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St Mark's Church, Swindon
St Mark's Church in central Swindon, Wiltshire, England is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Swindon, the archdeaconry of Malmesbury, and the diocese of Bristol. Its benefice is united with those of St Aldhelm, Swindon, St Luke, Swindon, and St Saviour, Swindon, to form the benefice of Swindon New Town. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade II listed building. History St Mark's was built to serve workers of the Great Western Railway, whose Swindon Works were nearby. George Henry Gibbs, the head of the merchant bank Anthony Gibbs & Sons who died in 1842, bequeathed £500 towards building a church and a school in the town. In February 1843, the railway company appealed for contributions from the public, and a total of £6,000 (equivalent to £ in ) was raised to build the church. The church was designed by George Gilbert Scott and William Moffatt, and built between 1843 and 1845. It was dedicated to St Mark on 25 April 1845 ...
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Swindon
Swindon () is a town in Wiltshire, England. At the time of the 2021 Census the population of the built-up area was 183,638, making it the largest settlement in the county. Located at the northeastern edge of the South West England region, Swindon lies on the M4 corridor, 84 miles (135 km) to the west of London and 36 miles (57 km) to the east of Bristol. The Cotswolds lie just to the town's north and the North Wessex Downs to its south. Recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as ''Suindune'', the arrival of the Great Western Railway in 1843 transformed it from a small market town of 2,500 into a thriving railway hub that would become one of the largest Swindon Works, railway engineering complexes in the world at its peak. This brought with it pioneering amenities such as the UK's first lending library and a 'cradle-to-grave' healthcare centre that was later used as a blueprint for the NHS. Swindon's railway heritage can be primarily seen today with the grade 2 listed Railway Villag ...
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Paul Thomas (bishop)
Paul Richard Thomas SSC (born 1975) is a British Anglican bishop who has served as Bishop of Oswestry, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Lichfield, and the provincial episcopal visitor for the western half of the Province of Canterbury (a position formerly held by the Bishop of Ebbsfleet) since February 2023. From 2011, he was vicar of St James's Church, Paddington. Early life and education Thomas was born in 1975 and raised in Carmarthenshire, Wales. He studied medieval English at Cardiff University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1996. He continued his studies and graduated with a Master of Arts (MA) degree in 1998 or 1999. He trained for ordained ministry at Ripon College Cuddesdon, a theological college near Oxford. He graduated with a further BA in 2001 and an MA in 2006. In 1992 while at high school, he was a contestant on the TV quiz show '' Blockbusters''. Ordained ministry Thomas was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 200 ...
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Ordination Of Women
The ordination of women to Minister of religion, ministerial or priestly office is an increasingly common practice among some contemporary major religious groups. It remains a controversial issue in certain religious groups in which ordination was traditionally reserved for men. Where laws prohibit Anti-discrimination law, sex discrimination in employment, exceptions are often made for clergy (for example in the United States) on grounds of Separation of church and state in the United States, separation of church and state. In some cases, women have been permitted to be ordained, but not to hold higher positions, such as (until July 2014) that of bishop in the Church of England. Ancient pagan religions Sumer and Akkad Sumerian and Akkadian Empire, Akkadian ''EN (cuneiform), EN'' were top-ranking priestesses distinguished by special ceremonial attire and holding equal status to high priests. They owned property, transacted business, and initiated the ''hieros gamos'' ceremony ...
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Churchmanship
Churchmanship (also churchpersonship, or tradition in most official contexts) is a way of talking about and labelling different tendencies, parties, or schools of thought within the Church of England and the sister churches of the Anglican Communion. The term has been used in Lutheranism in a similar fashion. Anglicanism In Anglicanism parties can include, from highest to lowest, Anglo-Papalist, Anglo-Catholic, Prayer Book Catholic, Old High/ Center, Broad, Low/Evangelical. The term is derived from the older noun ''churchman'', which originally meant an ecclesiastic or clergyman but, some while before 1677, it was extended to people who were strong supporters of the Church of England and, by the nineteenth century, was used to distinguish between Anglicans and Dissenters. The word "churchmanship" itself was first used in 1680 to refer to the attitude of these supporters but later acquired its modern meaning. While many Anglicans are content to label their own churchmansh ...
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Vestry
A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government of a parish in England, Wales and some English colony, English colonies. At their height, the vestries were the only form of local government in many places and spent nearly one-fifth of the budget of the British government. They were stripped of their secular functions in 1894 (1900 in London) and were abolished in 1921. The term ''vestry'' remains in use outside of England and Wales to refer to the elected governing body and legal representative of a parish church, for example in the Episcopal Church (United States), American and Scottish Episcopal Churches. Etymology The word vestry comes from Norman language, Anglo-Norman vesterie, from Old French ''vestiaire'', ultimately from Latin language, Latin ''vestiarium'' ‘wardrobe’. In a church building a Sacristy, vestry (also known as a sacristy) is a secure room for the storage or religious valuables and for changing into vestments. The vestry m ...
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Antony Gibbs & Sons
Antony Gibbs & Sons was a British trading company, which was founded by Antony Gibbs in 1808 in London. The company's interests spanned trading in cloth, fruit, wine, guano, and nitrate, which led to it becoming involved in banking, shipping and insurance. Having been family-owned from its foundation, by the turn of the 20th century it was focused on banking and insurance rather than import and export. Floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1973, it was bought by HSBC in 1981 and formed the basis of its insurance broking arm, now part of global insurance company Marsh McLennan. Antony Gibbs (1756–1815) Early life Antony Gibbs was born in Exeter, Devon; he was the third son of Dr. George Abraham Gibbs (1718–1794), from Clyst St George, Devon, Chief Surgeon at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. After leaving Exeter Grammar School, Antony Gibbs was apprenticed to merchant Nicholas Brooke, whose firm exported locally made woollen cloth to Spain. Brooke sent Antony ...
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Swindon Works
Swindon Works was opened by the Great Western Railway in 1843 in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It served as the principal west England maintenance centre until closed in 1986. History In 1835, Parliament approved the construction of the Great Western Main Line between Paddington railway station, London and Bristol Temple Meads railway station, Bristol by the Great Western Railway (GWR). Its Chief Engineer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel. From 1836, Brunel had been buying locomotives from various makers for the new railway. Brunel's general specifications gave the locomotive makers a free hand in design, although subject to certain constraints such as piston speed and axle load, resulting in a diverse range of locomotives of mixed quality. In 1837, Brunel recruited Daniel Gooch and gave him the job of rectifying the heavy repair burden of the GWR's mixed bag of purchased locomotives. It became clear that the GWR needed a central repair works, so in 1840 Gooch identified a site at S ...
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Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of —later slightly widened to —but, from 1854, a series of Consolidation (business), amalgamations saw it also operate Standard gauge, standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was Nationalization, nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways. ...
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Listed Building
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 "Record of Protected Structures, 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 ...
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National Heritage List For England
The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, and registered battlefields. It is maintained by Historic England, a government body, and brings together these different designations as a single resource even though they vary in the type of legal protection afforded to them. Although not designated by Historic England, World Heritage Sites also appear on the NHLE; conservation areas do not appear since they are designated by the relevant local planning authority. The passage of the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882 established the first part of what the list is today, by granting protection to 50 prehistoric monuments. Amendments to this act increased the levels of protection and added more monuments to the list. Beginning in 1948, the Town and Country Planning Acts created the ...
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Benefice
A benefice () or living is a reward received in exchange for services rendered and as a retainer for future services. The Roman Empire used the Latin term as a benefit to an individual from the Empire for services rendered. Its use was adopted by the Western Church in the Carolingian era as a benefit bestowed by the crown or church officials. A benefice specifically from a church is called a precaria (pl. ''precariae''), such as a stipend, and one from a monarch or nobleman is usually called a fief. A benefice is distinct from an allod, in that an allod is property owned outright, not bestowed by a higher authority. Catholic Church Roman imperial origins In ancient Rome a ''benefice'' was a gift of land ( precaria) for life as a reward for services rendered, originally, to the state. The word comes from the Latin noun ''beneficium'', meaning "benefit". Carolingian era In the 8th century, using their position as Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, Carloman I and Pepin ...
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Diocese Of Bristol
The Diocese of Bristol is an ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Church of England in the Province of Canterbury, England. It is based in the city of Bristol and covers South Gloucestershire and parts of north Wiltshire, as far east as Swindon. The diocese is headed by the Bishop of Bristol and the Episcopal seat is located at the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, commonly known as Bristol Cathedral. History Until the Reformation, Bristol was part of the medieval Diocese of Worcester. Under the Suffragan Bishops Act 1534, Henry Holbeach was appointed the only suffragan bishop of Bristol in 1538 and assisted the Bishop of Worcester in overseeing the medieval diocese. Nearly two years later, Bristol became part of the newly formed Diocese of Gloucester in 1541. The following year, the Diocese of Bristol was established on 4 June 1542 and consisted of the city of Bristol together with the county of Dorset. The Diocese of Bristol continued until ...
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