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Old Town Hall, Wantage
The Old Town Hall is a municipal building in the Market Place in Wantage, Oxfordshire, England. The building, which was the headquarters of Wantage Urban District Council, was converted into apartments in 2018. History The first municipal building in the town was a medieval town hall in the centre of the Market Place which stood on wooden posts and dated back at least to the mid-17th century. It was demolished in 1835 and replaced by a second town hall, a brick building which was financed by public subscription at a cost of £600. In November 1873, the second town hall was the venue for a meeting, chaired by Lord Wantage, at which it was agreed to commission the Wantage Tramway. By the mid-1870s, the second town hall was "so unworthy of the town that no one regretted its disappearance" and it was demolished in 1876 and replaced by a statue of Alfred the Great, which was presented to the town by Lord Wantage and unveiled by the Prince and Princess of Wales on 14 July 1877. A co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wantage
Wantage () is a historic market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, England. Although within the boundaries of the historic county of Berkshire, it has been administered as part of the Vale of White Horse district of Oxfordshire since 1974. The town is on Letcombe Brook, south-west of Abingdon, north-west of Reading, south-west of Oxford and north-west of Newbury. It was the birthplace of King Alfred the Great in 849. History Wantage was a small Roman settlement but the origin of the toponym is somewhat uncertain. It is generally thought to be from an Old English phrase meaning "decreasing river". King Alfred the Great was born at the royal palace there in the 9th century, in what was originally known as Wanating. Wantage appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its value was £61 and it was in the king's ownership until Richard I passed it to the Earl of Albemarle in 1190. Weekly trading rights were first granted to the town by Henry III in 1246. Markets are now held ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oriel Window
An oriel window is a form of bay window which protrudes from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground. Supported by corbels, bracket (architecture), brackets, or similar cantilevers, an oriel window is most commonly found projecting from an upper floor but is also sometimes used on the ground floor. Oriel windows are seen in Arab architecture in the form of mashrabiya and in Turkish are known as ''şahnişin'' or ''cumba''. In Islamic culture, these windows and balconies project from the street-front of a house, providing an area in which women could peer out and see the activities below while remaining invisible. Origins According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', the term ''oriel'' is derived from Anglo-Norman language, Anglo-Norman ' and Late Latin ', both meaning "gallery" or "porch", perhaps from Classical Latin ' ("curtain"). * Oriel College, Oxford, took its name from a balcony or oriel window forming a feature of a building which occupied the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Government Buildings Completed In 1878
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy. In many countries, the government has a kind of constitution, a statement of its governing principles and philosophy. While all types of organizations have governance, the term ''government'' is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations. The major types of political systems in the modern era are democracies, monarchies, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and tyranny. These forms are not always mutually exclusive, and mixed govern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HSBC
HSBC Holdings plc is a British multinational universal bank and financial services holding company. It is the largest bank in Europe by total assets ahead of BNP Paribas, with US$2.953 trillion as of December 2021. In 2021, HSBC had $10.8 trillion in assets under custody (AUC) and $4.9 trillion in assets under administration (AUA), respectively. HSBC traces its origin to a hong in British Hong Kong, and its present form was established in London by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to act as a new group holding company in 1991; its name derives from that company's initials. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation opened branches in Shanghai in 1865 and was first formally incorporated in 1866. HSBC has offices in 64 countries and territories across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America, serving around 40 million customers. As of 2022, it was ranked no. 38 in the world in the Forbes rankings of large companies ranked by sales, profits ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Midland Bank
Midland Bank Plc was one of the Big Four banking groups in the United Kingdom for most of the 20th century. It is now part of HSBC. The bank was founded as the Birmingham and Midland Bank in Union Street, Birmingham, England in August 1836. It expanded in the Midlands, absorbing many local banks, and merged with the Central Bank of London Ltd. in 1891, becoming the London City and Midland Bank. After a period of nationwide expansion, including the acquisition of many smaller banks, the name Midland Bank Ltd was adopted in 1923. By 1934, it was the largest deposit bank in the world. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but in June 1992, it was taken over by HSBC Holdings plc, which phased out the Midland Bank name by June 1999 in favour of HSBC Bank. On 10 June 2015, HSBC announced that it would be rebranding its branches in the United Kingdom. HSBC chairman Douglas Flint described the Midland brand as "odds on favour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Merseybeats
The Merseybeats (also related vocal duo The Merseys) are an English beat band that emerged from the Liverpool Merseybeat scene in the early 1960s, performing at the Cavern Club along with the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and other similar artists. The current line-up is: Tony Crane MBE (founding member) lead vocals and lead guitar, Billy Kinsley (founding member) lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Bob Packham (joined 1974) backing vocals and bass guitar (born Robert Packham, 17 July 1944, Anfield, Liverpool) (ex The Galvinsers), and Lou Rosenthal (joined 2000) drums. History The Merseybeats Originally called the Mavericks, the band was formed by Tony Crane and Billy Kinsley in late 1960. They became the Pacifics in September 1961. They were renamed the Mersey Beats in February 1962 by Bob Wooler, MC at the Cavern Club. In April 1962, they became the Merseybeats. By now Crane and Kinsley had joined up with guitarist Aaron Williams and drummer John Banks. They signed a reco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festival Of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people: Labour cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the original plan to celebrate the centennial of the Great Exhibition of 1851. However, it was not to be another World Fair, for international themes were absent, as was the British Commonwealth. Instead the 1951 festival focused entirely on Britain and its achievements; it was funded chiefly by the government, with a budget of £12 million. The Labour government was losing support and so the implicit goal of the festival was to give the people a feeling of successful recovery from the war's devastation, as well as promoting British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts. The Festival's centrepiece was in London on the South Bank ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Urban District (Great Britain And Ireland)
In England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, an urban district was a type of local government district that covered an urbanised area. Urban districts had an elected urban district council (UDC), which shared local government responsibilities with a county council. England and Wales In England and Wales, urban districts and rural districts were created in 1894 (by the Local Government Act 1894) as subdivisions of administrative counties. They replaced the earlier system of urban and rural sanitary districts (based on poor law unions) the functions of which were taken over by the district councils. The district councils also had wider powers over local matters such as parks, cemeteries and local planning. An urban district usually contained a single parish, while a rural district might contain many. Urban districts were considered to have more problems with public health than rural areas, and so urban district councils had more funding and greater power ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spire
A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are typically made of stonework or brickwork, or else of timber structures with Cladding (construction), metal cladding, ceramic tile, ceramic tiling, roof shingles, or Slate roof, slates on the exterior. Since towers supporting spires are usually square, square-plan spires emerge directly from the tower's walls, but octagonal spires are either built for a pyramidal transition section called a ''Broach spire, broach'' at the spire's base, or else freed spaces around the tower's summit for decorative elements like pinnacles. The former solution is known as a ''broach spire''. Small or short spires are known as ''spikes'', ''spirelets'', or ''flèche (architecture), flèches''. Etymology This sense of the word spire is attested in English since ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balcony
A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Maltese balcony is a wooden closed balcony projecting from a wall. By contrast, a Juliet balcony does not protrude out of the building. It is usually part of an upper floor, with a balustrade only at the front, like a small loggia. A modern Juliet balcony often involves a metal barrier placed in front of a high window that can be opened. In the UK, the technical name for one of these was officially changed in August 2020 to a ''Juliet guarding''. Juliet balconies are named after William Shakespeare's Juliet, who, in traditional stagings of the play ''Romeo and Juliet'', is courted by Romeo while she is on her balcony—though the play itself, as written, makes no mention of a balcony, but only of a window at which Juliet appears. Various types of balcony ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frieze
In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon the architrave ("main beam") and is capped by the moldings of the cornice. A frieze can be found on many Greek and Roman buildings, the Parthenon Frieze being the most famous, and perhaps the most elaborate. This style is typical for the Persians. In interiors, the frieze of a room is the section of wall above the picture rail and under the crown moldings or cornice. By extension, a frieze is a long stretch of painted, sculpted or even calligraphic decoration in such a position, normally above eye-level. Frieze decorations may depict scenes in a sequence of discrete panels. The material of which the frieze is made of may be plasterwork, carved wood or other decorative medium. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pier (architecture)
A pier, in architecture, is an upright support for a structure or superstructure such as an arch or bridge. Sections of structural walls between openings (bays) can function as piers. External or free-standing walls may have piers at the ends or on corners. Description The simplest cross section of the pier is square, or rectangular, but other shapes are also common. In medieval architecture, massive circular supports called drum piers, cruciform (cross-shaped) piers, and compound piers are common architectural elements. Columns are a similar upright support, but stand on a round base. In buildings with a sequence of bays between piers, each opening (window or door) between two piers is considered a single bay. Bridge piers Single-span bridges have abutments at each end that support the weight of the bridge and serve as retaining walls to resist lateral movement of the earthen fill of the bridge approach. Multi-span bridges require piers to support the ends of spans betwe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
