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| The University of Glasgow is the fourth oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. It was founded in 1451. Along with the University of Edinburgh, the University was part of the Scottish Enlightenment during the 18th century. It is currently a member of Universitas 21, the international network of research universities, and the Russell Group. |
I have been fascinated by the United Kingdom since Prince Charles and Lady Diana Married. I love all things British. This is a blog to share Pictures and Ideas about England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
Monday, September 26, 2016
University of Glasgow
Warwick Castle . Warwickshire, England
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| Warwick Castle is a medieval castle developed from an original built by William the Conqueror in 1068. Warwick is the county town ofWarwickshire, England, situated on a bend of the River Avon. The original wooden motte-and-bailey castle was rebuilt in stone in the 12th century. During theHundred Years War, the facade opposite the town was refortified, resulting in one of the most recognisable examples of 14th century military architecture. It was used as a stronghold until the early 17th century, when it was granted to Sir Fulke Greville by James I in 1604. Greville converted it to a country house and it was owned by the Greville family, who became Earls of Warwick in 1759, until 1978 when it was bought by the Tussauds Group. In 2007, the Tussauds Group merged with Merlin Entertainments, which is the current owner of Warwick Castle. |
Wentworth Castle
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Wentworth Castle is a grade I listed country house, the former seat of the Earls of Strafford, at Stainborough, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. It is now home to the Northern College for Residential and Community Education.
An older house existed on the estate, then called Stainborough, when it was purchased by Thomas Wentworth, Baron Raby (later Earl of Strafford), in 1711. It was still called Stainborough in Jan Kip's engraved bird's-eye view of parterres and avenues, 1714, and in the first edition of Vitruvius Britannicus, 1715 (illustration, left). The name was changed in 1731. The original name survives in the form of Stainborough Castle, a sham ruin constructed as a garden folly (illustration below) on the estate.
The Estate has been in the care of the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust since 2001 and is open to the public year round 7 days a week. The castle's gardens were restored in the early 21st century, and are also open to visitors.
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Wickham Manor Farm
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| Set in a National Trust-owned 16th-century cottage on a 750-acre farm, and formerly the home of Pennsylvania founder William Penn, this historic bed-and-breakfast is a 21-minute walk from the town of Winchelsea and 3.8 miles from Rye. The period-style rooms feature original oak beams, and offer garden or sea views. All come with TVs, and tea and coffee making facilities, while most also have 4-poster beds. The suite adds a separate living area and an adjoining bedroom. Complimentary full English breakfast is served in the beamed dining room, which has an inglenook fireplace, while other public areas include a cosy lounge and a lawned garden. |
Necropolis: London and Its Dead
In her excellent and morbidly fascinating book Necropolis: London and Its Dead, author Catharine Arnold describes in detail the subterranean presence of corpses found throughout the British capital. To no small extent, she makes clear, dead bodies were basically buried everywhere, to the point that, as Arnold pithily states, “London is one giant grave.“ As Arnold points out, there is an otherwise inexplicable shift in direction in the Piccadilly line passing east out of South Kensington.
“In fact,” she writes, “the tunnel curves between Knightsbridge and South Kensington stations because it was impossible to drill through the mass of skeletal remains buried in Hyde Park.” Put another way, the ground was so solidly packed with the interlocked skeletons of 17th-century victims of the Great Plague that the Tube’s 19th-century excavation teams couldn’t even hack their way through them all.
The Tube thus deviates SW-by-NE to avoid this huge congested knot of skulls, ribs, legs, and arms tangled in the soil—an artificial geology made of people, caught in the throat of greater London. Thus, like the example of the Aztec skulls unearthed by subway crews in Mexico City, London’s Tube also sits atop, cuts around, and tunnels through a citywide charnel ground of corpses, its very routes and station locations haunted by this earlier presence in the ground below. (via How Corpses Helped Shape the London Underground)
Inveraray castle
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| Inveraray Castle is a country house near Inveraray in the county of Argyll, in western Scotland, on the shore of Loch Fyne, Scotland’s longest sea loch. It has been the seat of the Dukes of Argyll, chiefs of Clan Campbell, since the 18th century. |
British naval official photograph
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| British naval official photograph. Pilot of a British seaplane releasing a pigeon carrying a message asking for assistance. Angleterre, vers 1910 |
Bowthorpe Oak, Bourne, Lincolnshire.
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| This 1,000-year-old tree stands in a field at Manthorpe, near Bourne. Its hollow trunk has been used for parties; at one point, it is claimed, three dozen people managed to stand within it. |
Bodiam Castle
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| Bodiam Castle is a 14th-century moated castle. It was built in 1385 by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, a former knight of Edward III, with the permission of Richard II, to defend the area against French invasion during the Hundred Years’ War. Bodiam Castle has a quadrangular plan. It has no keep, having its various chambers built around the outer defensive walls and inner courts. The corners and entrance are marked by towers, topped by crenellations. It was the home of the Dalyngrigge family and the centre of the manor of Bodiam. The castle is protected as a Grade I listed building and Scheduled Monument. It has been owned by The National Trust since 1925, when it was donated by Lord Curzon on his death. It is open to the public. |
Satellite Picture of UK
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| A true-color image of the UK and Ireland, observed by the Terra satellite, May 26, 2012. |
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, England
Sissinghurst's garden was created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West, poet and gardening writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. Sackville-West was a writer on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group who found her greatest popularity in the weekly columns she contributed as gardening correspondent of The Observer, which incidentally—for she never touted it—made her own garden famous. The garden itself is designed as a series of 'rooms', each with a different character of colour and/or theme, the walls being high clipped hedges and many pink brick walls. The rooms and 'doors' are so arranged that, as one enjoys the beauty in a given room, one suddenly discovers a new vista into another part of the garden, making a walk a series of discoveries that keeps leading one into yet another area of the garden. Nicolson spent his efforts coming up with interesting new interconnections, while Sackville-West focused on making the flowers in the interior of each room exciting. For Sackville-West, Sissinghurst and its garden rooms came to be a poignant and romantic substitute for Knole, reputedly the largest house in Britain, which as the only child of Lionel, the 3rd Lord Sackville she would have inherited had she been a male, but which had passed to her cousin as the male heir. The site is ancient; "hurst" is the Saxon term for an enclosed wood. A manor house with a three-armed moat was built here in the Middle Ages. In 1305, King Edward I spent a night here. It was long thought that in 1490 Thomas Baker, a man from Cranbrook, purchased Sissinghurst, although there is no evidence for it. What is certain is that the house was given a new brick gatehouse in the 1530s by Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, and greatly enlarged in the 1560s by his son Sir Richard Baker, when it became the centre of a 700-acre (2.8 km2) deer park. In August 1573, Queen Elizabeth I spent three nights at Sissinghurst.
Shadwell park
HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT Robert Buxton acquired the manor of Rushworth in Shadwell during the C16, initially holding a lease from the fourth Duke of Norfolk. In c 1715 John Buxton, amateur architect of Channonz Hall in Tibenham, began to rebuild what he called Shadwell Lodge and to lay out the grounds. The main features however of the design which survives today (1999), including the layout of the plantations and the creation of the lake, are the work of his son, also John, between the 1740s and 1760s and these are recorded on William Faden's map of the county dated 1797. The house was altered by John Soane in c 1789 and again by Edward Blore in 1840-3, but it is the work of S S Teulon between 1857 and 1860 that completely transformed the house in the Gothic style. During the same period the formal gardens to the west and south were laid out, a pleasure ground was planted between these and the kitchen garden, and the park was embellished. The estate remained in the Buxton family until 1895 when it was sold to John Musker who simplified the west garden. The Musker family sold Shadwell in the 1980s and the site remains (1999) in private ownership.
Sanndringham
Sandringham House is a Grade II* listed country house on 20,000 acres (8,100 ha) of land near the village of Sandringham in Norfolk, England. The house is privately owned by Queen Elizabeth II and is located on the royal Sandringham Estate, which lies within the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
