United Kingdom census, 2011
A census of the population of the United Kingdom is taken every ten years. The 2011 census was held in all countries of the UK on 27 March 2011, it was the first UK census. The Office for National Statistics is responsible for the census in England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland is responsible for the census in Scotland, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency is responsible for the census in Northern Ireland; the Office for National Statistics is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department formed in 2008 and which reports directly to Parliament. ONS is the UK Government's single largest statistical producer of independent statistics on the UK's economy and society, used to assist the planning and allocation of resources, policy-making and decision-making. ONS designs and runs the census in England and Wales. In its capacity as the national statistics office for the United Kingdom, ONS compiles and releases census tables for the United Kingdom when the data from England and Wales and Northern Ireland are complete.
In the run-up to the census both the main UK political parties expressed concerns about the increasing cost and the value for money of the census, it was suggested that the 2011 census might be the last decennial census to be taken. The first results from the 2011 census and sex, occupied households estimates for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, were released on 16 July 2012; the first results for Scotland, the first UK-wide results, were published on 17 December 2012. More detailed and specialised data were published from 2013; the Registrar General John Rickman conducted the first census of Great Britain's population, was responsible for the ten-yearly reports published between 1801 and 1831. During the first 100 years of census-taking the population of England and Wales grew more than threefold, to around 32 million, that of Scotland, where a separate census has been carried out since 1861, to about 4.5 million. From 1911 onwards rapid social change, scientific breakthroughs, major world events affected the structure of the population.
A fire that destroyed census records in 1931, the declaration of war in 1939, made the 1951 census hugely significant in recording 30 years of change over one of the most turbulent periods in British history. The 1971 census was run by the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, a body formed by the merger of the General Register Office and Government Social Survey. In 1996 the Office for National Statistics was formed by merging the Central Statistical Office, OPCS and the statistics division of the Department of Employment. In 2008 the UK Statistics Authority was established as an independent body. A population census is a key instrument for assessing the needs of local communities; when related to other data sources such as housing or agricultural censuses, or sample surveys, the data becomes more useful. Most countries of the world take censuses: the United Nations recommends that countries take a census at least once every ten years; the design for the 2011 census reflects changes in society since 2001 and asks questions to help paint a detailed demographic picture of England and Wales, as it stands on census day, 27 March.
Data collected by the census is used to provide statistical outputs which central government uses to plan and allocate local authority services funding, which local authorities themselves use to identify and meet the needs of their local communities. Other organisations that use census data include healthcare organisations, community groups and businesses; the questionnaires, including people's personal information, are kept confidential for 100 years before being released to the public, providing an important source of information for historical and genealogy research. The 2011 census for England and Wales included around 25 million households. Questionnaires were posted out to all households, using a national address register compiled by the Office for National Statistics with the help of local authorities through comparisons of the National Land and Property Gazetteer and the Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey national address products. People could complete and submit their questionnaire online, or fill it in on paper and post it back in a pre-addressed envelope.
Guidance was provided online and through the census helpline. Completed questionnaires were electronically tracked and field staff followed up with households that did not return a questionnaire. Special arrangements were made to count people living in communal establishments such as. In these cases field staff delivered and collected questionnaires and, where needed, provided advice or assistance in completing the questionnaire. There was a legal requirement to complete the 2011 census questionnaire, under the terms of the Census Act 1920; as at 27 March 2011 everyone who had lived or intended to live in the country for three months or more was required to complete a questionnaire. Failure to return a completed questionnaire could lead to a criminal record. Lockheed Martin UK, the UK arm of US-based aerospace, technology company Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract to provide services for the census comprising questionnaire printing, a customer contact centre and data capture and processing.
The contract is valued at £150 million one third of the total £1 million census budget
Regency era
The Regency in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a period when King George III was deemed unfit to rule due to his illness and his son ruled as his proxy as Prince Regent. On the death of George III in 1820, the Prince Regent became George IV; the term Regency can refer to various stretches of time. The period from 1795 to 1837, which includes the latter part of the reign of George III and the reigns of his sons George IV and William IV, is sometimes regarded as the Regency era, characterised by distinctive trends in British architecture, fashions and culture, it ended in 1837 when Queen Victoria succeeded William IV. The Regency is noted for its elegance and achievements in the fine arts and architecture; this era encompassed a time of great social and economic change. War was waged with Napoleon and on other fronts, affecting commerce both at home and internationally, as well as politics. Despite the bloodshed and warfare, the Regency was a period of great refinement and cultural achievement and altering the societal structure of Britain as a whole.
One of the greatest patrons of the arts and architecture was the Prince Regent himself. Upper-class society flourished in a sort of mini-Renaissance of refinement; as one of the greatest patrons of the arts, the Prince Regent ordered the costly building and refurbishing of the beautiful and exotic Brighton Pavilion, the ornate Carlton House, as well as many other public works and architecture. This required dipping into the treasury and the Regent, the King's exuberance outstripped his pocket, at the people's expense. Society was considerably stratified. In many ways, there was a dark side to the fashion in England at this time. In the dingier, less affluent areas of London, womanising, the existence of rookeries, constant drinking ran rampant; the population boom—the population increased from just under a million in 1801 to one and a quarter million by 1820—created a wild, roiling and vibrant scene. According to Robert Southey, the difference between the strata of society was vast indeed: The squalor that existed beneath the glamour and gloss of Regency society provided sharp contrast to the Prince Regent's social circle.
Poverty was addressed only marginally. The formation of the Regency after the retirement of George III saw the end of a more pious and reserved society, gave birth of a more frivolous, ostentatious one; this change was influenced by the Regent himself, kept removed from the machinations of politics and military exploits. This did nothing to channel his energies in a more positive direction, thereby leaving him with the pursuit of pleasure as his only outlet, as well as his sole form of rebellion against what he saw as disapproval and censure in the form of his father. Driving these changes was not only money and rebellious pampered youth, but significant technological advancements. In 1814, The Times adopted steam printing. By this method it could now print 1,100 sheets every hour, not 200 as before—a fivefold increase in production capability and demand; this development brought about the rise of the wildly popular fashionable novels in which publishers spread the stories and flaunting of the rich and aristocratic, not so secretly hinting at the specific identity of these individuals.
The gap in the hierarchy of society was so great that those of the upper classes could be viewed by those below as wondrous and fantastical fiction, something out of reach yet tangibly there. 1811 George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, began his nine-year tenure as regent and became known as The Prince Regent. This sub-period of the Georgian era began the formal Regency; the Duke of Wellington held off the French at Fuentes Albuhera in the Peninsular War. The Prince Regent held a fete at 9:00 p.m. June 19, 1811, at Carlton House in celebration of his assumption of the Regency. Luddite uprisings. Glasgow weavers riot. 1812 Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the House of Commons. Final shipment of the Elgin Marbles arrived in England. Sarah Siddons retired from the stage. Shipping and territory disputes started the War of 1812 between the United Kingdom and the United States; the British were victorious over French armies at the Battle of Salamanca. Gas company founded. Charles Dickens, English writer and social critic of the Victorian era, was born on 7 February 1812.
1813 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was published. William Hedley's Puffing Billy, an early steam locomotive, ran on smooth rails. Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry started her ministry at Newgate Prison. Robert Southey became Poet Laureate. 1814 Invasion of France by allies led to the Treaty of Paris, ended one of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon was exiled to Elba; the Duke of Wellington was honoured at Burlington House in London. British soldiers burn the White House. Last River Thames Frost Fair was held, the last time the river froze. Gas lighting introduced in London streets. 1815 Napoleon I of France defeated by the Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena; the English Corn Laws restricted corn imports. Sir Humphry Davy patented the miners' safety lamp. John Loudon Macadam's road construction method adopted. 1816 Income tax abolished. A "year without a summer" followed a volcanic eruption in Indonesia. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. William Cobbett published his newspaper as a pamphlet.
The British returned Indonesia to the Dutch. Regent's Canal, phase one of c
Mary, Queen of Scots
Mary, Queen of Scots known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, reigned over Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567. Mary, the only surviving legitimate child of King James V, was six days old when her father died and she acceded to the throne, she spent most of her childhood in France while Scotland was ruled by regents, in 1558, she married the Dauphin of France, Francis. He ascended the French throne as King Francis II in 1559, Mary became queen consort of France, until his death in December 1560. Widowed, Mary returned to Scotland, arriving in Leith on 19 August 1561. Four years she married her first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and in June 1566 they had a son, James. In February 1567, Darnley's residence was destroyed by an explosion, he was found murdered in the garden. James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, was believed to have orchestrated Darnley's death, but he was acquitted of the charge in April 1567, the following month he married Mary. Following an uprising against the couple, Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle.
On 24 July 1567 she was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, she fled southwards seeking the protection of her first cousin once removed, Queen Elizabeth I of England. Mary had once claimed Elizabeth's throne as her own, was considered the legitimate sovereign of England by many English Catholics, including participants in a rebellion known as the Rising of the North. Perceiving her as a threat, Elizabeth had her confined in various castles and manor houses in the interior of England. After eighteen and a half years in custody, Mary was found guilty of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth in 1586, she was beheaded the following year at Fotheringhay Castle. Mary was born on 8 December 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, Scotland, to King James V and his French second wife, Mary of Guise, she was said to have been born prematurely and was the only legitimate child of James to survive him. She was the great-niece of King Henry VIII of England, as her paternal grandmother, Margaret Tudor, was Henry VIII's sister.
On 14 December, six days after her birth, she became Queen of Scotland when her father died from the effects of a nervous collapse following the Battle of Solway Moss, or from drinking contaminated water while on campaign. A popular tale, first recorded by John Knox, states that James, hearing on his deathbed that his wife had given birth to a daughter, ruefully exclaimed, "It cam wi' a lass and it will gang wi' a lass!" His House of Stuart had gained the throne of Scotland by the marriage of Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert the Bruce, to Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland. The crown had come to his family through a woman, would be lost from his family through a woman; this legendary statement came true much later—not through Mary, but through her descendant Queen Anne. Mary was baptised at the nearby Church of St Michael. Rumours spread that she was weak and frail, but an English diplomat, Ralph Sadler, saw the infant at Linlithgow Palace in March 1543, unwrapped by her nurse, wrote, "it is as goodly a child as I have seen of her age, as like to live."As Mary was an infant when she inherited the throne, Scotland was ruled by regents until she became an adult.
From the outset, there were two claims to the regency: one from Catholic Cardinal Beaton, the other from the Protestant Earl of Arran, next in line to the throne. Beaton's claim was based on a version of the king's will. Arran, with the support of his friends and relations, became the regent until 1554 when Mary's mother managed to remove and succeed him. King Henry VIII of England took the opportunity of the regency to propose marriage between Mary and his own son and heir, hoping for a union of Scotland and England. On 1 July 1543, when Mary was six months old, the Treaty of Greenwich was signed, which promised that, at the age of ten, Mary would marry Edward and move to England, where Henry could oversee her upbringing; the treaty provided that the two countries would remain separate and that if the couple should fail to have children, the temporary union would dissolve. Cardinal Beaton rose to power again and began to push a pro-Catholic pro-French agenda, angering Henry, who wanted to break the Scottish alliance with France.
Beaton wanted to move Mary away from the coast to the safety of Stirling Castle. Regent Arran resisted the move, but backed down when Beaton's armed supporters gathered at Linlithgow; the Earl of Lennox escorted her mother to Stirling on 27 July 1543 with 3,500 armed men. Mary was crowned in the castle chapel on 9 September 1543, with "such solemnity as they do use in this country, not costly" according to the report of Ralph Sadler and Henry Ray. Shortly before Mary's coronation, Scottish merchants headed for France were arrested by Henry, their goods impounded; the arrests caused anger in Scotland, Arran joined Beaton and became a Catholic. The Treaty of Greenwich was rejected by the Parliament of Scotland in December; the rejection of the marriage treaty and the renewal of the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland prompted Henry's "Rough Wooing", a military campaign designed to impose the marriage of Mary to his son. English forces mounted a series of raids on French territory. In May 1544, the English Earl of Hertford raided Edinburgh, the Scots took Mary to Dunkeld for safety.
In May 1546, Beaton was murdered by Protestant lairds, on 10 September 1547, nine months after the death of Henry VIII, the Scots suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. Mary's guardians, fearful for her safety, sent her t
Hundred (county division)
A hundred is an administrative division, geographically part of a larger region. It was used in England, some parts of the United States, Southern Schleswig, Finland and Norway, it is still used in other places, including South Australia, The Northern Territory. Other terms for the hundred in English and other languages include wapentake, herad, hérað, härad or hundare, Satakunta or kihlakunta and cantref. In Ireland, a similar subdivision of counties is referred to as a barony, a hundred is a subdivision of a large townland; the use of "hundred" for a division of a county has what the OED describes as an "exceedingly obscure" etymology. It may once have referred to an area of 100 hides, though a "hide" is not a specific area: instead it was conceptually the amount of land required to support a family. Alternatively it may have been based on the area liable to provide 100 men under arms, or because it was an area settled by 100 men at arms. There was an equivalent traditional Germanic system, in Old High German a huntari, a division of a gau, but the OED believes that the link between the two is not established.
In England a hundred was the division of a shire for military and judicial purposes under the common law, which could have varying extent of common feudal ownership, from complete suzerainty to minor royal or ecclesiastical prerogatives and rights of ownership. Until the introduction of districts by the Local Government Act 1894, hundreds were the only used assessment unit intermediate in size between the parish, with its various administrative functions, the county, with its formal, ceremonial functions; the term "hundred" is first recorded in the laws of Edmund I as a measure of land and the area served by a hundred court. In the Midlands, they covered an area of about 100 hides, but this did not apply in the south; the Hundred Ordinance, which dates to the middle of the century, provided that the court was to meet monthly, thieves were to be pursued by all the leading men of the district. The name of the hundred was that of its meeting-place. During Norman times, the hundred would pay geld based on the number of hides.
To assess how much everyone had to pay, a clerk and a knight were sent by the king to each county. There would be two knights from each hundred. After it was determined what geld had to be paid, the bailiff and knights of the hundred were responsible for getting the money to the sheriff, the sheriff for getting it to the Exchequer. Above the hundred was the shire, under the control of a sheriff. Hundred boundaries were independent of both parish and county boundaries, although aligned, meaning that a hundred could be split between counties, or a parish could be split between hundreds. Exceptionally, in the counties of Kent and Sussex, there was a sub-division intermediate in size between the hundred and the shire: several hundreds were grouped together to form lathes in Kent and rapes in Sussex. At the time of the Norman conquest of England, Kent was divided into seven lathes and Sussex into four rapes; the system of hundreds was not as stable as the system of counties being established at the time, lists differ on how many hundreds a county had.
In many parts of the country, the Domesday Book contained a radically different set of hundreds from that which became established. The numbers of hundreds in each county varied widely. Leicestershire had six, whereas Devon, nearly three times the size, had 32. Over time, the principal functions of the hundred became the administration of law and the keeping of the peace. By the 12th century, the hundred court was held twelve times a year; this was increased to fortnightly, although an ordinance of 1234 reduced the frequency to once every three weeks. In some hundreds, courts were held at a fixed place; the main duty of the hundred court was the maintenance of the frankpledge system. The court was formed of freemen. According to a 13th-century statute, freeholders did not have to attend their lord's manorial courts, thus any suits involving them would be heard in a hundred court. For serious crimes, the hundred was under the jurisdiction of the Crown. However, many hundreds came into private hands, with the lordship of the hundred being attached to the principal manor of the area and becoming hereditary.
Helen Cam estimated that before the Conquest, over 130 hundreds were in private hands. Where a hundred was under a lord, a steward, acting as a judge and the chief official of the lord of the manor, was appointed in place of a sheriff; the importance of the hundred courts declined from the 17th century, most of their powers were extinguished with the establishment of county courts in 1867. The remaining duty of the inhabitants of a hundred to make good damages caused by riot was ended by the Riot Act 1886, when the cost was transferred to the county police rate
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom provide emergency care to people with acute illness or injury and are predominantly provided free at the point of use by the four National Health Services of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status; the NHS commissions most emergency medical services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other emergency services, the public access emergency medical services through one of the valid emergency telephone numbers. In addition to ambulance services provided by NHS organisations, there are some private and volunteer emergency medical services arrangements in place in the UK, the use of private or volunteer ambulances at public events or large private sites, as part of community provision of services such as community first responders. Air ambulance services in the UK are not part of the NHS and are funded through charitable donations.
Paramedics are seconded from a local NHS ambulance service, with the exception of Great North Air Ambulance Service who employ their own paramedics. Doctors are provided by their home hospital and spend no more than 40% of their time with an air ambulance service. Public ambulance services across the UK are required by law to respond to four types of requests for care, which are: Emergency calls Doctor's urgent admission requests High dependency and urgent inter-hospital transfers Major incidentsAmbulance trusts and services may undertake non-urgent patient transport services on a commercial arrangement with their local hospital trusts or health boards, or in some cases on directly funded government contracts, although these contracts are fulfilled by private and voluntary providers; the National Health Service Act 1946 gave county and borough councils a statutory responsibility to provide an emergency ambulance service, although they could contract a voluntary ambulance service to provide this, with many contracting the British Red Cross, St John Ambulance or another local provider.
The last St John Division, to be so contracted is reputed to have been at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire, where the two-bay ambulance garage can still be seen at the branch headquarters. The Regional Ambulance Officers’ Committee reported in 1979 that “There was considerable local variation in the quality of the service provided in relation to vehicles and equipment. Most Services were administered by Local Authorities through their Medical Officer of Health and his Ambulance Officer, a few were under the aegis of the Fire Service, whilst others relied upon agency methods for the provision of part or all of their services.” The 142 existing ambulance services were transferred by the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 from local authority to central government control in 1974, consolidated into 53 services under regional or area health authorities. This led to the formation of predominantly county based ambulance services, which merged up and changed responsibilities until 2006, when there were 31 NHS ambulance trusts in England.
The June 2005 report "Taking healthcare to the Patient", authored by Peter Bradley, Chief Executive of the London Ambulance Service, for the Department of Health led to the merging of the 31 trusts into 13 organisations in England, plus one organisation each in Wales and Northern Ireland. Following further changes as part of the NHS foundation trust pathway, this has further reduced to 10 ambulance service trusts in England, plus the Isle of Wight which has its own provision. Following the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, commissioning of the ambulance services in each area passed from central government control into the hands of regional clinical commissioning groups; the commissioners in each region are responsible for contracting with a suitable organisation to provide ambulance services within their geographical territory. The primary provider for each area is held by a public NHS body, of which there are 11 in England, 1 each in the other three countries. In England there are now ten NHS ambulance trusts, as well as an ambulance service on the Isle of Wight, run directly by Isle of Wight NHS Trust, with boundaries following those of the former regional government offices.
The ten trusts are: East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust London Ambulance Service NHS Trust North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS TrustThe English ambulance trusts are represented by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, with the Scottish and Northern Irish providers all associate members. On the 14 November 2018 West Midlands Ambulance Service became the UK's first university-ambulance trust; the service was operated before reorganisation in 1974 by the St Andrews’ Ambulance Association under contract to the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Scottish Ambulance Service is a Special Health Board that provides ambulance services throughout whole of Scotland, on behalf of the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government.
Due to the remote nature of many areas of Scotland compared to the other Home Nations, the Scottish Ambulance Service has Britain's only publi
Alabaster
Alabaster is a mineral or rock, soft used for carving, is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists; the former use is in a wider sense that includes varieties of two different minerals: the fine-grained massive type of gypsum and the fine-grained banded type of calcite. Geologists define alabaster only as the gypsum type. Chemically, gypsum is a hydrous sulfate of calcium. Both types of alabaster have similar properties, they are lightly colored and soft stones. They have been used throughout history for carving decorative artifacts; the calcite type is denominated "onyx-marble", "Egyptian alabaster", "Oriental alabaster" and is geologically described as either a compact banded travertine or "a stalagmitic limestone marked with patterns of swirling bands of cream and brown". "Onyx-marble" is a traditional, but geologically inaccurate, name because both onyx and marble have geological definitions that are distinct from the broadest definition of "alabaster".
In general, ancient alabaster is calcite in the wider Middle East, including Egypt and Mesopotamia, while it is gypsum in medieval Europe. Modern alabaster is calcite but may be either. Both are easy to work and soluble in water, they have been used for making a variety of indoor artwork and carving, they will not survive long outdoors. The two kinds are distinguished by their different hardnesses: gypsum alabaster is so soft that a fingernail scratches it, while calcite cannot be scratched in this way, although it yields to a knife. Moreover, calcite alabaster, being a carbonate, effervesces when treated with hydrochloric acid, while gypsum alabaster remains unaffected; the origin of "alabaster" is in Middle English through Old French "alabastre", in turn derived from Latin "alabaster", that from Greek "ἀλάβαστρος" or "ἀλάβαστος". The Greek words denoted a vase of alabaster; the name may be derived further from ancient Egyptian "a-labaste", which refers to vessels of the Egyptian goddess Bast.
She was represented as a lioness and depicted as such in figures placed atop these alabaster vessels. Ancient Roman authors, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy, wrote that the stone used for ointment jars called alabastra came from a region of Egypt known as Alabastron or Alabastrites; the purest alabaster is a snow-white material of fine uniform grain, but it is associated with an oxide of iron, which produces brown clouding and veining in the stone. The coarser varieties of gypsum alabaster are converted by calcination into plaster of Paris, are sometimes known as "plaster stone"; the softness of alabaster enables it to be carved into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water renders it unsuitable for outdoor work. If alabaster with a smooth, polished surface is washed with dishwashing liquid, it will become rough and whiter, losing most of its translucency and lustre; the finer kinds of alabaster are employed as an ornamental stone for ecclesiastical decoration and for the rails of staircases and halls.
Alabaster is mined and sold in blocks to alabaster workshops. There they are cut to the needed size, are processed in different techniques: turned on a lathe for round shapes, carved into three-dimensional sculptures, chiselled to produce low relief figures or decoration. In order to diminish the translucency of the alabaster and to produce an opacity suggestive of true marble, the statues are immersed in a bath of water and heated gradually—nearly to the boiling point—an operation requiring great care, because if the temperature is not regulated the stone acquires a dead-white, chalky appearance; the effect of heating appears to be a partial dehydration of the gypsum. If properly treated, it closely resembles true marble and is known as "marmo di Castellina". Alabaster is a porous stone and can be "dyed" into any colour or shade, a technique used for centuries. For this the stone needs to be immersed in various pigmentary solutions and heated to a specific temperature; the technique can be used to disguise alabaster.
In this way a misleading imitation of coral, called "alabaster coral" is produced. Only one type is sculpted in any particular cultural environment, but sometimes both have been worked to make similar pieces in the same place and time; this was the case with small flasks of the alabastron type made in Cyprus from the Bronze Age into the Classical period. When cut in thin sheets, alabaster is translucent enough to be used for small windows, it was used for this purpose in Byzantine churches and in medieval ones in Italy. Large sheets of Aragonese gypsum alabaster are used extensively in the contemporary Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, dedicated in 2002 by the Los Angeles, California Archdiocese; the cathedral incorporates special cooling to prevent the panes from turning opaque. The ancients used the calcite type, while the modern Los Angeles cathedral is using gypsum alabaster. There are multiple examples of alabaster windows in ordinary village churches and monasteries in northern Spain.
Calcite alabaster, harder than the gypsum variety, was the kind used in ancient Egypt and the wider Middle East, is used in modern times. It is found as either a stalagmitic deposit from the floor and walls of limestone caverns, or as a kind of travertine deposited in springs of calcareous water, its deposition in successive layers give
Crewe–Derby line
The Crewe–Derby line is a railway line in central and North West England, running from Crewe south east to Derby via Stoke-on-Trent and Uttoxeter. Services on the line are provided by East Midlands Trains; this line was opened by the North Staffordshire Railway Company and became part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923. The line was opened between Stoke and Uttoxeter on 7 August 1848; the next stage from here to Tutbury was opened 11 September 1848. Just beyond Tutbury was a branch line to Burton upon Trent, having opened on the same date, but now closed. A separate company, the Cheadle Railway Company, built a line from Cresswell to Cheadle, opened throughout on 1 January 1901 and was closed to passengers in 1953 and to freight traffic in 1978; the section of line between Egginton and the Midland Railway Derby to Birmingham line was opened on 13 July 1849. The section between Stoke and Kidsgrove is part of the West Coast Main Line, which together with the section from Kidsgrove to Crewe opened on 9 October 1848.
When Central Trains were awarded the franchise for the line in the 1990s, the Crewe-Derby service was expanded to run between Manchester Airport and Skegness. However, poor punctuality meant that this was curtailed to Crewe-Skegness. In Autumn 2005, further poor performance saw the through service limited to Crewe-Derby. During 2003 much of the line was closed as part of the West Coast Main Line upgrade with trains terminating at Blythe Bridge and a shuttle bus service running between there and Crewe. After the closure all stations on the route reopened except Etruria, closed in 2005; as a result of the upgrade the section from Crewe to Kidsgrove was electrified for use as a diversionary route for the West Coast Main Line. All stations on the route except Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe are managed by East Midlands Trains; the line serves or has served the following places: Crewe. The route starts at Derby and follows the route of the Cross Country Route as far as North Staffordshire Junction in Willington.
The line carries along the main body of the line until Stoke Junction on the Stoke-on-Trent branch of the West Coast Main Line until Kidsgrove where it follows the Alsager branch as far as Crewe south junction before terminating at Crewe. The route is double track for all of its length except for a three-mile section between Alsager and Crewe, singled by British Rail. Whilst the majority of the route is not electrified, the section between Stoke Junction and Crewe is as this is a part of the West Coast Main Line. In April 2006, Network Rail organised its maintenance and train control operations into "26 Routes"; the line from Crewe to Kidsgrove through to Stoke-on-Trent forms part of Route 18. The line through to Derby from the junction just south of Stoke-on-Trent station forms part of Route 19; the line sees a basic hourly service in each direction with trains calling at all stations on the route however Peartree, served by 2 Derby bound trains and 3 Crewe bound trains per weekday. The majority of services on the route since December 2008 have been provided by Class 153 "Super Sprinter" Diesel Multiple Units however Class 158 "Express Sprinter" and Class 156 "Super Sprinter" units are used.
Overcrowding remains a major issue on the route in the morning and evening peak and a weekends. Passengers are left behind. Network Rail in their East Midlands Route Utilisation Strategy has proposed extending the service to Nottingham
