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
York Art Gallery
York Art Gallery in York, England is a public art gallery with a collection of paintings from 14th-century to contemporary, watercolours and ceramics. It closed for major redevelopment in 2013, reopening in summer of 2015, it is managed by York Museums Trust. The gallery was created to provide a permanent building as the core space for the second Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1879, the first in 1866 occupied a temporary chalet in the grounds of Bootham Asylum. Following the 1879 exhibition the renamed Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Institution aimed to create a permanent art exhibition, it was given a major boost by the bequest of York collector John Burton of more than one hundred 19th-century paintings, supplemented by gifts and in the early years two major temporary loan collections. In 1888 the north galleries were leased to York School of Art, which moved there in 1890 from Minster Yard. York City Council purchased the buildings and collection in 1892. Temporary summer exhibitions ceased in 1903 but a major exhibition of the work of York artist William Etty was held in 1911 when his statue by local sculptor George Walker Milburn was erected outside.
The period up to the commencement of the Second World War was one of modest growth, the major event being purchase of the Dr W A Evelyn collection of prints and watercolours of York in 1931. The building was requisitioned for military purposes at the outbreak of the Second World War and closed, suffering bomb damage in an air raid on 29 April 1942; the gallery reopened in 1948 with a small temporary exhibition before a major restoration in 1951–52 after which began a major revival of fortune under the direction of Hans Hess. He made important acquisitions with the assistance of the York Art Collection Society founded in 1948 and the National Art Collections Fund, in 1955 the donation of FD Lycett Green's collection of more than one hundred continental Old Master paintings; as a result of the systematic build up under Hess and his successors, the gallery has a British collection of late-19th-century and early-20th-century works with some French works representative of influential styles. In 1963 the gallery was given Eric Milner-White's collection of studio pottery.
It was supplemented by other major donations and loans in the 1990s and 2000s, most notably those of WA Ismay and Henry Rothschild. The site for the 1879 exhibition was an area in the grounds of the medieval St Mary's Abbey known as Bearparks Garden, it is fronted by what became Exhibition Square, cleared by the demolition of a house and the former Bird in Hand Hotel. Designed by York architect Edward Taylor the art gallery consisted of an entrance hall, central hall and south galleries and on the upper floor a Grand Picture Saloon, its intended grand classical façade decorated with 18 stone figures, a carved tympanum and 14 mosaics was not done for financial reasons and it was decorated instead with two tiled panels representing'Leonardo expiring in the arms of Francis I', and'Michaelangelo showing his Moses', together with four ceramic roundels depicting York artists William Etty, John Carr, John Camidge, John Flaxman. To the rear of the building was a large temporary exhibition hall with machinery annex.
In 1888 the north wing was leased to York Art School which added a further storey in 1905, after that wing was vacated by the school it housed the city archives from 1977 to 2012. Major works took place in 1951–2 to repair bomb damage and rebuild the west end, the main gallery was refurbished in 2005; the building is Grade II listed. The 2013–15 restoration cost £8 million and was undertaken to increase display space by some 60%, including reincorporation of the north wing, an upper floor extension to the south wing, reorganisation of the internal space for exhibition and storage; the development enables the area to the rear of the building to be restored to public use as part of the Museum Gardens. The reopened gallery houses a new centre for British Studio Ceramics on the upper floor; the gallery reopened on 1 August 2015. Admission had been free; the gallery has more than 1,000 paintings. Western European paintings include 14th-century Italian altarpieces, 17th-century Dutch morality works, 19th-century works by French artists who were predecessors and contemporaries of the Impressionists.
British paintings date from the 16th-century onward, with 17th and 18th-century portraits and painting of Giambattista Pittoni, Victorian morality works and early 20th-century work by the Camden Town Group associated with Walter Sickert being strong. Amongst York born artists the gallery has the largest collection of works by William Etty and good paintings by Albert Moore. Henry Keyworth Raine, the great nephew of William Powell Frith, gifted various works, including a portrait of George Kirby, the First Curator of York Art gallery; the gallery holds a collection of British studio ceramics with more than 5,000 pieces. They include works by Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, William Staite Murray, Michael Cardew, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Jim Malone and Michael Casson; the collection of more than 17,000 drawings and prints is strong in views of York with more than 4,000 examples watercolours and drawings, some by local artists such as Henry Cave, John Harper, John Browne and Patrick Hall. Watercolour artists represented include Thomas Rowlandson, John Varley, Thomas Girtin, J. M. W. Turner, 20th century painters Edward Burra, J
Yorkshire Museum
The Yorkshire Museum is a museum in York, England. It was opened in 1830, has five permanent collections, covering biology, archaeology and astronomy; the museum was founded by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society to accommodate their geological and archaeological collections, was housed in Ousegate, until the site became too small. In 1828, the society received by royal grant, 10 acres of land belonging to St Mary's Abbey for the purposes of building a new museum; the main building of the museum is called the Yorkshire Museum. It was opened in February 1830, which makes it one of the longest established museums in England. A condition of the royal grant was that the land surrounding the museum building should be a botanic gardens and one was created in the 1830s; the botanic gardens are now known as the Museum Gardens. On 26 September 1831, the inaugural meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was held at the Yorkshire Museum; the Tempest Anderson Hall was built in 1912, as an annex to the museum, is an early example of a reinforced concrete building.
It is used as a conference lecture theatre. The Museum was narrowly missed by a bomb during the Baedeker Blitz on 29 April 1942, though the explosion caused damage to the roof and the windows; the Curator, Reginald Wagstaffe, lived in Manor Cottage and was responsible for the subsequent clean up effort of the debris, during which'seven large bath-tubs' of broken glass and geological specimens were thrown away. In 1960, the museum and gardens were given in trust to York City Council, the successor of which, the City of York Council, set up the York Museums Trust in 2002, to manage the York Castle Museum, York Art Gallery, the Yorkshire Museum and the Museum Gardens; the museum closed in November 2009 for a major refurbishment and reopened on Yorkshire Day on 1 August 2010. The £2 million scheme was carried out by the museum's own staff, who restructured and redecorated the interior of the building; as of 2018, the museum has the following permanent exhibits: "Roman York – Meet the People of the Empire", "Medieval York: Capital of the North", "Yorkshire's Jurrasic World", "After the Ice: Yorkshire’s Prehistoric People", "William Smith: The Map That Changed The World".
The four permanent collections at the museum all have English designated collection status, which means they are "pre-eminent collections of national and international importance". The collection began in the 1820s, with the collection of animal bones and fossils from Kirkdale Cave; the biology collection contains 200,000 specimens, including both fauna and flora, with the majority of the collection made up of insects. There are two stuffed specimens of the extinct great auk, an complete skeleton of an extinct moa, a large collection of specimens from the Yorkshire region including the remains of elephants, cave bears and hyena from Kirkdale Cave dated to the Quaternary period, around 125,000 years; the geology collection contains over 112,500 specimens of rocks and fossils. Fossils make up the majority of the collection numbering over 100,000 samples, include important specimens from the Carboniferous and Tertiary periods; the astronomy collection is kept in the observatory in the museum gardens with some telescopes kept at the Castle Museum in York.
The observatory is staffed by volunteers. The archaeology collection has close to a million objects that date from around 500,000 BC to the 20th century. Most of the objects from the Roman, Anglo Scandinavian and Medieval periods are from the York and Yorkshire area. Following the 2010 refit of the museum, the first gallery displayed parts of the Roman collection, focusing on objects from Eboracum. A statue of the Roman God Mars is prominently displayed, there is an interactive display describing the lives of some of the Romans whose remains have been found in York; the final record of the famous lost Roman legion, the ninth legion, is on display as part of the Roman gallery. The stone inscription, dated to Trajan's twelfth year as emperor, between 10 December 107 and 9 December 108, commemorates the legion's rebuilding in stone of the south-eastern wall of Eboracum's legionary fortress; the BBC reports that "Experts have described it the finest example of Romano British inscription in existence".
The museum houses some collections of forged prehistoric tools by Flint Jack. The Middlesbrough meteorite. Alan the Dinosaur; the Star Carr Pendant, the oldest Mesolithic art in Britain. The Wold Newton hoard, a hoard of 1,857 coins dating from the early 4th century AD The Head of Constantine the Great, a fragment of a marble statue of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great The Statue of Mars, a 4th-century sculpture of the Roman god Mars The Heslington Hoard, a hoard of 2,800 coins dating from the mid 4th century AD The Ivory Bangle Lady, a 4th-century skeleton of a woman The Coppergate Helmet, an 8th century helmet found in York; the Ormside Bowl, a silvert-gilt bowl from Cumbria. The Bedale Hoard, a hoard of Viking silver jewellery and an Anglo-Saxon sword; the Escrick ring, an Anglo-Saxon gold and sapphire finger ring. The Gilling sword, a late Anglo-Saxon sword found in a river; the Vale of York hoard. It was valued at £1,082,000, acquired jointly by the British Museum and the York Museums Trust.
After being cleaned by the conservation department of the British Museum, it was displayed at the Yorkshire Museum from 17 September 2009, for a period of six weeks before moving to the British Museum. The hoard was re
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire is a non-metropolitan county and largest ceremonial county in England. It is located in the region of Yorkshire and the Humber but in the region of North East England; the estimated population of North Yorkshire was 602,300 in mid 2016. Created by the Local Government Act 1972, it covers an area of 8,654 square kilometres, making it the largest county in England; the majority of the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors lie within North Yorkshire's boundaries, around 40% of the county is covered by National Parks. The largest towns are Middlesbrough, York and Scarborough; the area under the control of the county council, or shire county, is divided into a number of local government districts: Craven, Harrogate, Ryedale and Selby. The Department for Communities and Local Government considered reorganising North Yorkshire County Council's administrative structure by abolishing the seven district councils and the county council to create a North Yorkshire unitary authority; the changes were planned to be implemented no than 1 April 2009.
This was rejected on 25 July 2007 so District Council structure will remain. The largest settlement in the administrative county is the second largest is Scarborough. Within the ceremonial county, the largest is the Middlesbrough built-up area. York is the most populous district in the ceremonial county. York and Redcar and Cleveland are unitary authority boroughs which form part of the ceremonial county for various functions such as the Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, but do not come under county council control. Uniquely for a district in England, Stockton-on-Tees is split between North Yorkshire and County Durham for this purpose. Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar and Cleveland boroughs form part of the North East England region; the ceremonial county area, including the unitary authorities, borders East Riding of Yorkshire to the east/south east, South Yorkshire to the south, West Yorkshire to the west/south west, Lancashire to the west, Cumbria to the north west and County Durham to the north, with the North Sea to the east.
The geology of North Yorkshire is reflected in its landscape. Within the county are the North York Moors and most of the Yorkshire Dales. Between the North York Moors in the east and the Pennine Hills in the west lie the Vales of Mowbray and York; the Tees Lowlands lie to the north of the North York Moors and the Vale of Pickering lies to the south. Its eastern border is the North sea coast; the highest point is Whernside, on the Cumbrian border, at 736 metres. The two major rivers in the county are the River Ure; the Swale and the Ure form the River Ouse which flows into the Humber Estuary. The River Tees forms part of the border between North Yorkshire and County Durham and flows from upper Teesdale through Middlesbrough and Stockton and to the coast. North Yorkshire contains a small section of green belt in the south of the county, just north of Ilkley and Otley along the North and West Yorkshire borders, it extends to the east to cover small communities such as Huby, Kirkby Overblow, Follifoot before covering the gap between the towns of Harrogate and Knaresborough, helping to keep those towns separate.
The belt meets with the Yorkshire Dales National Park at its southernmost extent, forms a border with the Nidderdale AONB. It extends into the western area of Selby district, reaching as far as Balne; the belt was first drawn up from the 1950s. The city of York has an independent surrounding belt area affording protections to several outlying settlements such as Haxby and Dunnington, it too extends into the surrounding districts. North Yorkshire was formed on 1 April 1974 as a result of the Local Government Act 1972, covers most of the lands of the historic North Riding, as well as the northern half of the West Riding, the northern and eastern fringes of the East Riding of Yorkshire and the former county borough of York. York became a unitary authority independent of North Yorkshire on 1 April 1996, at the same time Middlesbrough and Cleveland and areas of Stockton-on-Tees south of the river became part of North Yorkshire for ceremonial purposes, having been part of Cleveland from 1974 to 1996.
The non-metropolitan county of North Yorkshire is administered by North Yorkshire County Council, a cabinet-style council. The full council of 72 elects a council leader, who in turn appoints up to 9 more councillors to form the executive cabinet; the cabinet is responsible for making decisions in the non-metropolitan county. The county council have their offices in the County Hall in Northallerton. Certain areas within the ceremonial county are administered independently of the county council and have their own unitary authority councils: the City of York Council and Cleveland Borough Council, Middlesbrough Borough Council, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council; the county has above average house prices. Unemployment is below average for the UK and claimants of Job Seekers Allowance is very low compared to the rest of the UK at 2.7%. Agriculture is an important industry, as are power generation; the county has prosperous high technology and tourism sectors. Tourism is a significant contribut
Système universitaire de documentation
The système universitaire de documentation or SUDOC is a system used by the libraries of French universities and higher education establishments to identify and manage the documents in their possession. The catalog, which contains more than 10 million references, allows students and researcher to search for bibliographical and location information in over 3,400 documentation centers, it is maintained by the Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education. Official website
River Foss
The River Foss is an improved river in North Yorkshire, a tributary of the River Ouse. It rises in the Foss Crooks woods near Oulston reservoir close to the village of Yearsley and runs south through the Vale of York to the Ouse; the name most comes from the Latin word Fossa, meaning ditch and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. The York district was settled by Norwegian and Danish people, so parts of the place names could be old Norse. Referring to the etymological dictionary "Etymologisk ordbog", ISBN 82-905-2016-6 dealing with the common Danish and Norwegian languages – roots of words and the original meaning; the old Norse word Fos meaning impetuous. The River Foss was dammed, though the elevation to the river Ouse is small, a waterfall was formed; this may have led to the name Fos, changed to Foss. The responsibility for the management of the river's drainage area lies with the Foss Internal drainage board, it has responsibility for the area from Crayke to the pre-1991 city boundary of York covering 9,085 hectares and 162.54 km of waterways.
The Foss IDB is itself part of the York Consortium of Drainage Boards that oversees 10 IDB's in the Yorkshire region. The typical river level range at the Foss Barrier is between 5.05m and 7.90m. The highest river level recorded at this location was 10.20 metres and the river level reached 9.34 metres on 23 January 2008. The source of this river is a spring situated in the Howardian Hills adjacent to, flowing into, Oulston Reservoir near Newburgh Priory, 4 miles north of Easingwold. From there to the Blue Bridge in York, where it joins the River Ouse, it is 19.5 miles in length. For part of its way it runs close to the B1363 between Stillington; the river flows in a series of wide meanders in southerly direction for most of its course towards York. As of 2010 the river is only navigable for some 1.5 miles upstream of Castle Mills Lock. The bridges by Peasholme Green and Foss Bank restrict the headroom to an air space of 2.4 metres. The Foss Barrier is built across the river near its mouth at Castle Mills.
When closed, it prevents floodwater from the River Ouse forcing the flow of the Foss back on itself. When the river Ouse reaches a level of 7.4m above ordnance datum, the staff at the barrier are alerted. When the level reaches 7.8m AOD the barrier is lowered, after running pumps for several minutes to clear silt and debris from the river bed. This provides a watertight fit, it takes four minutes to lower the barrier. To avoid the build-up of water behind the barrier causing the Foss to burst its banks, the water is pumped around the barrier and into the Ouse; this is done by eight pumps that pump water at 30 tonnes per second, this prevents the Foss flowing back on itself. The water pumped out should maintain a water level of 6.5m AOD behind the barrier. When the two sides of the barrier are equalised, the barrier is raised. Castle Mills Lock is 6 metres wide. There are mooring points in the lock basin on the River Ouse side with overnight mooring on the River Foss prohibited. Beyond Rowntree Wharf there are few opportunities for turning.
In 1069 William the Conqueror dammed the River Foss just south of York Castle, close to its confluence with the Ouse, to create a moat around the castle. This caused the river to flood further upstream in what is now the Hungate and Layerthorpe areas, forming a large lake, known as the "King's Pool" or the "King's Fish Pond" and which provided fish for the markets, it was 100 acres in size and fishing was only allowed by licence, except for the King's Men. The King's Pool was an integral part of the city's inner defences during the Middle Ages as the marsh was impassable; this explains why there is no city wall between the Red Tower. In the 17th century, the King's Pool and the Foss were in a state of decline because silt from upriver collected in the Pool, not enough water came down to move it on, despite the main channel of the River Foss having been deepened in 1608; the lake was too shallow to remain viable as a defence of the city. In 1644 the lake was shallow enough for Parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax to consider crossing it on foot as a way of breaking the Siege of York during the English Civil War.
In 1727 an order was placed upon Arthur Ingram, 6th Viscount of Irvine to scour the River Foss from the Castle Mills to Foss Bridge, making it eight yards wide at the top and four yards at the bottom, and, in 1731 the Little Foss, an extension to enclose the Castle, was drained. In the 18th century, the water was so low. Citizens used the river as a rubbish tip. Acts of Parliament in 1793 and 1801 were enacted to make the Foss navigable and they saw the end of the King's Pool; the Foss Navigation Company canalised the river from 1778, to make it navigable as far as Sheriff Hutton. The York Drainage and Sanitary Improvement Act of 1853 meant that the York Corporation purchased the River Foss from the Foss Navigation Company. In 1859, the York Improvement Act was passed that saw the river above Yearsley Bridge abandoned as a waterway. Stillington Hall was a mansion on the west side of the Foss and adjoining the village of the same name, it was the home of the Croft family, who are descended from a common ancestor with the house of Croft, of Croft Castle in Herefordshire.
Remains of Roman jetties and warehouses have been found by excavations and building works on the banks of the Foss, suggesting that water-borne transport and trade was important from early in the history of the city. The modern Foss benefits most from leisure activity and several long distance walks cross its pat
Bailey (castle)
A bailey or ward in a fortification is a courtyard enclosed by a curtain wall. In particular, an early type of European castle was known as a motte-and-bailey. Castles can have more than one bailey, their layout depends both on the local topography and the level of fortification technology employed, ranging from simple enclosures to elaborate concentric defences. In addition to the gradual evolution of more complex castle plans, there are significant differences in regional traditions of military architecture regarding the subdivision into baileys. Baileys can be arranged in sequence along a hill, giving lower bailey, they can be nested one inside the other, as in a concentric castle, giving an outer bailey and inner bailey. Large castles may have two outer baileys. On the other hand, tower houses lack an enclosed bailey; the most important and prestigious buildings, such as the great hall and the keep or bergfried, were located in the inner bailey of the castle, sometimes called the central bailey or main bailey.
Nonetheless, there are a few castles where the keep is outside the inner bailey, such as Château de Dourdan and Flint Castle. The lower or outer bailey held less important structures, such as stables, if there was not enough space in the inner bailey. Outer baileys could be defensive in function, without significant buildings. In the concentric castles of the military orders, such as Krak des Chevaliers or Belvoir, the inner bailey resembled a cloistered monastery, while the outer bailey was little more than a narrow passage between the concentric enceintes. In general, baileys could have any shape, including irregular or elongated ones, when the walls followed the contour lines of the terrain where the castle was sited. Rectangular shapes are common. A complex arrangement of baileys can be found at Château Gaillard. There is both a lower bailey separated from the main castle by a deep ditch, a concentric arrangement inside the main castle with an inner and middle bailey. In the Germanic castles of the Holy Roman Empire, there is a distinction between a Vorburg and a Kernburg corresponding to lower and upper baileys in English castles.
In German-speaking countries, many castles had double curtain walls with a narrow enclosure outside the main walls, acting as a killing ground between them, referred to as a zwinger. The outermost wall was a type of low mantlet wall; these were added at vulnerable points like the gate of a castle or town, but were as developed as in the concentric castles in Wales or the Crusader castles
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