Old English
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French; this is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, as during this period the English language was influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles and Jutes; as the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Latin, brought to Britain by Roman invasion. Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian and West Saxon.
It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop from Mercian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century. Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English and difficult for Modern English speakers to understand without study. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, word order is much freer; the oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a runic system, but from about the 9th century this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet. Englisc, which the term English is derived from, means'pertaining to the Angles'. In Old English, this word was derived from Angles.
During the 9th century, all invading Germanic tribes were referred to as Englisc. It has been hypothesised that the Angles acquired their name because their land on the coast of Jutland resembled a fishhook. Proto-Germanic *anguz had the meaning of'narrow', referring to the shallow waters near the coast; that word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂enǵʰ- meaning'narrow'. Another theory is that the derivation of'narrow' is the more connection to angling, which itself stems from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning bend, angle; the semantic link is the fishing hook, curved or bent at an angle. In any case, the Angles may have been called such because they were a fishing people or were descended from such, therefore England would mean'land of the fishermen', English would be'the fishermen's language'. Old English was not static, its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is an arbitrary process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections, a synthetic language.
Around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, but those that survived are basic elements of Modern English vocabulary. Old English is a West Germanic language, it came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England. This included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, except in the areas of Scandinavian settlements where Old Norse was spoken. Celtic speech remained established in certain parts of England: Medieval Cornish was spoken all over Cornwall and in adjacent parts of Devon, while Cumbric survived to the 12th century in parts of Cumbria, Welsh may have been spoken on the English side of the Anglo-Welsh border. Norse was widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century.
The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmon's Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a limited corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries, but the oldest coherent runic texts date to the 8th century; the Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century. With the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. Alfred advocated education in English alongside Latin, had many works translated into the English language. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, but King Alfred the Great chiefly inspired the growth of prose. A literary standard, dating from the 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. Th
Robert Atkinson (architect)
Robert Atkinson was an English architect working in the Art Deco style. Atkinson was born in Wigton in Cumberland and studied at University College Nottingham, afterwards in Paris and America, he was a talented draughtsman and worked for C. E. Mallows from 1905. In turn he illustrated many of the town planning and garden designs of Thomas Hayton Mawson, included in the latter's books The Art and Craft of Garden Making, Civic Art, to which he contributed a number of skilled perspective views. Atkinson experimented with various styles, including the American Beaux-Arts and oriental, in search of a new modern style, he is known for his cinema designs in English cities, including the 3,000 seat Regent Cinema, Brighton. Described as the "first luxury cinema on the American model", it was a recreation centre, in which one could "take tea", eat or dance. Atkinson is well known for the art deco interior of the Daily Express Building, London, in 1931–2, described as the "best surviving art deco interior in Britain".
Atkinson did a lot of work in the Art Deco style, but found that commercial considerations meant that he had to forgo his artistic aspirations. Much of his work is not remembered or not well regarded including the government rehousing scheme built in 1946 to 1950 in Gibraltar and government offices in Marsham Street, which were not built as he intended, as the design was changed after he died. Atkinson was appointed an OBE in 1951, shortly before his death; the following is a selection of Atkinson's works: All Hallows Twickenham Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital, Bucks Cannon Royal Cinema, Charing Cross Road, London City Hall, Norwich Croydon'B' power station Daily Express Building, London Eros Cinema, Shaftesbury Avenue, London Gresham Hotel, Dublin 30 Horniman Drive, Forest Hill, London Regent Cinema, Brighton Stockleigh Hall, Regent's Park Estate, Camden Borough, London Wallington Town Hall Spencer-Longhurst, Paul, ed.. Robert Atkinson 1883–1952.
London: Architectural Association. ISBN 1870890167. Robert Atkinson at archINFORM Gresham Hotel at Irish-architecture.com List of closed and/or demolished cinemas by Atkinson
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Plough
A plough or plow is a tool or farm implement used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting to loosen or turn the soil. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by working animals such as oxen and horses, but in modern times are drawn by tractors. A plough may be made of wood, iron, or steel frame with an attached blade or stick used to cut the soil and loosen it, it has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history, although despite archeological evidence for its use written references to the plough do not appear in the English language before c. 1100, after which point it is referenced frequently. The plough represents one of the major agricultural inventions in human history; the earliest ploughs were wheelless, the Romans used a wheelless plough called the aratrum, but Celtic peoples began using wheeled ploughs during the Roman era. The primary purpose of ploughing is to turn over the upper layer of the soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface, while burying weeds and the remains of previous crops and allowing them to break down.
As the plough is drawn through the soil it creates. In modern use, a ploughed field is left to dry out, is harrowed before planting. Ploughing and cultivating a soil homogenises and modifies the upper 12 to 25 centimetres of the soil to form a plough layer. In many soils, the majority of fine plant feeder roots can be found in the plough layer. Ploughs were human-powered, but the process became more efficient once animals were pressed into service; the first animal-powered ploughs were undoubtedly pulled by oxen, in many areas by horses and mules, although various other animals have been used for this purpose. In industrialised countries, the first mechanical means of pulling a plough were steam-powered, but these were superseded by internal-combustion-powered tractors. Modern competitions take place for ploughing enthusiasts like the National Ploughing Championships in Ireland. Use of the plough has decreased in some areas those threatened by soil damage and erosion, in favour of shallower ploughing and other less-invasive conservation tillage techniques.
In older English, as in other Germanic languages, the plough was traditionally known by other names, e.g. Old English sulh, Old High German medela, huohilī, Old Norse arðr, Gothic hōha, all referring to the ard; the term plough, as used today, was not common until 1700. The modern word plough comes from Old Norse plógr, therefore Germanic, but it appears late, is thought to be a loanword from one of the north Italic languages. Words with the same root appeared with related meanings: in Raetic plaumorati "wheeled heavy plough", in Latin plaustrum "farm cart", plōstrum, plōstellum "cart", plōxenum, plōximum "cart box"; the word must have referred to the wheeled heavy plough, common in Roman northwestern Europe by the a.d. 5th century. Orel tentatively attaches plough to a PIE stem *blōkó-, which gave Armenian peɫem "to dig" and Welsh bwlch "crack", though the word may not be of Indo-European origin; the diagram shows the basic parts of the modern plough: beam hitch vertical regulator coulter chisel share mouldboardOther parts not shown or labelled include the frog, landside, shin and stilts.
On modern ploughs and some older ploughs, the mouldboard is separate from the share and runner, so these parts can be replaced without replacing the mouldboard. Abrasion destroys all parts of a plough that come into contact with the soil; when agriculture was first developed, soil was turned using simple hand-held digging sticks and hoes. These were used in fertile areas, such as the banks of the Nile where the annual flood rejuvenates the soil, to create drills to plant seeds in. Digging sticks and mattocks were not invented in any one place, hoe-cultivation must have been common everywhere agriculture was practiced. Hoe-farming is the traditional tillage method in tropical or sub-tropical regions, which are characterised by stony soils, steep slope gradients, predominant root crops, coarse grains grown at wide distances apart. While hoe-agriculture is best suited to these regions, it is used in some fashion everywhere. Instead of hoeing, some cultures use pigs to grub the earth; some ancient hoes, like the Egyptian mr, were pointed and strong enough to clear rocky soil and make seed drills, why they are called hand-ards.
However, the domestication of oxen in Mesopotamia and the Indus valley civilization as early as the 6th millennium BC, provided mankind with the draft power necessary to develop the larger, animal-drawn true ard. The earliest evidence of a ploughed field in the world was found at the Indus Valley Civilization site of Kalibangan. Archeological finds in Prague, Czech Republic, push oldest known ploughed field further, to 3500 - 3800 B. C. Institute of Archeology of CAS report A terracotta model of the early ards was found at Banawali, giving historians insight into the form of the tool; the ard remains easy to replace if it were to become easy to find materials to recreate. The earliest was the bow ard, which consists of a draft-pole pierced by a thinner vertical pointed stick called the head, with one end being the stilt and the other a share (cutting bl
Municipal Borough of Beddington and Wallington
Beddington and Wallington was, from 1915 to 1965, a local government district in north east Surrey, England. It formed part of the London suburbs, lying within the Metropolitan Police District and the London Passenger Transport Area. In 1965 it was abolished on the creation of Greater London; the urban district was created on 1 April 1915, consisted of the civil parishes of Beddington and Wallington. The parishes had formed part of Croydon Rural District, but the rural district was broken up by an order made by Surrey County Council on 13 September 1913 and confirmed by the Local Government Board on 18 November 1914; the neighbouring County Borough of Croydon made an attempt to annex Beddington, but its private bill was defeated in parliament. The urban district council was based at 37 Manor Road, the former offices of Wallington Parish Council. In 1929 they purchased a house on Wallington, as the site of a new town hall; the architect chosen was Robert Atkinson, the building was formally opened on 21 September 1934.
In March 1936 the urban district council petitioned the privy council for the grant of a charter of incorporation to become a municipal borough. The petition was successful, the royal charter was presented to the charter mayor, Sir Richard Meller MP by Lord Ashcombe, the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey at a ceremony in Beddington Park attended by 10,000 people on 15 September 1937; the council had a membership of twenty-eight, comprising seven aldermen. The councillors had a three-year term, with seven retiring annually. Aldermen had a six-year term, with half being chosen by the council every three years; the council elected one its members to the office of mayor annually. Elections were suspended from 1939 to 1944 due to the Second World War. From its first election in 1937 the borough council was under independent control; the Conservative Party, dominant in parliamentary politics in the area, did not contest elections in the borough, so that the nominal "independents" were elected by Conservative supporters.
The first council election took place on 1 November 1937, resulted in councillors being elected under the "Independent", "Ratepayers' Association" or "Residents' Association" labels. The Labour Party failed to have any councillors elected; the three groups on the council subsequently formed a single Independent bloc, held all seats on the council until 1952. In that year there was a nationwide swing to Labour, the party had two councillors elected, against twenty-six independent councillors and aldermen; until 1960 there was a small Labour group on the council, never having more than three members. In that year the Independents regained all seats on the council. In the following years both Labour and a resurgent Liberal Party were able to gain a foothold on the council. After the final elections in 1963 the strength of the parties was: Independent 20, Labour 5, Liberal 3; the borough council was granted arms by the College of Arms on 3 July 1937. Across the centre of the shield was a "fess embattled", representing the fortified walls of the reputed Roman town of Noviomagus at Woodcote.
The Tudor roses stood for Henry VIII and Elizabeth I who visited the seat of the Carew family of Beddington. The small shield or "inescutcheon" in the centre of the arms bore an aeroplane flying over a rising sun; this recorded the presence of Croydon Airport in south Beddington. The blue and gold border denoted that the district formed part of Surrey, was derived from the arms of the de Warenne family, sometime Earls of Surrey; the crest above the shield was an armoured arm in the act of throwing down a gauntlet. This recalled that the manor of Wallington was anciently held by the Dymock family, who were Hereditary Champions of England; the borough was abolished in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963, with its area becoming part of the London Borough of Sutton in Greater London. "Beddington and Wallington MB/UD". Vision of Britain. University of Portsmouth. Retrieved 2009-04-16
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
Charing Cross
Charing Cross is a junction in London, where six routes meet. Clockwise from north these are: the east side of Trafalgar Square leading to St Martin's Place and Charing Cross Road, it makes an unbroken public space with Trafalgar Square in central London. A bronze equestrian statue of Charles I by French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur has stood there since 1675; the junction takes its name from the medieval Eleanor cross that stood on the site from the 1290s until its destruction on the orders of Parliament in 1647. It gives its name in turn to the immediate locality, to landmarks including Charing Cross railway station, on the forecourt of which stands the ornate Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross of 1864–1865; this was once neighbourhood of Charing. Until 1931, "Charing Cross" referred to the part of Whitehall between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square. Drummonds Bank, on the corner with The Mall, retains the address 49 Charing Cross. Since the early 19th century, Charing Cross has been the notional "centre of London" and the point from which distances from London are calculated.
"Erect a rich and stately carved cross, Whereon her statue shall with glory shine. George Peele The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First The name of the area, Charing, is derived from the Old English word "cierring", referring to a bend in the River Thames; the addition of the name "Cross" to the hamlet's name originates from the Eleanor cross erected in 1291–94 by King Edward I as a memorial to his wife, Eleanor of Castile, placed between the former hamlet of Charing and the entrance to the Royal Mews of the Palace of Whitehall. Folk etymology suggests the name derives from chère reine – "dear queen" in French – but the original name pre-dates Eleanor's death by at least a hundred years; this wooden sculpted cross was the work of Alexander of Abingdon. It was destroyed in 1647 on the orders of the purely Parliamentarian phase of the Long Parliament or Oliver Cromwell himself in the Civil War. A 70 ft -high stone sculpture in front of Charing Cross railway station is a copy of the original cross.
Erected in 1865, it is situated a few hundred yards to the north-east of the original cross, on the Strand. It was designed by the architect E. M. Barry and carved by Thomas Earp of Lambeth out of Portland stone, Mansfield stone and Aberdeen granite, it is not a faithful replica. A variation on the name appears to be "Charyngcrouche", near St Martin in the Fields, in 1396. Since 1675 the site of the cross has been occupied by a statue of King Charles; the site is recognised by modern convention as the centre of London for the purpose of indicating distances by road in favour of other measurement points. Charing Cross is marked on modern maps as a road junction, was a postal address denoting the stretch of road between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square. Since 1 January 1931 this section of road has been designated part of the Whitehall thoroughfare; the cross has given its name to a railway station, a tube station, police station, hospital, a hotel, a theatre, a music hall. Charing Cross Road the main route from the north was named after the railway station, a major destination for traffic, rather than for the original cross.
At some time between 1232 and 1236, the Chapel and Hospital of St Mary Rounceval was founded at Charing. It occupied land at the corner of the modern Whitehall and into the centre of Northumberland Avenue, running down to a wharf by the river, it was an Augustinian house, tied to a mother house at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees. The house and lands were seized for the king in 1379, under a statute "for the forfeiture of the lands of schismatic aliens". Protracted legal action returned some rights to the prior, but in 1414, Henry V suppressed the'alien' houses; the priory fell into a long decline due to lack of money and arguments regarding the collection of tithes with the parish church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. In 1541, religious artefacts were removed to St Margaret's, the chapel was adapted as a private house and its almshouse were sequestered to the Royal Palace. In 1608–09, the Earl of Northampton built Northumberland House on the eastern portion of the property. In June 1874, the whole of the duke's property at Charing Cross, was purchased by the Metropolitan Board of Works for the formation of Northumberland Avenue.
The frontage of the Rounceval property caused the narrowing at the end of the Whitehall entry to Charing Cross, formed the section of Whitehall known as Charing Cross, until road widening in the 1930s caused the rebuilding of the south side of the street, creating the current wide thoroughfare. In 1554, Charing Cross was the site of the final battle of Wyatt's Rebellion; this was an attempt by Thomas Wyatt and others to overthrow Queen Mary I of England, soon after her accession to the throne and replace her with Lady Jane Grey. Wyatt's army had come from Kent, with London Bridge barred to them, had crossed the river by what was the next bridge upstream, at Hampton Court, their circuitous route brought them down St Martin's Lane to Whitehall. The palace was defended by 1000 men under Sir John Gage at Charing Cross.
.jpg)
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1716542.jpg)
Wallington
