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Caxton Street
Caxton Street is a street in the City of Westminster in London that runs between Buckingham Gate in the west and Broadway, Westminster, Broadway in the east. It is joined on the north side by Vandon Street and crossed by Palmer Street. The street was once named Little Chapel Street. The street is named after William Caxton, who introduced the printing press to England. Caxton had worked near the site of the street in the almonry of Westminster Abbey. It is the location of the grade I listed Blewcoat School, grade II listed Caxton Hall, and previously, the National Map Centre. Alliance House, an eight-storey office block at number 12, on the corner with Palmer Street, opened in November 1938, with the demolition of the Westminster Hospital Medical School building, site clearance and construction, all being completed in under 12 months. It is the headquarters of the United Kingdom Alliance temperance movement, with a large meeting room, Alliance Hall, and much of the building le ...
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Grade II Listed
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Historic Environment Division of the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland. The classification schemes differ between England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland (see sections below). The term has also been used in the Republic of Ireland, where buildings are protected under the Planning and Development Act 2000, although the statutory term in Ireland is " protected structure". A listed building may not be demolished, extended, or altered without permission from the local planning authority, which typically consults the relevant central government agency. In England and Wales, a national amenity society must be notified of any work to be done on a listed building ...
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Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been the most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets. Born in British India, Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934. After leaving Cambridge, Philby worked as a journalist, covering the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of France. In 1940, he began working for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). By the end of the Second World War he had become a high-ranking member. In 1949, Philby was appointed first secretary to the British Embassy in Washington and served as chief British liaison with Americ ...
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Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards. The general public first became aware of the conspiracy in 1951 after the sudden flight of Donald Maclean (1913–1983, codename Homer) and Guy Burgess (1911–1963, codename Hicks) to the Soviet Union. Suspicion immediately fell on Kim Philby (1912–1988, codenames Sonny, Stanley), who eventually fled to the Soviet Union in 1963. Following Philby's flight, British intelligence obtained confessions from Anthony Blunt (1907–1983, codename Johnson) and then John Cairncross (1913–1995, codename Liszt), who have come to be seen as the last two of a group of five. Their involvement was kept secret for many years: until 1979 for Blun ...
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Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local Resistance during World War II, resistance movements during World War II. SOE personnel operated in all territories occupied or attacked by the Axis powers, except where demarcation lines were agreed upon with Britain's principal Allies of World War II, Allies, the United States and the Soviet Union. SOE made use of neutral territory on occasion, or made plans and preparations in case neutral countries were attacked by the Axis. The organisation directly employed or controlled more than 13,000 people, of whom 3,200 were women. Both men and women served as agents in Axis-occupied countries. The organisation was dissolved in 1946. A memorial to those who served in SOE was unveiled in 1996 on the wall of the west cloister of Westminster Abbey by the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Queen Mother, and in 2009 on t ...
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St Ermin's Hotel
St. Ermin's Hotel is a four-star central London hotel adjacent to St James's Park Underground station, close to Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament. The Grade II-listed late Victorian building, built as one of the early mansion blocks in the English capital, is thought to be named after an ancient monastery reputed to have occupied the site pre-10th century. Converted to a hotel in 1896–1899, it became a noted haunt of the British intelligence services from the 1930s onward, notably being the birthplace of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and the liaison point between Cambridge Five double agents Philby and MacLean and their Soviet handlers. St Ermin's is now part of Marriott Hotels' Autograph Collection. The hotel is owned by the family of Tei-Fu Chen, founder of Sunrider International. Background St. Ermin's Hotel in St James's Park, London, was originally a horse-shoe shaped mansion block built in 1887–1889 to the designs o ...
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United Kingdom Alliance
The United Kingdom Alliance (UKA) was a British temperance organisation. It was founded in 1853 in Manchester to work for the prohibition of the trade in alcohol in the United Kingdom. This occurred in a context of support for the type of law passed by General Neal Dow in Maine, United States, in 1851, prohibiting the sale of intoxicants. Early history The idea was initiated by Nathaniel Card (1805–1856), an Irish cotton manufacturer and member of the Society of Friends. He had earlier been a member of the Manchester and Salford Temperance Society, and had taken his inspiration from the success of what later became known as the Maine law. At a private meeting at Card's house on 20 July 1852, the National League for the Total and Legal Suppression of Intemperance was formed. Those present included Joseph Brotherton Member of Parliament for Salford and his cousin Alderman William Hervey, also of Salford. At a subsequent meeting of the League they formed a Provisional Commi ...
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Westminster Hospital Medical School
The Westminster Hospital Medical School was one of the constituent medical schools of Imperial College School of Medicine. It was formally founded in 1834 by George Guthrie, an ex-military surgeon – although students had been taken on at Westminster Hospital almost from the hospital's foundation in 1719. The hospital and medical school moved to larger buildings several times in the decades that followed, leading to conflict among the staff on several occasions. Guthrie's forceful urgings on retaining the location of the hospital and school on one occasion resulted in an argument climaxing in a pistol duel between two surgeons (though each missed each other). One early Westminster student was John Snow, later the founder of modern epidemiology. In 1905, the teaching of pre-clinical subjects ended at Westminster, and moved to King's College. The school was taken over by the army in 1914 to train pathologists for the war effort. Student numbers and the school suffered as a res ...
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National Map Centre
National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, census-designated place * National, Nevada, ghost town * National, Utah, ghost town * National, West Virginia, unincorporated community Commerce * National (brand), a brand name of electronic goods from Panasonic * National Benzole (or simply known as National), former petrol station chain in the UK, merged with BP * National Book Store, a bookstore and office supplies chain in the Philippines * National Car Rental, an American rental car company * National Energy Systems, a former name of Eco Marine Power * National Entertainment Commission, a former name of the Media Rating Council * National Motor Vehicle Company, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 1900–1924 * National Radio Company, Malden, Massachusetts, USA 1914–1991 * National Supermarket ...
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Caxton Hall
Caxton Hall is a building on the corner of Caxton Street and Palmer Street, in Westminster, London, England. It is a Grade II listed building primarily noted for its historical associations. It hosted many mainstream and fringe political and artistic events and after the Second World War was the most popular register office used by high society and celebrities who required a civil marriage. History of the structure Following a design competition set by the parishes of St Margaret and St John, the chosen design was a proposal by William Lee and F.J. Smith in an ornate Francois I style using red brick and pink sandstone, with slate roofs. The foundation stone was laid by the philanthropist, Baroness Burdett-Coutts, on 29 March 1882. The facility, which contained two public halls known as the Great and York Halls, was opened as "Westminster Town Hall" in 1883.
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Blewcoat School
Blewcoat School is a building in Caxton Street, London, that was built in 1709 as a school for the poor (a Bluecoat school). It was used as a school until 1926. In 1954, it was purchased by the National Trust who used it as a gift shop and information centre. In 2013 the building was refurbished as The Blewcoat, a store for fashion designer Ian Stuart. School The school was founded in Duck Lane in about 1688 by voluntary subscription as a charity school for the education of poor boys to teach them reading, writing, religion, and trades. It moved to purpose-built premises in Caxton Street. From 1714 to about 1876, it also admitted girls. In 1899, it was agreed that the school should move to a site that had been owned by the Christ Church National Schools Trust, and the Caxton Street site was then used for an elementary school. The school closed in 1926. Later uses During World War II, the building was used by the American services as a store. Afterwards, the Girl Guides used ...
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Map Of Caxton Street, London
A map is a symbolic depiction of interrelationships, commonly spatial, between things within a space. A map may be annotated with text and graphics. Like any graphic, a map may be fixed to paper or other durable media, or may be displayed on a transitory medium such as a computer screen. Some maps change interactively. Although maps are commonly used to depict geography, geographic elements, they may represent any space, real or fictional. The subject being mapped may be two-dimensional such as Earth's surface, three-dimensional such as Earth's interior, or from an abstract space of any dimension. Maps of geographic territory have a very long tradition and have existed from ancient times. The word "map" comes from the , wherein ''mappa'' meant 'napkin' or 'cloth' and ''mundi'' 'of the world'. Thus, "map" became a shortened term referring to a flat representation of Earth's surface. History Maps have been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowin ...
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