|
Rhiwperra Castle
Ruperra Castle or Rhiwperra Castle is a Grade II* Listed building and Scheduled Ancient Monument, situated in Lower Machen in the county borough of Caerphilly, Wales. It was built in 1626, now it is in a ruined condition. History Built in 1626 by Sir Thomas Morgan, Steward to the Earl of Pembroke, it was one of the first of the 'mock' castles to be built in Wales. King Charles I spent two nights at Ruperra Castle in 1645 shortly after the Battle of Naseby. Resultantly the royal coat of arms was added to the decoration on the South Porch, and the present public footpath from Rudry to the Castle is still known as "King's Drive." It was bought as his home by wealthy John Morgan "the merchant" for 12,400 pounds. He was unmarried and it was consolidated on his death in 1715 into the Tredegar estates of the Morgan family. It was destroyed by fire in 1785, and rebuilt, resultantly became home, especially in the 19th century, to the heir of the estate. Godfrey Charles Morgan, 2nd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lower Machen
Lower Machen ( cy, Machen Isaf) is a small hamlet of 19 houses on the A468 road at the very western edge of the city of Newport, South Wales. Machen itself lies further west in the county borough of Caerphilly, although both lie within the historic boundaries of Monmouthshire. Lower Machen holds an annual festival of chamber music concerts in the 12th-century church of St. Michael and All Angels. Ruperra Castle is also located in Lower Machen. Lower Machen was formerly served by Church Road railway station, which closed in 1957. The Conservative politician, Peter Thorneycroft, lived at Machen House in the hamlet, during his time as Member of Parliament for Monmouth from 1945-1966. St Michael and All Angels' Church It is believed that the church () was founded during the Celtic period in the 6th century. The current building dates back to the 12th century. The church has connections with the Morgan family of the nearby Tredegar House in Newport. There are eleven hatchments c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charge Of The Light Brigade
The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan had intended to send the Light Brigade to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions, a task for which the light cavalry were well-suited. However, there was miscommunication in the chain of command and the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. The Light Brigade reached the battery under withering direct fire and scattered some of the gunners, but they were forced to retreat immediately, and the assault ended with very high British casualties and no decisive gains. The events were the subject of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's narrative poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854), published just six weeks after the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St Donat's Castle
St Donat's Castle ( cy, Castell Sain Dunwyd), St Donats, Wales, is a Middle Ages, medieval castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, about to the west of Cardiff, and about to the west of Llantwit Major. Positioned on cliffs overlooking the Bristol Channel, the site has been occupied since the Iron Age, and was by tradition the home of the Celtic chieftain Caractacus, Caradog. The present castle's origins date from the 12th century when the de Haweys and later Stradling baronets, Peter de Stradling began its development. The Stradlings held the castle for four hundred years, until the death of Sir Thomas Stradling in a duel in 1738. During the 18th century, the castle's status and condition declined and by the early 19th century it was only partly habitable. The later 19th and early 20th centuries saw several restorations. In 1852, it was purchased by John Whitlock Nicholl Carne, who claimed descent from the Stradlings but whose efforts at reconstruction were not well regarded. More en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marion Davies
Marion Davies (born Marion Cecilia Douras; January 3, 1897 – September 22, 1961) was an American actress, producer, screenwriter, and philanthropist. Educated in a religious convent, Davies fled the school to pursue a career as a chorus girl. As a teenager, she appeared in several Broadway musicals and one film, '' Runaway Romany'' (1917). She soon became a featured performer in the '' Ziegfeld Follies''. While performing in the 1916 ''Follies'', the nineteen-year-old Marion met the fifty-three-year-old newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst, and became his mistress. Hearst took over management of Davies' career and promoted her as a film actress. Hearst financed Davies' pictures and promoted her career extensively in his newspapers and Hearst newsreels. He founded Cosmopolitan Pictures to produce her films. By 1924, Davies was the number one female box office star in Hollywood because of the popularity of '' When Knighthood Was in Flower'' and '' Little Old New York'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboyant methods of yellow journalism influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 with Mitchell Trubitt after being given control of ''The San Francisco Examiner'' by his wealthy father, Senator George Hearst. After moving to New York City, Hearst acquired the '' New York Journal'' and fought a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's '' New York World''. Hearst sold papers by printing giant headlines over lurid stories featuring crime, corruption, sex, and innuendos. Hearst acquired more newspapers and created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the 20th century's most distinguished writers and artists, including Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon—who were among her lovers—as well as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Constantin Brâncuși, Langston Hughes, Man Ray and William Carlos Williams. MI5 documents reveal that she was involved with Indian socialist leader V. K. Krishna Menon. In later years she suffered from mental illness, and her physical health deteriorated. When she died in the Hôpital Cochin, Paris, she weighed only 26 kg (57 pounds / 4 stone, 1lb). 1910s Her father was Sir Bache Cunard, an heir to the Cunard Line shipping businesses, interested in polo and fox hunting, and a baronet. Her mother was Maud Alice Burke, an Ame ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John. Early life Born in Tenby, at 11,12 or 13 The Esplanade, now known as The Belgrave Hotel, Pembrokeshire, John was the younger son and third of four children. His father was Edwin William John, a Welsh solicitor; his mother, Augusta Smith, from a long line of Sussex master plumbers, died young when he was six, but not before inculcating a love of drawing in both Augustus and his older sister Gwen. At the age of seventeen he briefly attended the Tenby School of Art, then left Wales for London, studying at the Slade School of Art, University College London. He became the star pupil of drawing teacher Henry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford he edited an undergraduate journal, ''The Spirit Lamp'', that carried a homoerotic subtext, and met Wilde, starting a close but stormy relationship. Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, abhorred it and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but some intimate notes were found and Wilde was later imprisoned. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas in Naples, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married a poet, Olive Custance, in 1902 and had a son, Raymond. On converting to Roman Catholicism in 1911, he repudiated homosexuality, and in a High-Catholic magazine, ''Plain English'', expressed openly anti-Semitic views, but rejected the policies of Nazi Germany. He was jailed for libelling Winston Churchill over ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine ''Oxford Poetry'', before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evan Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tredegar
Evan Frederick Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tredegar, , FAGS, FIL (13 July 1893 – 27 April 1949) was a Welsh poet and author. On 3 March 1934, he succeeded to the title of 6th Baronet Morgan, 4th Baron Tredegar, and 2nd Viscount Tredegar, after the death of his father. Life He was the son of Courtenay Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar, of Tredegar Park, Monmouthshire, Wales, and Lady Katharine Carnegie. The 13th Duke of Bedford described the Tredegar family as "the oddest family I have ever met". The 2nd Viscount was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford University. While working as private secretary to a government minister, W. C. Bridgeman, in 1917, he became friendly with another Oxford man, the poet Robert Graves, who had been a school friend of Evan's cousin, Raymond Rodakowski. They shared an interest in both poetry and the supernatural. A Roman Catholic convert, Morgan was a Chamberlain of the Sword and Cape to Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI. An accomplished occ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Courtenay Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar
Courtenay Charles Evan Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar, CBE, KStJ, VD (10 April 1867 – 3 May 1934), was a Welsh peer. Morgan was born at Ruperra Castle near Newport, Monmouthshire, and educated at Eton College.Published under Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. He was the eldest son of the Honourable Frederick Courtenay Morgan, of Ruperra Castle, third son of Charles Morgan, 1st Baron Tredegar. His mother was Charlotte Anne, daughter of Charles Alexander Williamson, of Lawers, Perthshire. He succeeded his uncle Godfrey Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar, as third Baron Tredegar in 1913. Tredegar was appointed a captain in the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers on 30 December 1891, and was later promoted an honorary major. In early 1900 he was Aide-de-camp to Sir Thomas Fraser, Commandant Royal School of Military Engineering at Chatham and Commanding the Thames District. Tredegar was a minor cricketer who played at county level for Shropshire between 1896 and 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Courtenay Morgan
Colonel Frederick Courtenay Morgan (24 May 1834 – 8 January 1909) was a Welsh Army officer and Conservative politician. Biography Morgan was the son of Charles Morgan, 1st Baron Tredegar, 3rd Bt., by his wife Rosamund Mundy. Morgan was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1853 and fought in the Crimean War. He was promoted lieutenant in 1854 and captain in 1855. In 1860 he left the Regular Army and joined the 2nd Monmouthshire (1st Newport) Rifle Volunteers, becoming lieutenant-colonel commanding the 1st Administrative Battalion of the Monmouthshire Rifle Volunteers later the same year. He resigned his commission in 1873. He later commanded the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the South Wales Borderers and was promoted colonel. Morgan was elected Member of Parliament for Monmouthshire in the 1874 general election and held it until the reorganisation under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. In the 1885 general election, he was elected MP for South Monmouthshire. He was re-e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
