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Castle Down (Tresco)
Castle Down is a windswept plateau of maritime heath in the northern part of the island of Tresco, Isles of Scilly. The area has a number of designations including Castle Down (Tresco) Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI); is part of the Isles of Scilly Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; part of the Isles of Scilly Heritage Coast; and part of Plantlife's Isles of Scilly Important Plant Area. There are a number of Schedule Ancient Monument's ranging in age from Bronze Age cairns (or burial places) to castles built in the 16th and 17th centuries to protect the anchorage of New Grimsby harbour. History There is a long history of human habitation with 66 cairns (usually burial sites) dating to the Bronze Age. In addition, within of the southern boundary of the SSSI, there is an Iron Age field system, associated hut circles and large middens covering . The huts are to apart and have diameters ranging from to while the middens are up to long, wide and high. () Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tresco, Isles Of Scilly
Tresco ( kw, Enys Skaw, meaning "island of Elder (tree), elder-trees") is the second-biggest island of the Isles of Scilly in Cornwall, England. It is in size, measuring about by . History In early times one group of islands was in the possession of a confederacy of hermits. Henry I of England, King Henry I gave it to Tavistock Abbey which established a Tresco Abbey Gardens, priory on Tresco; it was abolished during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The priory was given the care of souls in the secular islands by the lord of the fief. In 1233, a prior here, known as Alan of Cornwall, was made Abbot of Tavistock. The original name for the island (including Bryher) was the kw, Ryn Tewyn, meaning "promontory of sand-dunes". In 1193, when the island was granted to the Abbot of Tavistock by Pope Celestine III, the island was known as ''St. Nicholas's island'', and by 1305 it is called ''Trescau'' (farm of elder-trees). By 1540 this has changed to ''Iniscaw'' (island of elder-tree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cavalier
The term Cavalier () was first used by Roundheads as a term of abuse for the wealthier royalist supporters of King Charles I and his son Charles II of England during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration (1642 – ). It was later adopted by the Royalists themselves. Although it referred originally to political and social attitudes and behaviour, of which clothing was a very small part, it has subsequently become strongly identified with the fashionable clothing of the court at the time. Prince Rupert, commander of much of Charles I's cavalry, is often considered to be an archetypal Cavalier. Etymology Cavalier derives from the same Latin root as the Italian word and the French word (as well as the Spanish word ), the Vulgar Latin word '' caballarius'', meaning 'horseman'. Shakespeare used the word ''cavaleros'' to describe an overbearing swashbuckler or swaggering gallant in Henry IV, Part 2 (c. 1596–1599), in which Robert Shallow says "I'll drink ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 alway ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variscan Orogeny
The Variscan or Hercynian orogeny was a geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana to form the supercontinent of Pangaea. Nomenclature The name ''Variscan'', comes from the Medieval Latin name for the district '' Variscia'', the home of a Germanic tribe, the Varisci; Eduard Suess, professor of geology at the University of Vienna, coined the term in 1880. (Variscite, a rare green mineral first discovered in the Vogtland district of Saxony in Germany, which is in the Variscan belt, has the same etymology.) ''Hercynian'', on the other hand, derives from the Hercynian Forest. Both words were descriptive terms of strike directions observed by geologists in the field, ''variscan'' for southwest to northeast, ''hercynian'' for northwest to southeast. The ''variscan'' direction reflected the direction of ancient fold belts cropping out throughout Germany and adjacent countries and the meaning shifted from d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Punt (boat)
A punt is a flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, designed for use in small rivers or other shallow water. Punting is boating in a punt. The punter generally propels the punt by pushing against the river bed with a pole. A punt should not be confused with a gondola, a shallow draft vessel that is structurally different, and which is propelled by an oar rather than a pole. Punts were originally built as cargo boats or platforms for fowling and angling, but in modern times their use is almost exclusively confined to pleasure trips with passengers. The term ''punt'' has also been used to indicate a smaller version of a regional type of long shore working boat, for example the Deal Galley Punt. This derives from the wide usage in coastal communities of the name "punt" for any small clinker-built open-stem general purpose boat. In Canada, the term ''punt'' can also refer to any small flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, regardless of purpose, building material, or propuls ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piper’s Hole
Piper's Hole is a sea cave located on Tresco, an island of the Isles of Scilly. The name Piper's Hole can also refer to another, more minor, sea cave in the Isles of Scilly, located on Penninis Head, St Mary's. Etymology Piper's Hole is thought to have been named after the clay pipes that smokers would have used, due to the clay seams on the cave walls. Alternatively, others have theorised that the name comes from legends that postulated that the cave was once a fairy cave, and that said fairies would play pipes which could be heard from the cave. History Piper's Hole is thought to have once been a smugglers hideout. In the 17th century, the cave was mined out for tin. With the rise of tourism to the islands in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a punt was kept in the subterranean pool to ferry people across to the small beach on the other side for a fee. Candles would be placed and lit in the cave in order to illuminate it for visitors. Ethel Smyth, a suffragette ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adit
An adit (from Latin ''aditus'', entrance) is an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal, by which the mine can be entered, drained of water, ventilated, and minerals extracted at the lowest convenient level. Adits are also used to explore for mineral veins. Construction Adits are driven into the side of a hill or mountain, and are often used when an ore body is located inside the mountain but above the adjacent valley floor or coastal plain. In cases where the mineral vein outcrops at the surface, the adit may follow the lode or vein until it is worked out, in which case the adit is rarely straight. The use of adits for the extraction of ore is generally called drift mining. Adits can only be driven into a mine where the local topography permits. There will be no opportunity to drive an adit to a mine situated on a large flat plain, for instance. Also if the ground is weak, the cost of shoring up a long adit may outweigh its possible advantage ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lode
In geology, a lode is a deposit of metalliferous ore that fills or is embedded in a fissure (or crack) in a rock formation or a vein of ore that is deposited or embedded between layers of rock. The current meaning (ore vein) dates from the 17th century, being an expansion of an earlier sense of a "channel, watercourse" in late Middle English, which in turn is from the 11th-century meaning of ''lode'' as a ‘course, way’. The generally accepted hydrothermal model of lode deposition posits that metals dissolved in hydrothermal solutions (hot spring fluids) deposit the gold or other metallic minerals inside the fissures in the pre-existing rocks. Lode deposits are distinguished primarily from placer deposits, where the ore has been eroded out from its original depositional environment and redeposited by sedimentation. A third process for ore deposition is as an evaporite. A stringer lode is one in which the rock is so permeated by small veinlets that rather than mining the v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blockhouse
A blockhouse is a small fortification, usually consisting of one or more rooms with loopholes, allowing its defenders to fire in various directions. It is usually an isolated fort in the form of a single building, serving as a defensive strong point against any enemy that does not possess siege equipment or, in modern times, artillery, air force and cruise missiles. A fortification intended to resist these weapons is more likely to qualify as a fortress or a redoubt, or in modern times, be an underground bunker. However, a blockhouse may also refer to a room within a larger fortification, usually a battery or redoubt. Etymology The term '' blockhouse'' is of uncertain origin, perhaps related to Middle Dutch '' blokhus'' and 18th-century French '' blocus'' (blockade). In ancient Greece Blockhouses existed in ancient Greece, for example the one near Mycenae. Early blockhouses in England Early blockhouses were designed solely to protect a particular area by the use of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cromwell's Castle
Cromwell's Castle is an artillery fort overlooking New Grimsby harbour on the island of Tresco in the Isles of Scilly. It comprises a tall, circular gun tower and an adjacent gun platform, and was designed to prevent enemy naval vessels from entering the harbour. The castle was built in two phases; Sir Robert Blake constructed the tower between 1651 and 1652 in the aftermath of the Parliamentary invasion of the islands at the end of the English Civil War, and Master Gunner Abraham Tovey added the gun platform during the War of Jenkins' Ear around 1739. The tower fell into disuse soon afterwards, and in the 21st century is managed by English Heritage and open to visitors. History 17th century Cromwell's Castle is an artillery tower, built by Sir Robert Blake following the Parliamentary invasion of the Isles of Scilly in 1651. During the English Civil War between 1642 and 1646, the inhabitants of the Isles had been Royalist supporters of King Charles I, and rebelled against Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Blake (admiral)
General at Sea Robert Blake (27 September 1598 – 17 August 1657) was an English naval officer who served as the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports from 1656 to 1657. Blake is recognised as the chief founder of England's naval supremacy, a dominance subsequently inherited by the British Royal Navy well into the early 20th century.Greenwich Pageant , 18 July 1933 Despite this, due to deliberate attempts to expunge the Parliamentarians from historical records following the , Blake's achievements tend to remain unrecognized. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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