Mansion House, London
Mansion House is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. It is used for some of the City of Londons official functions, including two annual White Tie dinners, hosted by the Lord Mayor. At the Easter banquet, the speaker is the Foreign Secretary. In early June, it is the turn of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give his Mansion House Speech about the state of the British economy and it is a Grade I listed building. Mansion House was built between 1739 and 1752, in the fashionable Palladian style by the surveyor and architect George Dance the Elder. The site, at the east end of Poultry, had previously occupied by the Stocks Market. The construction was prompted by a wish to put an end to the inconvenient practice of lodging the Lord Mayor in one of the City Halls, Dance won a competition over designs solicited from James Gibbs and Giacomo Leoni, and uninvited submissions by Batty Langley and Isaac Ware. In 1795 George Dance the Younger re-roofed the central courtyard, and had the Noahs Ark demolished, in the same year, the original grand staircase was removed to make way for a further two rooms.
In 1835 the entrance steps were reduced to one flight, Mansion House was paid for in an unusual way. William Edward Hartpole Lecky in his History of England during the Eighteenth Century describes it as a very scandalous form of persecution, there are over one hundred livery companies, the senior members of which form a special electorate known as Common Hall. In order to serve as a Sheriff of the City of London and this was exactly what English Dissenters could not, in conscience, do. The electors appointed these Dissenters with a knowledge that they would not serve. One of those whom they selected was blind, another was bedridden, some tried to appeal, but the process was immensely risky and costly, with the City holding all the cards. Thomas Abney rose to be Lord Mayor in this fashion, a person who had not taken the Sacrament according to the Anglican rite could not stand as a candidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters were ineligible, they could not run if asked, Samuel Sharpe, banker by day and amateur Egyptologist by night, wrote about it in the 1830s, striking a blow against the Test and Corporate Acts.
The article was republished in 1872, Sharpe argues that Mansion House remains as a monument of the unjust manner in which Dissenters were treated in the last century. Mansion House has three storeys over a rusticated basement. The building originally had two prominent and unusual attic structures at either end, which were removed in 1794 and 1843, the building is on a confined site
Wanstead High School
Wanstead High School, formerly Wanstead County High School, is a co-educational, non-denominational, comprehensive secondary school in Wanstead, United Kingdom. It specialises in the arts and has 1490 pupils aged 11 to 19. Its local education authority is Redbridge and it is situated just west of the A12 junction with the North Circular Road. Its motto is Abeunt Studia in Mores which translates literally as studies become habits or practices zealously pursued pass into habits and it can be taken to mean Studies build ones character. Its symbol is the heron, a bird associated with the area. Its alumni are known as Old Heronians and its uniform colour is burgundy, having previously been black, and the school uniform must be worn by all pupils except the sixth form, Sixth form students are required to dress formally. Wanstead Country High school was opened in 1924 as a mixed Grammar school and it was one of the first co-educational secondary schools in England. The site had previously been a rectory, during the Second World War the school was evacuated to Newent.
On 15 February 1957, over 150 pupils suffered food poisoning, until 1965 it was administered by the Essex Education Committee. In the 1960s, the school had around 800 boys and girls, the school buildings were extended in 1964 and again in 1974 when the science and humanities block was built. Performing Arts facilities at the school include a theatre and dance studios, in addition to allowing pupils to study these areas specifically, performance elements are being introduced into other areas of the wider curriculum. Mr Ian Sweet and Mr Mark Whitehead are the current heads of performing arts at the school, the Inclusion Department deals with children who have broken rules to the extent that they must be kept separate from classmates and the rest of the school. Incidents will include bullying, disrespect to a member of staff, another part of the school is Learning Support, a department at WHS that helps children with learning difficulties learn and cope with school. The department has a specialist dyslexia teacher to support students at WHS.
Geraldine Bedell and writer Nick Berry Television actor. Bilal Zafar, award-winning comedian Rt Rev Robert Atwell, Anglican Bishop of Exeter Dr. Gerry Carr
Metropolitan Police Service
As of March 2016, the Met employed 48,661 full-time personnel. This included 32,125 sworn police officers,9,521 police staff and this number excludes the 3,271 Special Constables, who work part-time and who have the same powers and uniform as their regular colleagues. This makes the Metropolitan Police the largest police force in the United Kingdom by a significant margin, the post of Commissioner was first held jointly by Sir Charles Rowan and Sir Richard Mayne. The post is occupied by the now-outgoing Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe. The Commissioners deputy, the Deputy Commissioner, is currently Craig Mackey, a number of informal names and abbreviations exists for the Metropolitan Police Service, the most common being the Met. In colloquial London, it is referred to as the Old Bill. The Met is referred to by the metonym Scotland Yard after the location of its headquarters in a road called Great Scotland Yard in Whitehall. The Mets current headquarters is New Scotland Yard, in Victoria, the Metropolitan Police Service, whose officers became affectionately known as bobbies, was founded in 1829 by Robert Peel under the Metropolitan Police Act 1829.
In 1839, the Marine Police Force, which had formed in 1798, was amalgamated into the Metropolitan Police. In 1837, it incorporated with the Bow Street Horse Patrol that had organised in 1805. Since January 2012, the Mayor of London is responsible for the governance of the Metropolitan Police through the Mayors Office for Policing, the mayor is able to appoint someone to act on his behalf, the current office-holder is Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Sophie Linden. The work of MOPAC is scrutinised by the Police and Crime Committee of the London Assembly, the area policed by the Metropolitan Police Service is known as the Metropolitan Police District. In terms of policing, the Met is divided into a number of Borough Operational Command Units. The City of London is a police area and is the responsibility of the separate City of London Police. The British Transport Police are responsible for policing of the network in the United Kingdom. Within London, they are responsible for the policing of the London Underground, The Emirates Air Line.
There is a park police force, the Kew Constabulary, responsible for the Royal Botanic Gardens. Officers have limited powers in Scotland and Northern Ireland, within the MPD, the Met will take over the investigation of any serious crime from the British Transport Police and Ministry of Defence Police, if it is deemed appropriate
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 probably in the mid 5th century, Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally 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, Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Northumbrian and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon.
Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, adjectives and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and 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 a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and 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, 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 Cædmons Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. 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. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, a literary standard, dating from the 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English
Wanstead Park
Wanstead Park is a grade II listed municipal park covering an area of about 140 acres, located in Wanstead, in the London Borough of Redbridge, historically within the county of Essex. It is administered as part of Epping Forest by the City of London Corporation, todays park once formed part of the deer park of the former manor house of ancient Wanstead Manor, which included much of the urbanised area now known as Wanstead. In order to understand the history of todays municipal park of Wanstead, for this purpose the modern green spaces of the Park, golf course and Wanstead Flats should be considered as one entity. Ordnance Survey maps mark the site of a Roman Villa in present day Wanstead Park, archaeological excavations carried out in 1985 indicated a Roman presence here from the 1st to the 5th century AD, but did not locate any specific site of a Roman villa. A mosaic discovered in 1715 by gardener Adam Holt measured,20 feet, and from east to west about 16, that it was composed of small square brick tesserae of different sizes and colours, as black, red, &c.
A second letter mentions the foundation of a Roman building, the exact locations of the Roman remains described by Smart Lethieullier were subsequently lost although Jack Elsden Tuffs undertook further archaeological work during the 1960s. What appeared to be at least two rooms were visible which are considered likely to date from the Roman period and it is said that in Saxon times Abbot Aelfric granted the manor of Wanstead to the monks of Westminster Abbey yet this cannot be substantiated from any documentary evidence. However, the location was clearly a prized site on the east side of London, in 1086 the Domesday Book states that Wanstead Manor was held from the Bishop of London by one Ralph son of Brian. Wanstead was densely wooded, being situated within the Forest of Essex and it was part of the forest bailiwick of Becontree during the Middle Ages and of the Leyton Walk. Henry had developed a taste for privacy towards the end of his reign and it was valued by him especially for its park, bringing the King much needed seclusion.
The young future Henry VIII lived for a while at Wanstead, both kings hunted within the manor. It was during Henry VIIIs reign that Wanstead Park was inclosed, shortly before 1512, at about this time neighbouring Aldersbrook became a separate manor. Wanstead remained a Royal manor for a number of years, its “keeper” being an office awarded to favoured royal courtiers, one after another. Hugh Denys Groom of the Stool to Henry VII was its keeper until 1511, on Denyss death in 1511 the keepership passed to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Sir John Heron, another former financial officer within the Privy Chamber, was keeper of the park until his death in 1521, Heron held lands in Aldersbrook and it is said that he brought heron birds to the area, as an amusing mark of his presence. One of the lakes was historically known as Herony Lake, lord Richard Rich, High Chancellor of England, was keeper of the park in 1543, and in 1549 Edward VI granted him the lordship of the manor of Wanstead, complete with the park.
In 1577 Richs son Robert sold it to Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, thereafter a succession of owners kept the manor of Wanstead combined with Stonehall. In 1619 Sir Henry Mildmay was in possession, but forfeited the manor to the Crown at the end of the Civil War, in which he had fought for Parliament
Epping Forest
Epping Forest is an area of ancient woodland near Epping, straddling the border between Greater London and Essex. It is a royal forest, and is managed by the City of London Corporation. It covers 2,476 hectares and contains areas of woodland, heath, rivers and ponds, and most of it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area of Conservation. The forest lies on a ridge between the valleys of the rivers Lea and Roding, its elevation and thin gravelly soil historically made it unsuitable for agriculture and it gives its name to the Epping Forest local government district which covers part of it. The name Epping Forest was first recorded in the 17th century, the area which became known as Waltham, and Epping Forest has been continuously forested since Neolithic times. The former lime/linden Tilia-dominated woodland was permanently altered during Saxon times by cutting of trees. Todays beech-birch and oak-hornbeam-dominated forest was the result of partial forest clearance in Saxon times, the forest is thought to have been given legal status as a royal forest by Henry II in the 12th century.
This status allowed commoners to use the forest to gather wood and foodstuffs, and to graze livestock and turn out pigs for mast, but only the king was allowed to hunt there. Forest in the sense of royal forest meant an area of land reserved for royal hunting, where the forest laws applied. In Tudor times, Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I may have hunted in the forest, in 1543, Henry commissioned a building, known as Great Standing, from which to view the chase at Chingford. The building was renovated in 1589 for Queen Elizabeth I and can still be today in Chingford. The building is now known as Queen Elizabeths Hunting Lodge, and is open to the public, there is another hunt standing, which now forms the core of the Forest HQ at the Warren, Loughton. There were disputes between landowners and commoners, one group of commoners was led by Thomas Willingale who on behalf of the villagers of Loughton continued to lop the trees after the Lord of the Manor had enclosed 550 hectares of forest in Loughton.
This led to an injunction against further enclosures, the Epping Forest Act 1878 was passed, saving the forest from enclosure, and halting the shrinkage of the forest that this had caused. Epping Forest ceased to be a royal forest and was placed in the care of the City of London Corporation who act as Conservators, in addition, the Crowns right to venison was terminated, and pollarding was no longer allowed, although grazing rights continued. This act laid down a stipulation that the Conservators shall at all times keep Epping Forest unenclosed and unbuilt on as a space for the recreation. In compensation for the loss of lopping rights, Lopping Hall in Loughton was built as a community building, the City of London Corporation still manages Epping Forest in strict conformity with the Epping Forest Act. This care is funded from Citys Cash, the funds of the Corporation rather than any money for its upkeep coming from local rates or taxes
London Fire Brigade
The London Fire Brigade is the statutory fire and rescue service for London. It was formed by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act of 1865 under the leadership of superintendent Eyre Massey Shaw. Dany Cotton is the Commissioner for Fire and Emergency Planning, which includes the position of Chief Fire Officer, statutory responsibility for the running of the brigade lies with the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2013/14 the LFB handled 171,067999 emergency calls, of the calls it actually mobilised to,20,934 were fires, including 10,992 that were of a serious nature, making it one of the busiest fire brigades in the world. In the same 12-month period, it received 3,172 hoax calls, the highest number of any UK fire service, in 2015/16 the LFB received 171,488 emergency calls. These consisted of,20,773 fires,30,066 special service callouts and it conducts emergency planning and performs fire safety inspections and education. He introduced a uniform that, for the first time, included personal protection from the hazards of firefighting.
With 80 firefighters and 13 fire stations, the unit was still a private enterprise, funded by the insurance companies, in 1904 it was renamed as the London Fire Brigade. The LFB moved into a new headquarters built by Higgs and Hill on the Albert Embankment in Lambeth in 1937, during the Second World War the countrys brigades were amalgamated into a single National Fire Service. The separate London Fire Brigade for the County of London was re-established in 1948, in 1986 the Greater London Council was disbanded and a new statutory authority, the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, was formed to take responsibility for the LFB. The LFCDA was replaced in 2000 by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, at the same time, the Greater London Authority was established to administer the LFEPA and coordinate emergency planning for London. Consisting of the Mayor of London and other elected members, the GLA takes responsibility for the Metropolitan Police Authority, Transport for London, in 2007 the LFB vacated its Lambeth headquarters and moved to a site in Union Street, Southwark.
In the same year, the Department for Communities and Local Government announced that LFB Commissioner Ken Knight had been appointed as the first Chief Fire, Knight was succeeded as Commissioner at that time by Ron Dobson, who served for almost ten years. Dany Cotton took over in 2017, becoming the brigades first female commissioner, dany Cotton is the current commissioner, having taken up the role on 1 January 2017. She holds the Queens Fire Service Medal, frank Jackson, CBE1938 to 1941, Cdr. Sir Aylmer Firebrace, CBE1933 to 1938, Maj. Cyril Morris 1918 to 1933, Arthur Reginald Dyer 1909 to 1918, sir Sampson Sladen 1903 to 1909, RAdm. James de Courcy Hamilton 1896 to 1903, lionel de Latour Wells 1891 to 1896, James Sexton Simmonds 1861 to 1891, Capt. Both divisions were divided into three districts, each under a Superintendent with his headquarters at a superintendent station, the superintendent stations themselves were commanded by District Officers, with the other stations under Station Officers
Greater London
London, or Greater London, is a region of England which forms the administrative boundaries of London. It is organised into 33 local government districts, the 32 London boroughs, the Greater London Authority, based in Southwark, is responsible for strategic local government across the region and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The county of Greater London was created on 1 April 1965 through the London Government Act 1963, Greater London was first established as a sui generis council area under the Greater London Council between 1963 and 1986. The area was re-established as a region in 1994, and the Greater London Authority formed in 2000, the region covers 1,572 km2 and had a population of 8,174,000 at the 2011 census. In 2012, it had the highest GVA per capita in the United Kingdom at £37,232, the Greater London Built-up Area—used in some national statistics—is a measure of the continuous urban area of London, and therefore includes areas outside of the administrative region.
The term Greater London has been and still is used to different areas in governance, history. In terms of ceremonial counties, London is divided into the small City of London, outside the limited boundaries of the City, a variety of arrangements has governed the wider area since 1855, culminating in the creation of the Greater London administrative area in 1965. The Greater London Arterial Road Programme was devised between 1913 and 1916, one of the larger early forms was the Greater London Planning Region, devised in 1927, which occupied 1,856 square miles and included 9 million people. The LCC pressed for an alteration in its boundaries soon after the end of the First World War, noting that within the Metropolitan, a Royal Commission on London Government was set up to consider the issue. The LCC proposed a vast new area for Greater London, with a boundary somewhere between the Metropolitan Police District and the home counties, protests were made at the possibility of including Windsor and Eton in the authority.
The Commission made its report in 1923, rejecting the LCCs scheme, two minority reports favoured change beyond the amalgamation of smaller urban districts, including both smaller borough councils and a central authority for strategic functions. The London Traffic Act 1924 was a result of the Commission, Greater London originally had a two-tier system of local government, with the Greater London Council sharing power with the City of London Corporation and the 32 London Borough councils. The GLC was abolished in 1986 by the Local Government Act 1985 and its functions were devolved to the City Corporation and the London Boroughs, with some functions transferred to central government and joint boards. Greater London was used to form the London region of England in 1994, a referendum held in 1998 established a public will to recreate an upper tier of government to cover the region. The Greater London Authority, London Assembly and the directly elected Mayor of London were created in 2000 by the Greater London Authority Act 1999, in 2000, the outer boundary of the Metropolitan Police District was re-aligned to the Greater London boundary.
The 2000 and 2004 mayoral elections were won by Ken Livingstone, the 2008 and 2012 elections were won by Boris Johnson. The 2016 election was won by Sadiq Khan, Greater London continues to include the most closely associated parts of the Greater London Urban Area and their historic buffers. Thus it includes, in five boroughs, significant parts of the Metropolitan Green Belt which protects designated greenfield land in a way to the citys parks
Moons of Saturn
The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets less than 1 kilometer across to the enormous Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury. Saturn has 62 moons with confirmed orbits,53 of which have names and only 13 of which have larger than 50 kilometers. Seven Saturnian moons are large enough to be ellipsoidal in shape, twenty-four of Saturns moons are regular satellites, they have prograde orbits not greatly inclined to Saturns equatorial plane. They include the seven satellites, four small moons that exist in a trojan orbit with larger moons. Two other known regular satellites orbit within gaps in Saturns rings, the relatively large Hyperion is locked in a resonance with Titan. The remaining regular moons orbit near the edge of the A Ring, within G Ring. The regular satellites are traditionally named after Titans and Titanesses or other associated with the mythological Saturn. The remaining 38, all small except one, are irregular satellites, whose orbits are farther from Saturn, have high inclinations.
These moons are probably captured minor planets, or debris from the breakup of such bodies after they were captured, the irregular satellites have been classified by their orbital characteristics into the Inuit and Gallic groups, and their names are chosen from the corresponding mythologies. The largest of the moons is Phoebe, the ninth moon of Saturn. The rings of Saturn are made up of objects ranging in size from microscopic to moonlets hundreds of meters across, before the advent of telescopic photography, eight moons of Saturn were discovered by direct observation using optical telescopes. Saturns largest moon, was discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens using a 57-millimeter objective lens on a telescope of his own design. Tethys, Dione and Iapetus were discovered between 1671 and 1684 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini and Enceladus were discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. Hyperion was discovered in 1848 by W. C, the use of long-exposure photographic plates made possible the discovery of additional moons.
The first to be discovered in this manner, was found in 1899 by W. H. Pickering, in 1966 the tenth satellite of Saturn was discovered by Audouin Dollfus, when the rings were observed edge-on near an equinox. A few years it was realized that all observations of 1966 could only be explained if another satellite had been present and this object is now known as Epimetheus, the eleventh moon of Saturn. It shares the orbit with Janus—the only known example of co-orbitals in the Solar System. In 1980 three additional Saturnian moons were discovered from the ground and confirmed by the Voyager probes and they are trojan moons Dione, Tethys
Aberration of light
The aberration of light is an astronomical phenomenon which produces an apparent motion of celestial objects about their true positions, dependent on the velocity of the observer. Aberration causes objects to appear to be angled or tilted towards the direction of motion of the observer compared to when the observer is stationary. The change in angle is very small — of the order of v/c where c is the speed of light. The term aberration has historically used to refer to a number of related phenomena concerning the propagation of light in moving bodies. Aberration should not be confused with parallax, the latter is a change in the apparent position of a relatively nearby object, as measured by a moving observer, relative to more distant objects that define a reference frame. The amount of parallax depends on the distance of the object from the observer, Aberration is related to light-time correction and relativistic beaming, although it is often considered separately from these effects. Aberration is historically significant because of its role in the development of the theories of light, electromagnetism and, ultimately and it was first observed in the late 1600s by astronomers searching for stellar parallax in order to confirm the heliocentric model of the Solar System.
However, it was not understood at the time to be a different phenomenon, Aberration may be explained as the difference in angle of a beam of light in different inertial frames of reference. A common analogy is to consider the apparent direction of falling rain, the faster the observer moves, the more tilt is needed. The net effect is that light rays striking the moving observer from the sides in a frame will come angled from ahead in the moving observers frame. This effect is called the searchlight or headlight effect. In the case of annual aberration of starlight, the direction of incoming starlight as seen in the Earths moving frame is tilted relative to the angle observed in the Suns frame. While classical reasoning gives intuition for aberration, it leads to a number of physical paradoxes observable even at the classical level, the theory of special relativity is required to correctly account for aberration. The relativistic explanation is similar to the classical one however. In the Suns frame, consider a beam of light with velocity equal to the speed of c, with x and y velocity components u x and u y.
This relativistic derivation keeps the speed of light u x 2 + u y 2 = c constant in all frames of reference and it can be considered equivalent to them but in a different inertial frame of reference. Consider the case of an observer and a source moving relative to each other at constant velocity. At the moment of emission, the beam in the observers rest frame is tilted compared to the one in the sources rest frame, as understood through relativistic beaming
Stellar parallax
Stellar parallax is parallax on an interstellar scale, the apparent shift of position of any nearby star against the background of distant objects. Stellar parallax is so difficult to detect that its existence was the subject of debate in astronomy for thousands of years. It was first observed by Giuseppe Calandrelli who reported parallax in α-Lyrae in his work Osservazione e riflessione sulla parallasse annua dall’alfa della Lira, in 1838 Friedrich Bessel made the first successful parallax measurement ever, for the star 61 Cygni, using a Fraunhofer heliometer at Königsberg Observatory. Once a stars parallax is known, its distance from Earth can be computed trigonometrically, but the more distant an object is, the smaller its parallax. Even with 21st-century techniques in astrometry, the limits of accurate measurement make distances farther away than about 100 parsecs too approximate to be useful when obtained by this technique. Relatively close on a scale, the applicability of stellar parallax leaves most astronomical distance measurements to be calculated by spectral red-shift or other methods.
Stellar parallax measures are given in the units of arcseconds. The distance unit parsec is defined as the length of the leg of a right triangle adjacent to the angle of one arcsecond at one vertex, because stellar parallaxes and distances all involve such skinny right triangles, a convenient trigonometric approximation can be used to convert parallaxes to distance. The distance is simply the reciprocal of the parallax, d =1 / p, for example, Proxima Centauri, whose parallax is 0.7687, is 1 /0.7687 =1.3009 parsecs distant. Stellar parallax is so small that its apparent absence was used as an argument against heliocentrism during the early modern age. James Bradley first tried to measure stellar parallaxes in 1729, the stellar movement proved too insignificant for his telescope, but he instead discovered the aberration of light, the nutation of Earth’s axis, and catalogued 3222 stars. The parsec is defined as the distance for which the annual parallax is 1 arcsecond, annual parallax is normally measured by observing the position of a star at different times of the year as Earth moves through its orbit.
Measurement of annual parallax was the first reliable way to determine the distances to the closest stars, the first successful measurements of stellar parallax were made by Friedrich Bessel in 1838 for the star 61 Cygni using a heliometer. Being very difficult to measure, only about 60 stellar parallaxes had been obtained by the end of the 19th century, astrographs using astronomical photographic plates sped the process in the early 20th century. Automated plate-measuring machines and more sophisticated technology of the 1960s allowed more efficient compilation of star catalogues. In the 1980s, charge-coupled devices replaced photographic plates and reduced optical uncertainties to one milliarcsecond, stellar parallax remains the standard for calibrating other measurement methods. The angles involved in these calculations are very small and thus difficult to measure, the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, has a parallax of 0.7687 ±0.0003 arcsec. This angle is approximately that subtended by an object 2 centimeters in diameter located 5.3 kilometers away
Wanstead House
Wanstead Park is a grade II listed municipal park covering an area of about 140 acres, located in Wanstead, in the London Borough of Redbridge, historically within the county of Essex. It is administered as part of Epping Forest by the City of London Corporation, todays park once formed part of the deer park of the former manor house of ancient Wanstead Manor, which included much of the urbanised area now known as Wanstead. In order to understand the history of todays municipal park of Wanstead, for this purpose the modern green spaces of the Park, golf course and Wanstead Flats should be considered as one entity. Ordnance Survey maps mark the site of a Roman Villa in present day Wanstead Park, archaeological excavations carried out in 1985 indicated a Roman presence here from the 1st to the 5th century AD, but did not locate any specific site of a Roman villa. A mosaic discovered in 1715 by gardener Adam Holt measured,20 feet, and from east to west about 16, that it was composed of small square brick tesserae of different sizes and colours, as black, red, &c.
A second letter mentions the foundation of a Roman building, the exact locations of the Roman remains described by Smart Lethieullier were subsequently lost although Jack Elsden Tuffs undertook further archaeological work during the 1960s. What appeared to be at least two rooms were visible which are considered likely to date from the Roman period and it is said that in Saxon times Abbot Aelfric granted the manor of Wanstead to the monks of Westminster Abbey yet this cannot be substantiated from any documentary evidence. However, the location was clearly a prized site on the east side of London, in 1086 the Domesday Book states that Wanstead Manor was held from the Bishop of London by one Ralph son of Brian. Wanstead was densely wooded, being situated within the Forest of Essex and it was part of the forest bailiwick of Becontree during the Middle Ages and of the Leyton Walk. Henry had developed a taste for privacy towards the end of his reign and it was valued by him especially for its park, bringing the King much needed seclusion.
The young future Henry VIII lived for a while at Wanstead, both kings hunted within the manor. It was during Henry VIIIs reign that Wanstead Park was inclosed, shortly before 1512, at about this time neighbouring Aldersbrook became a separate manor. Wanstead remained a Royal manor for a number of years, its “keeper” being an office awarded to favoured royal courtiers, one after another. Hugh Denys Groom of the Stool to Henry VII was its keeper until 1511, on Denyss death in 1511 the keepership passed to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Sir John Heron, another former financial officer within the Privy Chamber, was keeper of the park until his death in 1521, Heron held lands in Aldersbrook and it is said that he brought heron birds to the area, as an amusing mark of his presence. One of the lakes was historically known as Herony Lake, lord Richard Rich, High Chancellor of England, was keeper of the park in 1543, and in 1549 Edward VI granted him the lordship of the manor of Wanstead, complete with the park.
In 1577 Richs son Robert sold it to Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, thereafter a succession of owners kept the manor of Wanstead combined with Stonehall. In 1619 Sir Henry Mildmay was in possession, but forfeited the manor to the Crown at the end of the Civil War, in which he had fought for Parliament
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Media related to Wanstead at Wikimedia Commons
