Tag: England

Normandy, Brittany and Channel Islands: A 22-Day Itinerary

Normandy, Brittany and Channel Islands: A 22-Day Itinerary Draw a line from Paris to London on a map of northern France and the Channel, and you cross a border that has moved more than almost any other in Europe. Normandy was Viking before it was French. The Channel Islands have been governed from London since […]

Francis Drake & Birth of the British Empire

Sir Francis Drake and England’s Challenge to Spain’s Global Supremacy On the morning of December 13, 1577, Francis Drake, a pirate and former slaver, ordered his small fleet in Plymouth, England, to weigh anchor. Two of the most consequential figures of this era, Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth I, knew the expedition’s true purpose: to […]

Wedgwood Anti Slavery Medallion

Josiah Wedgwood Anti Slavery Medallion Throughout his life, the famed English entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood was deeply concerned with the social issues of his contemporary 18th century Great Britain.  Unsurprisingly then, he was actively involved the cause for the abolition of slavery from 1787 until his death in 1795, serving as a committee member of the […]

Liverpool Cathedral, England

Liverpool Cathedral, United Kingdom Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, located on St James Road, Liverpool, is the biggest church in England and the eighth largest cathedral in the world, towering over the city skyline. It has the world’s tallest tower at 101 metres, offering panoramic views over the river Mersey, and with a total external length of […]

John Constable

John Constable  English artist John Constable (1776-1837) is one of the greatest landscape painters of all time and one of the most important artists of the Romantic Tradition. Nature was his primary inspiration. Along with his rival J M W Turner, he created a new style that detailed nature as the focal point in the […]

Scientific Revolution, England

The Scientific Revolution in England The Scientific Revolution refers to drastic changes in scientific thought that occurred in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, marking the emergence of modern science. During this period, science…

Ely Cathedral, England

Ely Cathedral Ely Cathedral, located in the city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, is perhaps England’s most eccentric cathedral, outstanding architecturally for both its scale and stylistic details. Rising up from the flat, marshy fenland of East Anglia, it is often referred to as ‘The Ship of the Fens’. At a massive 66 metres tall and 164 […]

History of English Wool

History of English Wool Wool plays a significant role in England’s history and heritage. Sheep, along with Neolithic shepherds, first migrated to the British Isles around 6,000 years ago, and it didn’t take long before their wool was being extracted to make cloth. A thriving wool industry then existed under the Romans, and the wool […]

York Minster Cathedral: England’s Greatest Gothic Church

York Minster Cathedral: England’s Greatest Gothic Church York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral by volume in England, its stone towers visible from almost anywhere in the city below. Built in stages from the 12th to 15th centuries, it houses the country’s finest medieval stained glass and its largest chapter house, standing on a site […]

London Coffee Houses

London Coffee Houses in the 17th and 18th Centuries In the late 1600s and early 1700s, there were as many as 3,000 coffee houses spread throughout London. These were popular public social places, where men of all strata of society could go to meet and talk to each other. All were welcome for the price […]

Winchester Cathedral, England

Winchester Cathedral, United Kingdom The magnificent cathedral in the city of Winchester, England, is one of the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. And with an overall length of 170 m, it is the longest medieval cathedral in the world. Its rich, fascinating history spans more than 1000 years, having served as a site […]

England’s Cathedrals

Chester Chester Cathedral is the mother church of the Diocese of Chester, squeezed into the centre of the old city in Chester. According to legend, the site was originally a druidical temple, before it was…

William Morris’ Kelmscott Manor

Kelmscott Manor: ‘Heaven on Earth’ Described as ‘heaven on earth’, Kelmscott Manor was beloved by William Morris – the poet, author, architectural conservationist, and social reformer, widely regarded as the founding father of the Arts and Crafts movement. The limestone farmhouse in the English West Oxfordshire village of Kelmscott was Morris’ country home from 1871 […]

Wedgwood’s Etruria, England

The English entrepreneur and most significant potter of the 18th century, Mr Josiah Wedgwood, is famous for embracing Etruscan heritage in his designs. Urns, cameos, and vases all emerged from his kilns to be decorated with reclining figures, mythological characters, and classical garlands evoking the art of the Etruscan civilisation. Wedgwood believed he was not merely imitating ancient artworks but was intelligently updating the classical aesthetic, improving the antiques for the modern age.

18th Century London

London in the 18th Century The 18th century was a period of unimaginable change in England. The century witnessed not only the early stirrings of the Industrial Revolution, after the industrious revolution, but also a consumer revolution in which a new form of society emerged based on the mass consumption of a variety of goods […]

The Rise of Liverpool, UK

During the last three decades of the seventeenth century, however, Liverpool emerged as one of England’s leading ports. The port’s commercial rise began as a result of profitable trade with the Americas and the West Indies. Its merchant fleets subsequently carried salt, naval stores, wines, iron, and eventually slaves, dominating the transatlantic slave trade in the second half of the 18th century.

England’s Consumer Revolution

Rising disposable incomes, a growing supply of inexpensive goods, and social emulation combined to spark a ‘consumer revolution’ during the Georgian England period. From the late 1600s, a new form of society emerged based on the mass consumption of a variety of goods and products, a process which then intensified rapidly over the eighteenth century. People lived in grander houses than ever before, owned more domestic and personal goods, and boasted of their status in the display of luxury and semi-luxury goods.

Canals and the Industrial Revolution, UK

Despite the benefits of canals, they still had their issues. As not all areas were environmentally suited for them, they could not extend entirely across Britain. Instead, they were largely restricted to operating in the Midlands and North West England, with some major areas across the country such as Newcastle having relatively few. Neither were the canals all connected by an organized national network.

Bronze Age Beaker People of Stonehenge

Most scientists agree that Neolithic agrarians were the first people to construct a monument on the Stonehenge site in approximately 3000 BCE. The site was then built upon in later phases during the Bronze Age by the Beaker People, a new population of people who arrived in Britain around 2500 BCE.

The Exeter Book

The Exeter Book contains the largest and probably oldest surviving collection of Old English literature in the world. Dating back to the late 10th-cenutry, it is one of the four most significant verse manuscripts to survive from the Anglo-Saxon period

London’s Victorian Architecture: The Definitive Guide for Travellers

London’s architecture during the Victorian Era was defined by the transformation of British society, due to the rapid changes of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialisation transformed British life, leading to innovative new technologies, rapid wealth accumulation, and a proliferation of new goods and services.