Praise and insults
Evidently there are far more British words for insulting people than there are for praising them, probably because insults sound funnier. Indeed, […]
Read MoreMonth: January 2023
Test-tube babies
Louise Brown, born in Lancashire in 1978, and Alastair MacDonald, born in Glasgow six months later, were the world’s first ‘test-tube babies’. […]
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The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace (a.k.a. ‘the Palace of the People’) began as a glass-walled, modular, 3-storey hall-cum-greenhouse in Hyde Park for the 1851 […]
Read MoreThe Crystal Palace (a.k.a. ‘the Palace of the People’) began as a glass-walled, modular, 3-storey hall-cum-greenhouse in Hyde Park for the 1851 Great Exhibition. Bedfordshire-born Sir Joseph Paxton (1803-65) took just nine days to produce the design since he simply scaled-up the lily-house he had built at Chatsworth House, where he was Head Gardener.
The cost to build the Palace was £150,000 and it employed 2,000 workmen. The use of so much glass was unprecedented in Britain and it proved very popular. After the Exhibition, Paxton re-erected it on 200 acres now known as Crystal Palace Park on Sydenham Ridge, south London, in 1852-4, but the cost of his additions, including two extra floors, numerous fountains, courtyards, water towers and ambitious leisure facilities, went way over budget at £1,300,000 and employed 7,000 workmen and specialists. Debt hung over the enterprise for decades, partly because despite its wide-ranging attractions, there was no Sunday opening permitted in those days.
It suffered a big fire in 1866 but the fire of 1936 completely destroyed it. The operators had already gone bankrupt in 1911 despite all efforts, including hosting that year’s Festival of Empire. A few remnants of the Park’s heyday survive, including the TV transmitter, Sports Centre and the world’s first full-size dinosaur models.
(Top image of the re-built 5-storey Sydenham Crystal Palace: Andy Scott at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)
Chinese New Year
Trade with China in the 1800s brought about a small, close-knit settlement of Chinese sailors and their families in the Limehouse district […]
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Freedom of association
In its simplest form, freedom of association places no restrictions on which friendship circles, clubs or societies we choose to join, but […]
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Table Tennis
To while away chilly evenings, some sports developed miniature indoor versions adapted for play on tables, initially in the gentry’s mansions. ‘Whiff-Whaff’ […]
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Stained glass church windows
Two Northumbrian clergymen, Wilfrid (634-709/10) and Benedict (c.628-90), adopted the European idea of having stained glass church windows for their monasteries (home […]
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The formation of Great Britain
One of the noteworthy figures in the formation of Great Britain (England, Wales & Scotland) was the 4th Duke of Hamilton (1658-1712) […]
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The Truck Acts
Employee welfare in Britain’s unprecedented and, for some, traumatic passage through the Industrial Revolution was not always uppermost in employers’ minds. The […]
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The marine chronometer
As one of history’s greatest seafaring nations, Britain has made many contributions to oceanography, with the marine chronometer being one of the […]
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Stonehenge
Stonehenge in Wiltshire is Crown property and its mysterious origins and purpose remain unknown, although Druids believe they have a special connection […]
Read MoreStonehenge in Wiltshire is Crown property and its mysterious origins and purpose remain unknown, although Druids believe they have a special connection to it. There are theories that it served as a calendar for Neolithic farmers, or a burial ground or a place for pagan festivals. The word ‘henge’, meaning a prehistoric ring of upright stone, timber or earth surrounding a circular ditch, is taken from the name Stonehenge, which itself means either ‘stone gallows’ or ‘hanging stones’.
Legend tells of the stone formation then called ‘The Giants’ Dance’ being sailed from Ireland to commemorate the spot where British leaders were disgracefully murdered by their Saxon counterparts during negotiations. In a similar vein, giant skeletons have been discovered in Stonehenge’s vicinity, one of which was 14’10” tall. Clearly the “wonder” of this World Heritage Site still has much to be revealed.
However, the stones have been subjected to a spot of house-cleaning ~ between 1901 and 1964 the stones were repositioned and even replaced and finally set into concrete footings in order to create a more aesthetic and tidy impression for the million visitors per year, now only permitted to walk the perimeter. Compare John Constable‘s 1835 Stonehenge painting (left) to a 2008 photograph (right):-
(Top image: Mark Philpott at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)
Windsor Castle
The neighbouring towns of Ascot and Windsor in Berkshire lie just 20 miles from central London and while Ascot has its royal […]
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