Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The three founders were joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner to form the seven-member "brotherhood", their principles were shared by other artists, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. A medievalising strain inspired by Rossetti included Edward Burne-Jones and extended into the twentieth century with artists such as John William Waterhouse; the group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what it considered the mechanistic approach first adopted by Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. Its members believed the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art, hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular, the group objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts, whom they called "Sir Sloshua".
To the Pre-Raphaelites, according to William Michael Rossetti, "sloshy" meant "anything lax or scamped in the process of painting... and hence... any thing or person of a commonplace or conventional kind". The brotherhood sought a return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art; the group associated their work with John Ruskin, an English critic whose influences were driven by his religious background. The group continued to accept the concepts of history painting and mimesis, imitation of nature, as central to the purpose of art; the Pre-Raphaelites defined themselves as a reform movement, created a distinct name for their form of art, published a periodical, The Germ, to promote their ideas. The group's debates were recorded in the Pre-Raphaelite Journal; the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais's parents' house on Gower Street, London in 1848. At the first meeting, the painters John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt were present.
Hunt and Millais were students at the Royal Academy of Arts and had met in another loose association, the Cyclographic Club, a sketching society. At his own request Rossetti became a pupil of Ford Madox Brown in 1848. At that date and Hunt shared lodgings in Cleveland Street, Central London. Hunt had started painting The Eve of St. Agnes based on Keats's poem of the same name, but it was not completed until 1867; as an aspiring poet, Rossetti wished to develop the links between Romantic art. By autumn, four more members, painters James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, Rossetti's brother and critic William Michael Rossetti, sculptor Thomas Woolner, had joined to form a seven-member-strong brotherhood. Ford Madox Brown was invited to join, but the more senior artist remained independent but supported the group throughout the PRB period of Pre-Raphaelitism and contributed to The Germ. Other young painters and sculptors became close associates, including Charles Allston Collins, Alexander Munro.
The PRB intended to keep the existence of the brotherhood secret from members of the Royal Academy. The brotherhood's early doctrines, as defined by William Michael Rossetti, were expressed in four declarations: to have genuine ideas to express; the principles were deliberately non-dogmatic, since the brotherhood wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists to determine their own ideas and methods of depiction. Influenced by Romanticism, the members thought responsibility were inseparable, they were fascinated by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity, lost in eras. The emphasis on medieval culture clashed with principles of realism which stress the independent observation of nature. In its early stages, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed its two interests were consistent with one another, but in years the movement divided and moved in two directions; the realists were led by Hunt and Millais, while the medievalists were led by Rossetti and his followers, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.
The split was never absolute, since both factions believed that art was spiritual in character, opposing their idealism to the materialist realism associated with Courbet and Impressionism. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was influenced by nature and its members used great detail to show the natural world using bright and sharp focus techniques on a white canvas. In attempts to revive the brilliance of colour found in Quattrocento art and Millais developed a technique of painting in thin glazes of pigment over a wet white ground in the hope that the colours would retain jewel-like transparency and clarity, their emphasis on brilliance of colour was a reaction to the excessive use of bitumen by earlier British artists, such as Reynolds, David Wilkie and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Bitumen produces unstable areas of an effect the Pre-Raphaelites despised. In 1848, Rossetti and Hunt made a list of "Immortals", artistic heroes whom they admired from literature, some of whose work would form subjects for PRB paintings, notably including Keats and Tennyson.
The first exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite work occurred in 1849. Both Millais's Isabella and Holman Hunt's Rienzi were exhibited at
Ford Madox Brown
Ford Madox Brown was a French-born British painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work. Brown spent the latter years of his life painting the twelve works known as The Manchester Murals, depicting Mancunian history, for Manchester Town Hall. Brown was the grandson of the medical theorist John Brown, founder of the Brunonian system of medicine, his great grandfather was a Scottish labourer. His father Ford Brown served as a purser in the Royal Navy, including a period serving under Sir Isaac Coffin and a period on HMS Arethusa, he left the Navy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1818, Ford Brown married Caroline Madox, of an old Kentish family, from which his middle name was taken. Brown's parents had limited financial resources, they moved to Calais to seek cheaper lodgings, where their daughter Elizabeth Coffin was born in 1819 and their son Ford Madox Brown in 1821.
Brown's education was limited, as the family moved between lodgings in the Pas-de-Calais and relatives in Kent, but he showed artistic talent in copying of old master prints. His father sought a naval career for his son, writing to his former captain Sir Isaac Coffin; the family moved to Bruges in 1835. Brown moved to Ghent in 1836 to continue his studies under Pieter van Hanselaere, he moved to Antwerp in 1837 to study under Gustaf Wappers. He continued to study in Antwerp after his mother's death in 1839, his sister died in 1840, his father in 1842. The Tate Gallery holds an early example of a portrait of his father, he first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840, a work inspired by Lord Byron's poem The Giaour and completed a version of The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, with his cousin and future wife Elisabeth Bromley as one of his models. He lived in Montmartre with his new wife and aging father in 1841, he painted Manfred on the Jungfrau, inspired by Lord Byron's poem Manfred. In 1843 he submitted work to the Westminster Cartoon Competition, for compositions to decorate the new Palace of Westminster.
His entry, The Body of Harold Brought before William, was not successful. His early works were, however admired by the young Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who asked him to become his tutor. Through Rossetti, Brown came into contact with the artists who went on to form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Though linked to them, he was never a member of the brotherhood itself, but adopted the bright colours and realistic style of William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, he was influenced by the works of Holbein that he saw in Basel in 1845, by Friedrich Overbeck and Peter Cornelius, whom he met in Rome in 1845-46. Brown struggled to make his mark in the 1850s, with his paintings failing to find buyers, he considered emigrating to India. In 1852 he started work on two of his most significant works. One of his most famous images is The Last of England, painted from 1852 to 1855, sold in March 1859 for 325 Guineas, it depicts a pair of stricken emigrants as they sail away on the ship that will take them from England forever.
It was inspired by the departure of the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner, who had left for Australia. In an unusual tondo format, the painting is structured with Brown's characteristic linear energy, emphasis on grotesque and banal details, such as the cabbages hanging from the ship's side; the husband and wife are portraits of his second wife Emma. Brown's most important painting was Work, begun in Hampstead in 1852 and which he showed at his retrospective exhibition in 1865. Thomas Plint advanced funds to enable Brown to complete the work, in anticipation of obtaining the finished painting, but died in 1861 before the painting had been completed. In this painting, Brown attempted to depict the totality of the mid-Victorian social experience in a single image, depicting'navvies' digging up a road and disrupting the old social hierarchies as they did so; the image erupts into proliferating details from the dynamic centre of the action, as the workers tear a hole in the road – and, symbolically, in the social fabric.
Each character represents a particular social role in the modern urban environment. Brown wrote a catalogue to accompany the special exhibition of Work; this publication included an extensive explanation of Work that leaves many questions unanswered. Brown's concern with the social issues addressed in Work prompted him to open a soup kitchen for Manchester's hungry, to attempt to aid the city's unemployed to find work by founding a labour exchange. Brown found patrons in the north of England, including Plint, George Rae from Birkenhead, John Miller from Liverpool, James Leathart from Newcastle. By the late 1850s he had lost patience with the poor reception he received at the Royal Academy and ceased to show his works there, rejecting an offer from Millais to support his becoming an associate member, he founded the Hogarth Club in 1858, with William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, his former pupil Rossetti. After a successful period of a few years, the club reached over 80 members, including several prominent members of the Royal Academy, but Brown resigned in 1860, the club collapsed in 1861.
From the 1860s, Brown designed furniture and stained glass. He was a founder partner of William Morris's design company, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861, which dissolved in 1874 with Morris continuing on his own. He was a close friend of the landscape artist Henry
Palgrave's Golden Treasury
The Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics is a popular anthology of English poetry selected for publication by Francis Turner Palgrave in 1861. It was revised, with input from Tennyson, about three decades later. Palgrave excluded all poems by poets still alive; the book continues to be published in regular new editions. These reproduce Palgrave's selections and notes, but include a supplement of more recent poems. Christopher Ricks in 1991 produced a scholarly edition of the original Treasury, along with an account of its evolution from 1861 to 1891, with inclusions and exclusions. William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling – Richard Barnefield – Thomas Campion – Samuel Daniel – Thomas Dekker – Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford – Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex – John Donne – Michael Drayton – William Drummond – W. Drummond of Hawthornden – Thomas Heywood – Thomas Lodge – John Lylye – Christopher Marlowe – Thomas Nashe – William Shakespeare – Sir Philip Sidney – Edmund Spenser – The Shepherd Tonie – Joshua Sylvester – John Webster – Sir Thomas Wyatt Francis Beaumont – Thomas Carew – Abraham Cowley – Richard Crashaw – John Dryden – John Fletcher – William Habington – George Herbert – Robert Herrick – Ben Jonson – Richard Lovelace – Andrew Marvell – John Milton – John Norris of Bemerton – Francis Quarles – Sir Charles Sedley – John Shirley – Sir John Suckling – Henry Vaughan – Edmund Waller – John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester – George Wither – Sir Henry Wotton Anna Laetitia Barbauld – William Blake – Robert Burns – Henry Carey – Colley Cibber – John Collins – William Collins – William Cowper – Jane Elliott – John Gay – Oliver Goldsmith – Robert Graham of Gartmore – Thomas Gray – Lady A. Lindsay – Joshua Logan – W. J. Mickle – Lady Nairn – Ambrose Philips – Alexander Pope – Matthew Prior – Samuel Rogers – Christopher Smart – John Thomson William Blake – Lord Byron – Thomas Campbell – Hartley Coleridge – Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Allan Cunningham – Thomas Hood – John Keats – Charles Lamb – Mary Lamb – H. F. Lyte – Thomas Moore – Percy Bysshe Shelley – Sir Walter Scott – Robert Southey – Charles Wolfe – William Wordsworth This five-book version is republished as a Penguin Popular ClassicMatthew Arnold – William Barnes – F. W. Bourdillon – Robert Bridges – Emily Brontë – Rupert Brooke – Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Robert Browning – John Clare – Arthur Hugh Clough – Mary Coleridge – William Johnson Cory – John Davidson – Austin Dobson – D. M. Dolben – George Darley – R. W. Dixon – Edward FitzGerald – James Elroy Flecker – Thomas Hardy – Thomas Hood – Gerard Manley Hopkins – Lionel Johnson – Charles Kingsley – Rudyard Kipling – Walter Savage Landor – Hon. Emily Lawless – J. C.
Mangan – John Masefield – George Meredith – William Morris – Sir Henry Newbolt – Alice Meynell – William Morris – Wilfred Owen – Coventry Patmore – Christina Georgina Rossetti – Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Charles Sorley – Robert Louis Stevenson – Algernon Charles Swinburne – Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Edward Thomas – Francis Thompson – H. F. Trench – William Butler Yeats An important edition was edited by Cecil Day-Lewis Poet laureate, it contained 229 Additional Poems, with Books I-IV, including in this case a number of American poets. William Blake – Walter Savage Landor – T. L. Peacock – John Clare – W. C. Bryant – George Darley – William Barnes – Thomas Lovell Beddoes – Ralph Waldo Emerson – Elizabeth Barrett Browning – H. W. Longfellow – Edward Fitzgerald – Edgar Allan Poe – Alfred Tennyson – Robert Browning – Aubrey de Vere – Emily Brontë – A. H. Clough – Charles Kingsley – Herman Melville – Walt Whitman – Jean Ingelow – Matthew Arnold – William Cory – Coventry Patmore – William Allingham – Sydney Dobell – George Meredith – D. G. Rossetti – Emily Dickinson – Christina Rossetti – Richard Watson Dixon – William Morris – Warren de Tabley – Algernon Charles Swinburne – Thomas Hardy – Robert Bridges – Gerard Manley Hopkins – Andrew Lang – A. W. E. O’Shaughnessy – R. L. Stevenson – John Davidson – A. E. Housman – Francis Thompson – Mary E. Coleridge – Rudyard Kipling – W. B.
Yeats – Ernest Dowson – Lionel Johnson – Laurence Binyon – Edwin Arlington Robinson – Hilaire Belloc – T. Sturge Moore – W. H. Davies – Ralph Hodgson – Walter de la Mare – G. K. Chesterton – Robert Frost – John Masefield – Edward Thomas – Harold Monro – Padraic Colum – James Stephens – James Elroy Flecker – D. H. Lawrence – Ezra Pound – Andrew Young – Siegfried Sassoon – Rupert Brooke – Edwin Muir – Edith Sitwell – T. S. Eliot – John Crowe Ransom – W. J. Turner – Dorothy Wellesley – V. Sackville-West – Wilfred Owen – Lilian Bowes Lyon – Robert Graves – Edmund Blunden – F. R. Higgins – William Soutar – Roy Campbell – C. Day-Lewis – John Betjeman – W. H. Auden – Louis MacNeice – Stephen Spender – George Barker – Laurie Lee – Henry Reed – Dylan Thomas – Alun Lewis – David Gascoyne – Sidney Keyes Edited by John Press; the poets included were: Dannie Abse – Fleur Adcock – William Alexander, Earl of Stirling – Kingsley Amis – Simon Armitage – Matthew Arnold – W. H. Auden – Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam – Anna Laetitia Barbauld – George Barker – Richard Barnfield – Francis Beaumont – Patricia Beer – John Betjeman – Laurence Binyon – Thomas Blackburn – Edmund Blunden – Eavan Boland – Ronald Bottrall – Robert Bridges – George Mackay Brown – Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Robert Browning – Alan Brownjohn – Robert Burns – George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron – Norman Cameron – Roy Campbell – Thomas Campbell – Thomas Campion – Thomas Carew – Henry Carey – Lewis Carroll – Charles Causley – Colley Cibber – John Clare – Austin Clarke – Jack Clemo – Arthur Hugh Clough – Hartley Coleridge – Samuel Taylor Coleridge – John Collins – William Collins – Tony Connor – Henry Constable – David Constantine – Abraham Cowley – William Cowper – Richard Crashaw – Robert Crawford – Allan Cunningham – Samuel Daniel –
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served for twelve years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times. Gladstone was born in Liverpool to Scottish parents, he first entered the House of Commons in 1832, beginning his political career as a High Tory, a grouping which became the Conservative Party under Robert Peel in 1834. Gladstone served as a minister in both of Peel's governments, in 1846 joined the breakaway Peelite faction, which merged into the new Liberal Party in 1859, he was Chancellor under Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell. Gladstone's own political doctrine—which emphasised equality of opportunity, free trade, laissez-faire economic policies—came to be known as Gladstonian liberalism, his popularity amongst the working-class earned him the sobriquet "The People's William". In 1868, Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time.
Many reforms were passed during his first ministry, including the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland and the introduction of secret voting. After electoral defeat in 1874, Gladstone resigned as leader of the Liberal Party, his Midlothian Campaign of 1879–80 was an early example of many modern political campaigning techniques. After the 1880 general election, Gladstone formed his second ministry, which saw the passage of the Third Reform Act as well as crises in Egypt and Ireland, where his government passed repressive measures but improved the legal rights of Irish tenant farmers. Back in office in early 1886, Gladstone proposed home rule for Ireland but was defeated in the House of Commons; the resulting split in the Liberal Party helped keep them out of office—with one short break—for twenty years. Gladstone formed his last government in 1892, at the age of 82; the Second Home Rule Bill passed through the Commons but was defeated in the House of Lords in 1893. Gladstone left office in March 1894, aged 84, as both the oldest person to serve as Prime Minister and the only Prime Minister to have served four terms.
He died three years later. Gladstone was known affectionately by his supporters as "The People's William" or the "G. O. M.". Historians call him one of Britain's greatest leaders. Born in 1809 in Liverpool, at 62 Rodney Street, William Ewart Gladstone was the fourth son of the merchant John Gladstone, his second wife, Anne MacKenzie Robertson. In 1835, the family name was changed from Gladstones to Gladstone by royal licence, his father was made a baronet, of Fasque and Balfour, in 1846. Although born and brought up in Liverpool, William Gladstone was of purely Scottish ancestry, his grandfather Thomas Gladstones was a prominent merchant from Leith, his maternal grandfather, Andrew Robertson, was Provost of Dingwall and a Sheriff-Substitute of Ross-shire. His biographer John Morley described him as "a highlander in the custody of a lowlander", an adversary as "an ardent Italian in the custody of a Scotsman". One of his earliest childhood memories was being made to stand on a table and say "Ladies and gentlemen" to the assembled audience at a gathering to promote the election of George Canning as MP for Liverpool in 1812.
In 1814, young "Willy" visited Scotland for the first time, as he and his brother John travelled with their father to Edinburgh and Dingwall to visit their relatives. Willy and his brother were both made freemen of the burgh of Dingwall. In 1815, Gladstone travelled to London and Cambridge for the first time with his parents. Whilst in London, he attended a service of thanksgiving with his family at St Paul's Cathedral following the Battle of Waterloo, where he saw the Prince Regent. William Gladstone was educated from 1816–1821 at a preparatory school at the vicarage of St. Thomas' Church at Seaforth, close to his family's residence, Seaforth House. In 1821, William followed in the footsteps of his elder brothers and attended Eton College before matriculating in 1828 at Christ Church, where he read Classics and Mathematics, although he had no great interest in the latter subject. In December 1831, he achieved the double first-class degree. Gladstone served as President of the Oxford Union, where he developed a reputation as an orator, which followed him into the House of Commons.
At university, Gladstone was a denounced Whig proposals for parliamentary reform. Following the success of his double first, William travelled with his brother John on a Grand Tour of Europe, visiting Belgium, France and Italy. Upon his return to England, William was elected to Parliament in 1832 as a Tory Member of Parliament for Newark through the influence of the local patron, the Duke of Newcastle. Although Gladstone entered Lincoln's Inn in 1833, with intentions of becoming a barrister, by 1839 he had requested that his name should be removed from the list because he no longer intended to be called to the Bar. In the House of Commons, Gladstone was a disciple of High Toryism and, as a scion of one of the largest slave-holding families in the world, he opposed both the abolition of slavery and factory legislation. Gladstone's father was a slave owner.
Godley Statue
The Godley Statue is a bronze statue situated in Cathedral Square in Christchurch, New Zealand. It commemorates the "Founder of Canterbury" John Robert Godley, it was the first statue portraying a person in New Zealand. The statue fell off its plinth in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake and time capsules were discovered inside the plinth, it was four years. In November 1847, Godley had a fruitful meeting with Edward Gibbon Wakefield over two days; the founding of the Canterbury Association was an outcome of this. He arrived in Lyttelton in April 1850, eight months before the first settlers arrived through the scheme of the Canterbury Association, acted as the'Resident Chief Agent'. Whilst he only stayed for two days before leaving for Wellington, he stopped expenditure to address mounting debt. Godley was back in the port town for the arrival of the First Four Ships, was in effect governor for the Canterbury settlement, he was scrupulous and an accepted authority. He was a strong advocate for settler self-governance.
He left the colony in December 1852. The Godley statue is located in Cathedral Square, the heart of Christchurch, to commemorate the "Founder of Canterbury"; the statue, by English sculptor Thomas Woolner, was cast in the Coalbrookdale foundry in Shropshire in 1865. It was unveiled by magistrate Charles Bowen in Cathedral Square on 8 August 1867. In 1904, a Christchurch City Councillor advocated for the statue to be moved, as the soon to be built trams would not leave enough space around it. In 1907, the City Council gave permission for the erection of a tram shelter to be built that hid the statue from view from the Cathedral. In 1917, the situation was made worse by the construction of underground toilets right next to the statue. On 5 March 1918, the statue was shifted to a new position to the north of ChristChurch Cathedral; the tram shelter was demolished in 1931 and the statue was moved back into its original location in April 1933 after the removal of some trees from this part of the Square.
The statue fell over during the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. In the following days time capsules were discovered beneath its plinth by a crane driver, one a damaged glass bottle containing a parchment and the other a sealed metal container; the two capsules were placed in the care of Canterbury Museum for preservation. The time capsules were to be opened once the Museum's lab was operating again sometime in April 2011. Christchurch mayor Bob Parker said in late February 2011 "the first thing that we will do in this city is put back up on that plinth the man whose vision it was." After a conservation process that included the strengthening of the bronze, the statue was put back on 18 February 2015, "just shy of four years since he tumbled from his plinth." On 2 April 1985, the statue was registered by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust as a Category I historic place, with the registration number being 3666. The statue is significant, it demonstrates the link between the Canterbury Association.
It was the first portrait statue, unveiled in New Zealand, for 20 years, it was the only one
Hadleigh, Suffolk
Hadleigh is an ancient market town and civil parish in South Suffolk, East Anglia, next to the River Brett, between the larger towns of Sudbury and Ipswich. It had a population of 8,253 at the 2011 census; the headquarters of Babergh District Council were located in the town until 2017. Skeat, in his 1913 The Place-Names of Suffolk, says this: Spelt Hadlega, R. B.. S. Chronicle, ii. 102. B. p.184. In D. B. the t stands for th. S. form appears in a Worcs. Charter, dated 849, as hæðleage with reference to Headley Heath in Birch, C. S. ii. 40. The sense is'heath-lea.' In a similar way the A. S. Ð has become t in Hatfield which means'heath-field'. Guthrum, King of the Danes, is said to be buried in the grounds of St Mary's Church in the town, he was defeated by King Alfred at the battle of Edington in 878. The first documented lord of the manor was ealdorman Byrhtnoth, killed at the Battle of Maldon in 991, when Anglo-Saxon forces tried to repel Viking invaders. Ealdorman was the highest rank of noble and just before his death he was the most senior ealdorman in the country to King Aelthelred.
Byrhtnoth and his wife had no children, "so he bequeathed his many lands to churches or religious institutions around the country". Hadleigh received its market charter in 1252 and had a grammar school by 1275; the manor of Hadleigh, along with those of Lawling in Essex and Monks Eleigh in Suffolk, were among those given to the Priory Church of Canterbury Cathedral. It made Hadleigh an "archiepiscopal peculiar" – under the direct control of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Hadleigh was a moderately-sized town, with a reckoned population of about 1,100 or 1,200 in 1306. At that time there were 118 "unfree tenants" in 1306 and 75 "free tenants." They had to provide labour services The manor had 2,000 acres. The manor was a working farm, with crops and some animals, had quite an important dairy. Hadleigh Hall was the site of the medieval manor house, in 4 acres, it has been suggested by Woods that Walter "Wat" Tyler and his wife were Hadleigh tenants about 20 years before he was one of the leaders of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt.
Records show a Wat Tyler taking over a freeholding in Coram Street in 1358/59 and it is possible he worked as a tiler. In 1438 administration was passed from manorial control to trustees; the market was sold to Babergh District Council in the late 20th century. Hadleigh was one of the East Anglian towns that derived its prosperity from its wool and cloth industries, it has a 15th-century timber-framed Guildhall and many fine examples of timber and brick listed buildings, some with detailed 17th century plasterwork or "pargeting". Most of these buildings can be found in the High Street, Angel Street, Benton Street and the surrounding area; the town has a total of 246 listed buildings. Of these, four are Grade I listed: the grouping of St Mary’s Church, the Deanery Tower and the Guildhall. Twenty-seven are II*. One hall house has been dated to 1380-1420; the Georgian East House, on George Street, is designated a Grade II* listed building. In March 2013 plans by Babergh District Council to redevelop the site and build houses on the land behind were withdrawn after strong local protest.
The property was once used for a range of community activities. Opponents of the plan had argued that the adjacent land had been used as a village green for the previous 20 years; the building was renovated as a private home in 2018. Originating in the 14th century, the Grade II* listed Toppesfield Bridge, over the River Brett, is the oldest in the county still carrying vehicles, it was widened in 1812. The Anglican church of St Mary the Virgin is an active parish church in the archdeaconry of Ipswich in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, its earliest parts date from medieval times. On 26 April 1950 the church was designated a Grade I listed building by English Heritage; the Grade I designation is the highest of the three grades and is for buildings that are "of exceptional interest, sometimes considered to be internationally important."According to the Annals of St Neots, a chronicle compiled in Bury St Edmunds, king Guthrum was buried at Headleage, identified as Hadleigh. He may have built the original Saxon church at this site, traces of which were revealed in the churchyard to the south of the porch, in 1829 and in 1984.
There is no real evidence, that Guthrum was the founder of the church. In the Domesday Book there is mention of a church at "Hetlega" being owned by Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury; the deanery, with a tall Tudor gatehouse in brick built just before the Reformation, next to the church, is a Grade I listed building. Like its near neighbour, East Bergholt, Hadleigh was known during the 16th century for its Protestant radicalism. Rowland Taylor, a preacher from the town, his curate, Richard Yeoman, were martyred during the reign of Queen Mary I; the Oxford Movement was said to have been founded in 1833 following a meeting in the deanery. Hadleigh United Reformed Church, situated off Market Place, was the town's Congregational Church, founded in 1688, it was rebuilt between 1825 and 1832, with seating for 1,000 and was restored in 1890–91. The current minister is Rev Bryn Rickards; the Baptist chapel founded in 1814, was built in 1830 and had a gallery added in 1884. It was enlarged in 1875; the Salvation Army was established in 1889 a hall in Duke Street in 1920.
St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church was built in 1966. The congrega
Manchester Assize Courts
The Manchester Assize Courts were law courts on Great Ducie Street in the Strangeways district of Manchester, England. It was 279 ft tall and from 1864 to 1877 the tallest building in Manchester. Admired, it has been referred to as one of Britain's'lost buildings'; the Assize Courts was the first civic building to be constructed in Manchester after the town hall on King Street by Francis Goodwin in 1819. The Builder described it as the most important building outside Whitehall, its design was the result of a competition in 1858. The competition was won by Alfred Waterhouse whose design beat schemes from other renowned architects such as Thomas Worthington and Edward Walters. Waterhouse designed the building in the Venetian Gothic style, construction began in 1859 and was completed in 1864; as part of the scheme, the nearby 1862 Strangeways Prison was included in his design and is a Grade II listed structure. The building contained exterior sculptures by the firm of O'Shea and Whelan, they depicted lawgivers from history, along with a "drunk woman", a "good woman", a scene of the Judgment of Solomon and carvings depicting different punishments throughout history.
As part of the court system changes, the assize court system in Manchester was abolished in 1956 and changed to the Crown Court system. The courts building was damaged in the Manchester Blitz in 1940 and 1941, it was said that everything was destroyed except judges' lodgings. Some buildings in the city damaged in the war were repaired but Manchester Assize was demolished soon after the assize court abolition in 1957; some of the sculptures were incorporated into the new magistrates' court building. Assize court Parkinson-Bailey, John. Manchester: An Architectural History. Manchester University Press. Hartwell, Clare. Pevsner Architecture Guide: Manchester. Penguin Books. Photo of the courts Photo of the courts being demolished More on the History of the area of Strangeways
