Beckford's Tower
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Beckford's Tower
Beckford's Tower, originally known as Lansdown Tower, is an architectural folly built in Neoclassical architecture, neo-classical style on Lansdown Hill, just outside Bath, Somerset, Bath, Somerset, England. The tower and its attached railings are designated as a Grade I listed building. Along with the adjoining Lansdown Cemetery it is Grade II listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England. The tower was built for William Thomas Beckford, a rich novelist, art collector and critic, to designs by Henry Goodridge, and was completed in 1827. Beckford used it as a library and a retreat, with the cupola at the top acting as a Belvedere (structure), belvedere providing views over the surrounding countryside. The Italianate architecture, Italianate building at the base of the tower housed drawing rooms and a library. Extensive grounds between Beckford's house in Lansdown Crescent, Bath, Lansdown Crescent and the tower were landscaped and p ...
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Lansdown Hill
Charlcombe is a civil parish and small village just north of Bath in the Bath and North East Somerset unitary authority, Somerset, England. The parish had a population of 422 in 2011, and includes the villages of Woolley and Langridge and the hamlet of Lansdown (not to be confused with the Bath suburb of the same name). History Charlcombe is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 under the name "Cerlecume", meaning in Old English "valley of the ceorls" (freemen or peasants). Langridge and Woolley were part of the hundred of Bath Forum, while the parish of Charlcombe was part of the hundred of Hampton. The Battle of Lansdowne (1643) was fought in the Lansdown Hill area and is commemorated by Sir Bevil Grenville's Monument (1720). From about 1720 until the early 19th century, Woolley was the site of a gunpowder mill. In 1848 the village had a population of 84, and covered . Woolley is one of 52 thankful villages for having lost no residents during World War I, and one of only ...
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William Thomas Beckford (1 October 1760 – 2 May 1844)
William Thomas Beckford (29 September 1760 – 2 May 1844) was an English novelist, art collector, patron of decorative art, critic, travel writer, plantation owner and for some time politician. He was reputed at one stage to be England's richest commoner. The son of William Beckford and Maria Hamilton, daughter of the Hon. George Hamilton, he served as a Member of Parliament for Wells in 1784–1790 and Hindon in 1790–1795 and 1806–1820. Beckford is remembered for a Gothic novel ''Vathek'' (1786), for building the lost Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire and Lansdown Tower ("Beckford's Tower") in Bath, and for his art collection. Biography Beckford was born in the family's London home at 22 Soho Square on 29 September 1760. At the age of ten, he inherited a fortune from his father William Beckford, who had been twice a Lord Mayor of London. It consisted of £1 million in cash, an estate at Fonthill in Wiltshire (including the Palladian mansion Fonthill Splendens), several s ...
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Pink Granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies underground. It is common in the continental crust of Earth, where it is found in igneous intrusions. These range in size from dikes only a few centimeters across to batholiths exposed over hundreds of square kilometers. Granite is typical of a larger family of ''granitic rocks'', or ''granitoids'', that are composed mostly of coarse-grained quartz and feldspars in varying proportions. These rocks are classified by the relative percentages of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase (the QAPF classification), with true granite representing granitic rocks rich in quartz and alkali feldspar. Most granitic rocks also contain mica or amphibole minerals, though a few (known as leucogranites) contain almost no dark minerals. Granite is nearly always m ...
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Sarcophagus
A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Greek σάρξ ' meaning "flesh", and φαγεῖν ' meaning "to eat"; hence ''sarcophagus'' means "flesh-eating", from the phrase ''lithos sarkophagos'' ( λίθος σαρκοφάγος), "flesh-eating stone". The word also came to refer to a particular kind of limestone that was thought to rapidly facilitate the decomposition of the flesh of corpses contained within it due to the chemical properties of the limestone itself. History of the sarcophagus Sarcophagi were most often designed to remain above ground. The earliest stone sarcophagi were used by Egyptian pharaohs of the 3rd dynasty, which reigned from about 2686 to 2613 B.C. The Hagia Triada sarcophagus is a stone sarcophagus elaborately painted in fresco; one style of later A ...
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Bath Abbey Cemetery
The Anglican Bath Abbey Cemetery, officially dedicated as the Cemetery of St Peter and St Paul (the patron saints that Bath Abbey is dedicated to), was laid out by noted cemetery designer and landscape architect John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843) between 1843 and 1844 on a picturesque hillside site overlooking Bath, Somerset, England. The cemetery was consecrated on 30 January 1844. It was a private Anglican cemetery financed by W. J. Broderick, Rector of Bath Abbey. The layout is a mixture of formal and informal arranged along a central avenue. It features a mortuary chapel, designed by Bath City Architect G. P. Manners in the then fashionable Norman Revival architectural style.The Victorian Society: Avon Group, "The Quick and the Dead: A Walk Round Some Bath Cemeteries", 15 September 1979. History The cemetery is on a site that was used for Roman burials, three stone coffins and Roman coins dating to Constantine the Great and Carausius having been found when the roadway ...
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Reservation Price
In economics, a reservation (or reserve) price is a limit on the price of a good or a service. On the demand side, it is the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay; on the supply side, it is the lowest price a seller is willing to accept for a good or service. Reservation prices are commonly used in auctions, but the concept is extended beyond. A party's best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) is closely related to their reservation price. Once a party determines their BATNA, they can then calculate their reservation price. In negotiations surrounding the price of a particular good or service, the reservation price is a singular number. However, this is not the only situation in which reservation prices are seen. When multiple issues are being discussed, such as the size of salary and amount of benefits when applying for a new job position, the reservation price would be represented as a package where multiple requirements need to be met. Description In mi ...
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Hamilton Palace
Hamilton Palace was a country house in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The former seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, it dated from the 14th century and was subsequently much enlarged in the 17th and 19th centuries.Hamilton's royal past
Widely acknowledged as having been one of the grandest houses in the , the palace was situated at the centre of the extensive Low Parks (now
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Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke Of Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton, 7th Duke of Brandon KG PC FRS FSA (3 October 1767 – 18 August 1852) was a Scottish politician and art collector. Life Born on 3 October 1767 at St. James's Square, London, a son of Archibald Hamilton, 9th Duke of Hamilton, he was educated at Harrow School and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated on 4 March 1786. He received his MA on 18 February 1789. Hamilton was a Whig, and his political career began in 1802, when he became MP for Lancaster. He remained in the House of Commons until 1806, when he was appointed to the Privy Council, and Ambassador to the court of St. Petersburg until 1807; additionally, he was Lord Lieutenant of Lanarkshire from 1802 to 1852. He received the numerous titles at his father's death in 1819. He was Lord High Steward at King William IV's coronation in 1831 and Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838, and remains the last person to have undertaken this duty twice. He became a Knight of ...
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Crimson Drawing Room
Crimson is a rich, deep red color, inclining to purple. It originally meant the color of the kermes dye produced from a scale insect, ''Kermes vermilio'', but the name is now sometimes also used as a generic term for slightly bluish-red colors that are between red and rose. It is the national color of Nepal. History Crimson (NR4) is produced using the dried bodies of a scale insect, ''Kermes'', which were gathered commercially in Mediterranean countries, where they live on the kermes oak, and sold throughout Europe. Kermes dyes have been found in burial wrappings in Anglo-Scandinavian York. They fell out of use with the introduction of cochineal, also made from scale insects, because although the dyes were comparable in quality and color intensity, it needed ten to twelve times as much kermes to produce the same effect as cochineal. Carmine is the name given to the dye made from the dried bodies of the female cochineal, although the name crimson is sometimes applied to thes ...
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Vertu (collections)
In art history, the French term Objet d’art describes an ornamental work of art, and the term Objets d’art describes a range of works of art, usually small and three-dimensional, made of high-quality materials, and a finely-rendered finish that emphasises the aesthetics of the artefact. Artists create and produce ''objets d’art'' in the fields of the decorative arts and metalwork, porcelain and vitreous enamel; figurines, plaquettes, and engraved gems; ivory carvings and semi-precious hardstone carvings; tapestries, antiques, and antiquities; and books with fine bookbinding. The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, describe their accumulated artworks as a: "collection of ''objets d’art'' hichcomprises over 800 objects. These are mostly small, decorative art items that fall outside the scope of the Museum’s ceramic, plate, textiles and glass collections." The artwork collection also includes metal curtain ties, a lacquered ''papier-maché'' tray, tobacco boxes, ci ...
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Bristol Channel
The Bristol Channel ( cy, Môr Hafren, literal translation: "Severn Sea") is a major inlet in the island of Great Britain, separating South Wales from Devon and Somerset in South West England. It extends from the lower estuary of the River Severn ( cy, Afon Hafren) to the North Atlantic Ocean. It takes its name from the English city of Bristol, and is over 30 miles (50 km) wide at its western limit. Long stretches of both sides of the coastline are designated as Heritage Coast. These include Exmoor, Bideford Bay, the Hartland Point peninsula, Lundy Island, Glamorgan, Gower Peninsula, Carmarthenshire, South Pembrokeshire and Caldey Island. Until Tudor times the Bristol Channel was known as the Severn Sea, and it is still known as this in both cy, Môr Hafren and kw, Mor Havren. Geography The International Hydrographic Organization now defines the western limit of the Bristol Channel as "a line joining Hartland Point in Devon () to St. Govan's Head in Pembrokeshire ...
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John Farquhar (gunpowder Dealer)
John Farquhar (1751–1826) was a Scottish millionaire dealer in gunpowder. Early life Farquhar was born of humble parents at Bilbo, in the parish of Crimond, Aberdeenshire. At 15 he had a bursary to attend Marischal College, Aberdeen, studied there for four years, and graduated M.A. He went to London, and then sought his fortune in the East, taking a place on an East Indiaman as surgeon's mate. He found work in a Bengal merchant's office in Barrackpore. Picking up chemistry as a hobby, Farquhar found it a business asset. Gunpowder was being manufactured at Pultah, a reach of the Hooghly River about two miles inland from Barrackpore. It had been found unsatisfactory, and Farquhar was chosen by General Cornwallis, governor-general of Bengal, to look into it. He was made superintendent of the factory, and ultimately became sole contractor to the government. He became wealthy, influential, and on good terms with Warren Hastings. In England Farquhar returned to England in 1814, with ...
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