday Book. In 1888 when county councils were set up, Lindsey, Holland and these survived until 1974, when Holland, Kesteven, and most of Lindsey were unified into Lincolnshire. A local government reform in 1996 abolished Humberside, and the south of the Humber was allocated to the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire. These two areas became part of Lincolnshire for ceremonial such as the Lord-Lieutenancy, but are not covered by the Lincolnshire police and are in the Yorkshire. The remaining districts of Lincolnshire are Boston, East Lindsey, Lincoln, North Kesteven, South Holland, South Kesteven and they are part of the East Midlands region. Lincolnshire is home to Woolsthorpe Manor, birthplace and home of Sir Isaac Newton and he attended The Kings School, Grantham and its library has preserved his signature, applied to a window sill when he was a teenager. Lincolnshire is an area, growing large amounts of wheat, barley, sugar beet. In South Lincolnshire, where the soil is rich in nutrients, some of the most common crops include potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers. Most such companies are long gone, and Lincolnshire is no longer an engineering centre, however, as a result of the current economic climate some food production facilities have closed down, this has caused some reduction in the levels of migrant workers. The large number of people from Portugal is still obvious in the town of Boston. A coalition of Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Independents currently controls Lincolnshire County Council, the Conservative Party comfortably controlled the County Council following the 2009 local elections, in which they increased their majority to 43 seats. The Labour Party lost a total of 15 seats including 7 in Lincoln, the Lincolnshire Independents gained a total of four seats, although one of their number moved to the Conservative group during 2010, increasing the number of Conservative seats to 61
4.
Sleaford
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Sleaford is a market town and civil parish in Lincolnshire, England. It is on the edge of the fertile Fenlands, about 11 miles north-east of Grantham,16 miles west of Boston, with a population of 17,671 at the 2011 Census, the town is the largest settlement in the North Kesteven district. Bypassed by the A17 and the A15, it is connected to Lincoln, Newark, Peterborough, Sleaford railway station is on the Nottingham to Skegness and Peterborough to Lincoln Lines. The first settlement formed in the Iron Age where a prehistoric track crossed the River Slea and it was a tribal centre and home to a mint for the Corieltauvi in the 1st centuries BC and AD. Evidence of Roman and Anglo-Saxon settlement has been uncovered, and by the late Saxon period the town was an economic and jurisdictional centre with a court and market. In the medieval period, records differentiate between Old and New Sleaford, the emerging in the areas around the present day market place. Sleaford Castle was constructed in the 12th century for the Bishops of Lincoln, granted the right to hold a market in the mid-12th century, New Sleaford developed into a market town and became locally important in the wool trade, while Old Sleaford declined. From the 16th century, the landowners were the Carre family, who operated tight control over the town, the manor passed from the Carre family to the Hervey family by the marriage of Isabella Carre to John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, in 1688. The Sleaford Navigation brought economic growth until it was superseded by the railways in the mid-1850s, in the 20th century, the sale of farmland around Sleaford by Bristol Estates led to the development of large housing estates. The subsequent availability of affordable housing combined with the educational facilities. As a result, the population underwent the fastest growth of any town in the county in the 1990s. The arrival of the made the town favourable for malting. Industry has declined, and in 2011 the most common occupations are in wholesale and retail trade, health and social care, public administration and defence and manufacturing. Regeneration of the centre has led to the redevelopment of the old industrial areas. The earliest records of the place-name Sleaford are found in a charter of 852 as Slioford, in the Domesday Book, it is recorded as Eslaforde and in the early 13th century as Sliforde. In the 13th century Book of Fees the name appears as Lafford, the name is formed from the Old English words sliow and ford, which together mean ford over a muddy or slimy river. Archaeological material from the Bronze Age and earlier has been recovered and excavations have shown there was unsustained late-Neolithic. The earliest known permanent settlement dates from the Iron Age and began where a track running northwards from Bourne crossed the River Slea, during the Roman occupation of Britain, the settlement was extensive and of considerable importance
5.
Manor house
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A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The term is loosely applied to various country houses, frequently dating from the late medieval era. They were sometimes fortified, but this was intended more for show than for defence. Manor houses existed in most European countries where feudalism existed, where they were known as castles, palaces. Many buildings, such as schools, are named Manor, the reason behind this is because the building was or is close to a manor house. The lord of the manor may have several properties within a county or, for example in the case of a feudal baron, spread across a kingdom. A large and suitable building was required within the manor for such purpose, generally in the form of a hall. This also gave the opportunity for the manor house to be cleaned, especially important in the days of the cess-pit. Thus such non-resident lords needed to appoint a steward or seneschal to act as their deputy in such matters, the day-to-day administration was carried out by a resident official in authority at each manor, who in England was called a bailiff, or reeve. Although not typically built with strong fortifications as were castles, many manor-houses were fortified and they were often enclosed within walls or ditches which often also included agricultural buildings. The primary feature of the house was its great hall. A late 16th-century transformation produced many of the smaller Renaissance châteaux of France, the Tudor period of stability in England saw the building of the first of the unfortified great houses, for example Sutton Place in Surrey, circa 1521. During the second half of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and under her successor King James I the first mansions designed by architects not by mere masons or builders, began to make their appearance. Such houses as Burghley House, Longleat House, and Hatfield House are among the best known of this period, nearly every large mediaeval manor house had its own deer-park adjoining, emparked by royal licence, which served primarily as a store of food in the form of venison. Within these licensed parks deer could not be hunted by royalty and this gave them more privacy and space. Court was a suffix which came into use in the 16th century, the obvious origin of the suffix would appear to be that the building was the location where the manorial courts were held. True castles, when not royal castles, were generally the residences of feudal barons, the manor on which the castle was situated was termed the caput of the barony, thus every true ancient defensive castle was also the manor house of its own manor. The suffix -Park came into use in the 18th and 19th centuries, the usage is often a modern catch-all suffix for an old house on an estate, true manor or not
6.
Moat
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A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places evolved into more extensive water defences, including natural or artificial lakes, dams. In older fortifications, such as hillforts, they are referred to simply as ditches. In later periods, moats or water defences may be largely ornamental and they could also act as sewerage. Some of the earliest evidence of moats has been uncovered around ancient Egyptian castles, one example is at Buhen, a castle excavated in Nubia. Other evidence of ancient moats is found in the ruins of Babylon, and in reliefs from ancient Egypt, Assyria, and other cultures in the region. Evidence of early moats around settlements has been discovered in archaeological sites throughout Southeast Asia, including Noen U-Loke, Ban Non Khrua Chut, Ban Makham Thae. The use of the moats could have been either for defensive or agriculture purposes, moats were excavated around castles and other fortifications as part of the defensive system as an obstacle immediately outside the walls. In suitable locations they might be filled with water, a moat made access to the walls difficult for siege weapons, such as siege towers and battering rams, which needed to be brought up against a wall to be effective. A water-filled moat made the practice of mining, digging tunnels under the castles in order to effect a collapse of the defences, segmented moats have one dry section and one section filled with water. Dry moats cut across the part of a spur or peninsula are called neck ditches. Moats separating different elements of a castle, such as the inner and outer wards are cross ditches, the shared derivation implies that the two features were closely related and possibly constructed at the same time. The term moat is also applied to natural formations reminiscent of the artificial structure, the walls were further protected from infantry attack by wet or dry moats, sometimes in elaborate systems. When this style of fortification was superseded by lines of forts in the mid-19th century. The Walls of Benin were a combination of ramparts and moats, called Iya and it was considered the largest man-made structure lengthwise, second only to the Great Wall of China and the largest earthwork in the world. With more recent work by Patrick Darling, it has established as the largest man-made structure in the world. It enclosed 6,500 km² of community lands and its length was over 16,000 km of earth boundaries. It was estimated that earliest construction began in 800 and continued into the mid-15th century, the walls are built of a ditch and dike structure, the ditch dug to form an inner moat with the excavated earth used to form the exterior rampart
7.
Gothic architecture
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Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished in Europe during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture and its characteristics include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress. Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the cathedrals, abbeys. It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guild halls, universities and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings, for this reason a study of Gothic architecture is largely a study of cathedrals and churches. A series of Gothic revivals began in mid-18th-century England, spread through 19th-century Europe and continued, largely for ecclesiastical and university structures, the term Gothic architecture originated as a pejorative description. Hence, François Rabelais, also of the 16th century, imagines an inscription over the door of his utopian Abbey of Thélème, Here enter no hypocrites, slipping in a slighting reference to Gotz and Ostrogotz. Authorities such as Christopher Wren lent their aid in deprecating the old medieval style, the Company disapproved of several of these new manners, which are defective and which belong for the most part to the Gothic. Gothic architecture is the architecture of the medieval period, characterised by use of the pointed arch. As an architectural style, Gothic developed primarily in ecclesiastical architecture, the greatest number of surviving Gothic buildings are churches. The Gothic style is most particularly associated with the cathedrals of Northern France. At the end of the 12th century, Europe was divided into a multitude of city states, norway came under the influence of England, while the other Scandinavian countries and Poland were influenced by trading contacts with the Hanseatic League. Angevin kings brought the Gothic tradition from France to Southern Italy, throughout Europe at this time there was a rapid growth in trade and an associated growth in towns. Germany and the Lowlands had large flourishing towns that grew in comparative peace, in trade and competition with other, or united for mutual weal. Civic building was of importance to these towns as a sign of wealth. England and France remained largely feudal and produced grand domestic architecture for their kings, dukes and bishops, the Catholic Church prevailed across Europe at this time, influencing not only faith but also wealth and power. Bishops were appointed by the lords and they often ruled as virtual princes over large estates. The early Medieval periods had seen a growth in monasticism, with several different orders being prevalent. Foremost were the Benedictines whose great abbey churches vastly outnumbered any others in France, a part of their influence was that towns developed around them and they became centers of culture, learning and commerce
8.
Tapestry
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Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work. In tapestry weaving, weft yarns are typically discontinuous, the artisan interlaces each coloured weft back and it is a plain weft-faced weave having weft threads of different colours worked over portions of the warp to form the design. Most weavers use a warp thread, such as linen or cotton. The weft threads are usually wool or cotton, but may include silk, gold, silver, the earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek
9.
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
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As Viceroy of India, he is noted for the creation of Eastern Bengal and Assam. As Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, he drew the Curzon Line as the eastern frontier of Poland. He was passed over as Prime Minister in 1923 in favour of Stanley Baldwin and his character polarised opinion amongst his contemporaries, sow gratitude and resentment along his path with equally lavish hands. He quarrelled endlessly and his arrogance and inflexibility made even more enemies, critics have been negative in contrasting his enormous talents and energy on behalf of British imperialism with his mixed results and unrealized ambitions. He was born at Kedleston Hall, built on the site where his family and his mother, worn out by childbirth, died when George was 16, her husband survived her by 41 years. Neither parent exerted an influence on Curzons life. Lord Scarsdale was an austere and unindulgent father who believed in the family tradition that landowners should stay on their land. He thus had little sympathy for those journeys across Asia between 1887 and 1895 which made his son one of the most travelled men who sat in a British cabinet. Paraman periodically forced him to parade through the wearing a conical hat bearing the words liar, sneak. Curzon later noted, No children well born and well-placed ever cried so much and he was educated at Wixenford School, Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford. At Eton he was a favourite of Oscar Browning, a relationship that led to his tutors dismissal. While at Eton, he was a figure who was liked and disliked with equal intensity by large numbers of masters. This strange talent for both attraction and repulsion stayed with him all his life, few people ever felt neutral about him, at Oxford he was President of the Union and Secretary of the Oxford Canning Club. Although he failed to achieve a first class degree in Greats, he won the Lothian and Arnold Prizes and he was elected a prize fellow of All Souls College in 1883. Whilst at Oxford, he was a contemporary and close friend of Cecil Spring Rice and Edward Grey. While at Oxford, Curzon was the inspiration for the following Balliol rhyme and my cheeks are pink, my hair is sleek, I dine at Blenheim once a week. Curzon became Assistant Private Secretary to Lord Salisbury in 1885, subsequent performances in the Commons, often dealing with Ireland or reform of the House of Lords, received similar verdicts. He was Under-Secretary of State for India in 1891–92 and Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1895–98
