Clock Tower, St Albans
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Clock Tower, St Albans
The Clock Tower is a Grade I listed belfry in St Albans, England which was constructed between 1403 and 1412, believed to have been completed in 1405. It has been claimed to be the only remaining medieval town belfry in England. Its construction has been seen as a protest against the power of the local abbey to regulate time-keeping in the town. Design The Clock Tower is high, and has 5 floors including the roof. Each floor is slightly narrower than the previous, with each floor being marked externally by a stone string. The outside of the Tower is faced in flint, has freestone dressings, including quoins on each corner. The stone battlemented parapet features gargoyles on each angle. The ground floor has three wide windows (one on each exposed face) under four centered, triple chamfered arches. The second floor features 2 windows on each face, one above the other. Each window is cusped and rests under a square head. The third floor features the clock on the southern face, and ...
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Clock Tower
Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another building. Some other buildings also have clock faces on their exterior but these structures serve other main functions. Clock towers are a common sight in many parts of the world with some being iconic buildings. One example is the Elizabeth Tower in London (usually called "Big Ben", although strictly this name belongs only to the bell inside the tower). Definition There are many structures which may have clocks or clock faces attached to them and some structures have had clocks added to an existing structure. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat a structure is defined as a building if at least fifty percent of its height is made up of floor plates containing habitable floor area. Structures that do not meet this crite ...
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Eleanor Cross
The Eleanor crosses were a series of twelve tall and lavishly decorated stone monuments topped with crosses erected in a line down part of the east of England. King Edward I had them built between 1291 and about 1295 in memory of his beloved wife Eleanor of Castile. The King and Queen had been married for 36 years and she stayed by the King’s side through his many travels. While on a royal progress, she died in the East Midlands in November 1290. The crosses, erected in her memory, marked the nightly resting-places along the route taken when her body was transported to Westminster Abbey near London. The crosses stood at Lincoln, Grantham and Stamford, all in Lincolnshire; Geddington and Hardingstone in Northamptonshire; Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire; Woburn and Dunstable in Bedfordshire; St Albans and Waltham (now Waltham Cross) in Hertfordshire; Cheapside in London; and Charing (now Charing Cross) in Westminster. Three of the medieval monuments – those at ...
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British Archaeological Association
The British Archaeological Association (BAA) was founded in 1843 and aims to inspire, support and disseminate high quality research in the fields of Western archaeology, art and architecture, primarily of the mediaeval period, through lectures, conferences, study days and publications. The BAA was founded in December 1843 by Charles Roach Smith, Thomas Wright and Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, to encourage the recording, preservation, and publication of archaeological discoveries, and to lobby for government assistance for the collection of British antiquities. All three men were Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London but felt the older body was too aristocratic, too London-focused and lacked the campaigning vigour required. The naming of the new body was symbolic: British referred to the campaign for a museum of British Antiquities, Archaeological differentiated their field from older antiquarian methods and Association had reformist, even revolutionary, overtones. Smith becam ...
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Church Of St Peter, St Albans
St Peter's Church is a Church of England parish church. It is located in St Albans, England, at the northern end of the town centre. Background It is believed, based upon the writing of Matthew Paris, to have been founded in AD 948 by Abbot Ulsinus of St Albans. There is some uncertainty about the dates other details in the writings of Paris, but there is little doubt that the church, together with St Stephen's and St Michael's churches, was built at about that time to receive pilgrims and to prepare them for their visit to the shrine of St Alban within St Albans Abbey. The three churches, all of which still exist as active places of Christian worship, stand on the three main roads into St Albans. History In the mid-12th century it was one of the 15 churches which, with St Albans Abbey, became exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln. It was then ruled by the Abbot of St Albans until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. After the Dissolution in 1539, the churc ...
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St Albans City And District
The City and District of St Albans () is a local authority district in Hertfordshire in the East of England region. The main urban settlements are St Albans and Harpenden. The council offices are in St Albans. History St Albans City and District is a non-metropolitan district and city created on 1 April 1974 as a merger of the Municipal Borough of St Albans, the Harpenden Urban District and most of St Albans Rural District. The municipal borough had had city status since 1877 and it was granted to the entire district by letters patent on 9 July 1974. Geography The district is in the west of Hertfordshire, bounded on the north west by Luton, on the north east by North Hertfordshire, on the east by Welwyn Hatfield, on the south by Hertsmere, on the south west by Watford and Three Rivers and on the west by Dacorum. The largest urban settlement is St Albans, followed in size by Harpenden, with lesser settlements at Redbourn, Wheathampstead, London Colney, Chiswell Green and Br ...
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Frederick George Kitton
Frederick George Kitton (5 May 1856 – 10 September 1904) was a British wood-engraver, author, and illustrator. He is best known for illustrating and editing the works of Charles Dickens. Life Born at Norwich, Frederick George Kitton went at age seventeen to London as an apprentice and was trained as a draughtsman and wood-engraver by W. L. Thomas, the managing director of ''The Graphic'' and one of the leading practitioners of the technique at the time. Kitton contributed to several art periodicals, such as ''The Art Journal'' and ''Magazine of Art A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination ...'', and in 1882 began literary work. He illustrated, edited or wrote several books, most of which were related to the work of Charles Dickens. He annotated the 1900 'Rochester' edition o ...
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Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of French domination over most of continental Europe. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars consisting of the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). The Napoleonic Wars are often described as five conflicts, each termed after the coalition that fought Napoleon: the Third Coalition (1803–1806), the Fourth (1806–1807), the Fifth (1809), the Sixth (1813–1814), and the Seventh (1815) plus the Peninsular War (1807–1814) and the French invasion of Russia (1812). Napoleon, upon ascending to First Consul of France in 1799, had inherited a republic in chaos; he subsequently created a state with stable financ ...
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Giotto's Campanile
Giotto's Campanile (, also , ) is a free-standing campanile that is part of the complex of buildings that make up Florence Cathedral on the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Standing adjacent to the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistry of St. John, the tower is one of the showpieces of Florentine Gothic architecture with its design by Giotto, its rich sculptural decorations and its polychrome marble encrustations. The slender structure is square in plan with 14.45 metre (47.41 ft) sides. It is 84.7 metres (277.9 ft) tall and has polygonal buttresses at each corner. The tower is divided horizontally into five stages. History On the death in 1302 of Arnolfo di Cambio, the first Master of the Works of the Cathedral, and after an interruption of more than thirty years, the celebrated painter Giotto di Bondone was nominated as his successor in 1334. At that time he was 67 years old. Giotto concentrated his energy on the design and construction of ...
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Sir George Gilbert Scott
Sir George Gilbert Scott (13 July 1811 – 27 March 1878), known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he started his career as a leading designer of workhouses. Over 800 buildings were designed or altered by him. Scott was the architect of many iconic buildings, including the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, the Albert Memorial, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, all in London, St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, the main building of the University of Glasgow, St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh and King's College Chapel, London. Life and career Born in Gawcott, Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, Scott was the son of the Reverend Thomas Scott (1780–1835) and grandson of the biblical commentator Thomas Scott. He studied architecture as a pupil of James Edmeston and, from 1832 to 1834, worked as an assistant to Henry Roberts. He also worked as ...
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Gazebo
A gazebo is a pavilion structure, sometimes octagonal or turret-shaped, often built in a park, garden or spacious public area. Some are used on occasions as bandstands. Etymology The etymology given by Oxford Dictionaries (website), Oxford Dictionaries is "Mid 18th century: perhaps humorously from gaze, in imitation of Latin future tenses ending in -ebo: compare with lavabo." L. L. Bacon put forward a derivation from ''Casbah of Algiers, Casbah'', a Muslim quarter around the citadel in Algiers.Bacon, Leonard Lee. "Gazebos and Alambras", ''American Notes and Queries'' 8:6 (1970): 87–87 W. Sayers proposed Andalusian Arabic, Hispano-Arabic ''qushaybah'', in a poem by Córdoba, Spain, Cordoban poet Ibn Quzman (d. 1160).William Sayers, ''Eastern prospects: Kiosks, belvederes, gazebos''. Neophilologus 87: 299–305, 200/ref> The word ''gazebo'' appears in a mid-18th century English book by the architects John and William Halfpenny: ''Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste''. The ...
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Market Cross
A market cross, or in Scots, a mercat cross, is a structure used to mark a market square in market towns, where historically the right to hold a regular market or fair was granted by the monarch, a bishop or a baron. History Market crosses were originally from the distinctive tradition in Early Medieval Insular art of free-standing stone standing or high crosses, often elaborately carved, which goes back to the 7th century. Market crosses can be found in many market towns in Britain. British emigrants often installed such crosses in their new cities, and several can be found in Canada and Australia. The market cross could be representing the official site for a medieval town or village market, granted by a charter, or it could have once represented a traditional religious marking at a crossroads. Design These structures range from carved stone spires, obelisks or crosses, common to small market towns such as that in Stalbridge, Dorset, to large, ornate covered structur ...
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