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Verulam House, St Albans (17th Century)
Verulam House was a building in St Albans, built by Francis Bacon to supplement his family home of Gorhambury. The main source describing it is John Aubrey's ''Brief Lives'' (1669-1696). It was named after Verulamium, the ancient Roman city of St Albans, though it was not sited within that city's walls as Aubrey asserted. History Bacon completed it around 1617, partly motivated by a drought which starved the advanced plumbing system built at Gorhambury by his father - Bacon stated that "since he could not carry the water to his house, he would carry his house to the water". He picked a site next to water gardens he had already constructed and Aubrey writes that he was assisted in the designs by the father of the painter William Dobson. Again according to Aubrey, it cost £9000-£10,000 and included underground larders, an underground kitchen and two rooms for Turkish baths. Bacon died childless and so his will conveyed Verulam House to trustees for the use of his secretary Thom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St Albans
St Albans () is a cathedral city in Hertfordshire, England, east of Hemel Hempstead and west of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Hatfield, north-west of London, south-west of Welwyn Garden City and south-east of Luton. St Albans was the first major town on the old Roman Britain, Roman road of Watling Street for travellers heading north and became the city of Verulamium. It is within the London commuter belt and the Greater London Built-up Area. Name St Albans takes its name from the first British saint, Saint Alban, Alban. The most elaborate version of his story, in Bede's ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'', relates that he lived in Verulamium, sometime during the 3rd or 4th century, when Christians were suffering persecution. Alban met a Christian priest fleeing from his persecutors and sheltered him in his house, where he became so impressed with the priest's piety that he converted to Christianity. When the authorities searched Alban's house, he put on the priest's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of natural philosophy, guided by the scientific method, and his works remained influential throughout the Scientific Revolution. Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. He argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only upon inductive reasoning and careful observation of events in nature. He believed that science could be achieved by the use of a sceptical and methodical approach whereby scientists aim to avoid misleading themselves. Although his most specific proposals about such a method, the Baconian method, did not have long-lasting influence, the general idea of the importance and possibility of a sceptical methodology makes Bacon one of the later founders of the scientific method. His portion of the method based in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Gorhambury House
Old Gorhambury House located near St Albans, Hertfordshire, England, is a ruined Elizabethan mansion, a leading and early example of the Elizabethan prodigy house. History The old house It was built in 1563–68 by Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, and was visited a number of times by Queen Elizabeth I. It is a Grade I listed building. The house was built partly from bricks taken from the old Abbey buildings at St Albans, then in process of demolition following the Benedictine priory's dissolution some 25 years earlier. It was used as a residence by his youngest son, the polymath (scientist, philosopher, statesman and essayist) Sir Francis Bacon, before being bequeathed by him to his former secretary, Sir Thomas Meautys, who married Anne Bacon, the great-granddaughter of Sir Nicholas. The estate passed in 1652 to Anne's second husband Sir Harbottle Grimston, Master of the Rolls and Speaker in the Convention Parliament of 1660. The estate is owned by the Grimston famil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Aubrey
John Aubrey (12 March 1626 – 7 June 1697) was an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer. He was a pioneer archaeologist, who recorded (often for the first time) numerous megalithic and other field monuments in southern England, and who is particularly noted for his systematic examination of the Avebury henge monument. The Aubrey holes at Stonehenge are named after him, although there is considerable doubt as to whether the holes that he observed are those that currently bear the name. He was also a pioneer folklorist, collecting together a miscellany of material on customs, traditions and beliefs under the title "Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme". He set out to compile county histories of both Wiltshire and Surrey, although both projects remained unfinished. His "Interpretation of Villare Anglicanum" (also unfinished) was the first attempt to compile a full-length study of English place-names. He had wider interests in applied mathematics and astronomy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brief Lives
''Brief Lives'' is a collection of short biographies written by John Aubrey (1626–1697) in the last decades of the 17th century. Writing Aubrey initially began collecting biographical material to assist the Oxford scholar Anthony Wood, who was working on his own collection of biographies. With time, Aubrey's biographical researches went beyond mere assistance to Wood and became a project in its own right. Aubrey was careful, wherever possible, to seek out and talk with those who had been acquainted with his subjects. His sociable nature and his wide circle of friends helped him in this pursuit. At his death, Aubrey left his biographical writings in a state of chaos. It has been the task of later editors to organise the manuscripts (held at the Bodleian Library) into readable form. Afterlife Aubrey's ''Brief Lives'' has been loved for generations for its colourful gossipy tone and for the glimpses it provides of the unofficial sides of its subjects. Aubrey's use of informan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verulamium
Verulamium was a town in Roman Britain. It was sited southwest of the modern city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, England. The major ancient Roman route Watling Street passed through the city, but was realigned in medieval times to bring trade to St Albans. It was about a day's walk from London. A large portion of the Roman city remains unexcavated, being now park and agricultural land, although due to ploughing on the privately owned agricultural half of the city a lot of damage has been done, as proven by parts of mosaic floors that have been found on the surface, and results of ground penetrating radar show outlines of buildings as smudges rather than clearly defined walls like those protected by the parkland. Part of the Roman city has been built upon, such as the small settlement around the Anglo-Saxon St Michael's Church. Much of the site and its environs is now a scheduled monument. History Before the Romans established their settlement, there was already a tribal ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Dobson
William Dobson (4 March 1611 (baptised); 28 October 1646 (buried)) was a portraitist and one of the first significant English painters, praised by his contemporary John Aubrey as "''the most excellent painter that England has yet bred''". He died relatively young and his final years were disrupted by the English Civil War. Biography Dobson was born in London, the son of a lawyer also called William Dobson. He was baptised at St Andrew Holborn (church), St Andrew's Holborn.Biography used for television series Retrieved 10 May 2021. He was apprenticed to William Peake and probably later joined the studio of Francis Cleyn. There is a claim that his father was a decorative artist, but this may be a misreading of the single known quote about Dobson Sr, by the antiquarian John Aubrey, which states that William senior assi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turkish Baths
A hammam (), also often called a Turkish bath by Westerners, is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world. It is a prominent feature in the culture of the Muslim world and was inherited from the model of the Roman ''thermae.'' Muslim bathhouses or hammams were historically found across the Middle East, North Africa, al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia, i.e. Spain and Portugal), Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and in Southeastern Europe under Ottoman rule. In Islamic cultures the significance of the hammam was both religious and civic: it provided for the needs of ritual ablutions but also provided for general hygiene in an era before private plumbing and served other social functions such as offering a gendered meeting place for men and for women. Archeological remains attest to the existence of bathhouses in the Islamic world as early as the Umayyad period (7th–8th centuries) and their importance has persisted up to modern times. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Meautys
Sir Thomas Meautys (1592–1649) was an English civil servant and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1621 and 1640. Biography Meautys was the son of Thomas Meautys of West Ham and of St Julian's Hospital, Hertfordshire, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Coningsby of North Mimms. His elder brother, Henry, was also a Member of Parliament. He became the private secretary to Francis Bacon. In 1619, he was made clerk to His Majesty's Council. He is credited, with William Rawley, as being one of two key clients of Bacon who remained loyal to the former Lord Chancellor in his disgrace. Meautys eventually paid for a funerary monument to Bacon at his gravesite in St. Albans. After Bacon's fall, Meautys became a protégé of Lord Keeper Coventry, High Steward of Cambridge from 1626 to 1640. In 1621, Meautys was made a freeman and elected an alderman of Cambridge. On the same day, he was elected Member of Parliament for Cambridge. He was a clerk of the Priv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Harbottle Grimston, 2nd Baronet
Sir Harbottle Grimston, 2nd Baronet (27 January 1603 – 2 January 1685) was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1685 and was Speaker in 1660. During the English Civil War he remained a Parliamentarian but was sympathetic to the Royalists. Life Grimston was born at Bradfield Hall, near Manningtree, the son of Sir Harbottle Grimston, 1st Baronet (d. 1648). He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and became a barrister of Lincoln's Inn. He was recorder of Harwich and recorder of Colchester and elected MP for Harwich in 1628. As member for Colchester, Grimston sat in the Short Parliament of 1640, and he represented the same borough during the Long Parliament, speedily becoming a leading member of the popular party. He attacked Archbishop Laud with great vigour and was a member of the important committees of the parliament, including the one appointed in consequence of the attempted seizure of the five member ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Civil War
The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the struggle consisted of the First English Civil War and the Second English Civil War. The Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652), Anglo-Scottish War of 1650 to 1652 is sometimes referred to as the ''Third English Civil War.'' While the conflicts in the three kingdoms of England, Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland and Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland had similarities, each had their own specific issues and objectives. The First English Civil War was fought primarily over the correct balance of power between Parliament of England, Parliament and Charles I of England, Charles I. It ended in June 1646 with Royalist defeat and the king in custody. However, victory exposed Parliamentarian divisions over the nature of the political settlemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
