3385 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Buckingham Palace

The London residence and administrative headquarters of the monarchy of the United Kingdom, but also the centre of state occasions and royal hospitality, Buckingham Palace is located in the City of Westminster and has 775 rooms and the largest private garden in London. The state rooms, used for official and state entertaining, are open to the public each year for most of August and September and on some days in winter and spring. When paying a state visit to Britain, foreign heads of state are usually entertained by the Queen at Buckingham Palace

3272 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Lincoln Cathedral

 

Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln Minster, or the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln, in Lincoln (Lincolnshire in the East Midlands of England), is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Lincoln. It is one of the few English cathedrals built from the rock it is standing on, and has owned the existing quarry, on Riseholme Road, since 1876. This quarry is expected to run out of stone in 2021, because the stonemasons use more than 100 tonnes of stone per year for maintenance and repairs.

3192 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Mary Rose

Launched in 1511, during the reign of King Henry VIII, the Mary Rose was named after the King's younger sister, Mary Tudor (1496-1533), who was later briefly Queen of France. The rose was the emblem of the Tudors. She was a carrack-type warship, with high "castles" in the bow and stern with a low waist of open decking in the middle. The shape of the hull has a so-called tumblehome form and reflected the use of the ship as a platform for heavy guns.

3161 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - HMS Victory

3161 Starboard side of H.M.S. Victory

HMS Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, and one of the most famous warships ever launched. Ordered in 1758, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765, she was placed in active service after France joined the American War of Independence in 1778. Over time she served as Keppel's flagship at Ushant, Howe's flagship at Cape Spartel, and Jervis's flagship at Cape St Vincent, but she is best known for her role as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

3080 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Osmington White Horse

The Osmington White Horse is a hill figure cut into the limestone of Osmington Hill just north of Weymouth in 1808. The figure is of King George III riding his horse and can be seen for miles around. The king was a regular visitor to Weymouth and made it 'the first resort'. The figure is 85m long and 98m high and was restored in 1989 for a broadcast of the TV show Challenge Anneka, although the work was subsequently criticised by historians for doing more harm than good. Anneka Rice.

0093, 0223, 0774, 1330, 2892 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Stonehenge - part of Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites (UNESCO WHS)

2892 Stonehenge during a storm

Posted on 08.01.2012, 26.05.2012, 30.07.2013, 09.11.2014, 05.12.2016
I don't know if Stonehenge is the most important megalithic construction which survived the history, but certainly is the best known and most intensively researched. Located in the county of Wiltshire, at about 13km north of Salisbury, in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds, Stonehenge assembly consists of four concentric circles made of standing stones set within earthworks.

2892 Stonehenge during a storm (left)

 

The outer circle (Sarsen Circle), about 33m in diameter, was originally comprised of 30 neatly trimmed upright sandstone blocks (of which only 17 are now standing), above which were placed as lintels some other blocks, circular arc-shaped. Inside is another circle of eggplant stone blocks. They surround a horseshoe-shaped arrangement, built also of eggplant stone, within which is a sandstone slab mecacee called the Altar Stone.

2892 Stonehenge during a storm (center)

The whole construction is surrounded by a circular ditch measuring 104m in diameter. Inside stands a sandbank which contains 56 tombs, known as the Aubrey holes (named after the discoverer). The embankment and the ditch are intersected by a processional path 23m wide and almost 3km long, Stonehenge Avenue, which connects Stonehenge with the River Avon, and the small henge on its bank, discovered in 2008, at West Amesbury. 

2892 Stonehenge during a storm (right)

Near the entrance to the Avenue is Slaughter Stone (a fallen sarsen that once stood upright with one or two other stones across the entrance causeway), and on the other side is the Heelstone, a single huge unshaped sarsen boulder. The main axis of the stones is aligned upon the solstitial axis. At midsummer, the sun rises over the horizon to the north-east, close to the Heel Stone. At midwinter, the sun sets in the south-west, in the gap between the two tallest trilithons, one of which has now fallen.

0223 Stonehenge at sunset

With regard to construction's purpose, opinions are divided, the most important theories circulated claiming that Stonehenge have served as a burial ground, as a place of healing, as part of a ritual landscape or have a celestial observatory function. Even I'm not historian, may have my own opinion, isn't it? Personally I believe that the people who have built it (between 3100 and 1600 BC) just don't thinking like us, ie they not separate the sides of existence as we do, but they viewed things globally.

0774 Stonehenge in summertime

Surrounding universe didn't have for them a sacred dimension and a profran one, but life, death, nature, cosmos, divinity was closely entwined, forming a inseparable whole. As a result I don't think there was a space where they worshiped gods, another in which they buried the dead, another in which they made astronomical observations and so on, but there was only one site (like Stonehenge) which served all these types of activities. Anyway, many aspects of Stonehenge remain subject to debate.

1330 Stonehenge in springtime

 

Throughout the 20th century, Stonehenge began to be revived as a place of religious significance, this time by adherents of Neopagan and New Age beliefs, particularly the Neo-druids. The historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that "it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it." The first such Neo-druidic group to make use of the megalithic monument was the Ancient Order of Druids, who performed a mass initiation ceremony there in August 1905.

0093 Stonehenge in wintertime

Between 1972 and 1984, Stonehenge was the site of the Stonehenge Free Festival, culminating with the summer solstice on or near June 21. It emerged as the major free festival in the calendar after the violent suppression of the Windsor Free Festival in August 1974. After the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985, this use of the site was stopped for several years and ritual use of Stonehenge is now heavily restricted. Some Druids have arranged an assembling of monuments styled on Stonehenge in other parts of the world as a form of Druidist worship.

2836 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - China Miéville

China Tom Miéville is an English fantasy fiction author, comic writer, political activist and academic. He often describes his work as weird fiction and specifically to the loosely associated movement of writers sometimes called New Weird. Born in Norwich, Miéville was brought up in Willesden, northwest London, and has lived in the city since early childhood. He grew up with his sister Jemima and mother Claudia, a translator, writer and teacher. By virtue of his mother's birth in New York City, Miéville holds dual American and British citizenship.

2630 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - The red double decker buses of London

London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with about 8,500 buses, more than 700 bus routes and around 19,500 bus stops. In 2013, the network had more than 2 billion commuter trips per annum, more than the Underground. The distinctive red double-decker buses have become a national symbol of England and United Kingdom, and are an internationally recognised trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.

2427 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Birmingham

Located in West Midlands, Birmingham is the largest and most populous British city outside London. A medium-sized market town in the medieval period, it grew to international prominence in the 18th century at the heart of the Midlands Enlightenment and subsequent Industrial Revolution, which saw the town at the forefront of worldwide advances in science, technology and economic development. By 1791 it was being hailed as "the first manufacturing town in the world".

2409 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Hereford Cathedral

Located on the River Wye, approximately 26km east of the border with Wales, Hereford has been recognised as a city since time immemorial. A town charter from 1189 granted by Richard I of England describes it as "Hereford in Wales". Its cathedral dates from 1079, and is dedicated to two patron saints, namely Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint Ethelbert the King. The latter was beheaded by Offa, King of Mercia in the year 792, at Sutton Walls, 6km from Hereford.

2290 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Anne Hathaway's Cottage and Gardens

Anne Hathaway's Cottage is a twelve-roomed farmhouse where Anne Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare, lived as a child in the hamlet of Shottery, Warwickshire, England, about 1.6km west of Stratford-upon-Avon. The earliest part of the house was built prior to the 15th century; the higher part is 17th century. It had more than 36 hectares of land attached to it, being known as Hewlands Farm in Shakespeare's day, so to call it a cottage is a misnomer, as it is much larger than the term usually means.

1964 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Cambridge

Cambridge: 1. Queens' Mathematical Bridge; 2. King's College Chapel;
3. St. John's College; 4. The ubiquitous bicycle.

Located in East Anglia, on the River Cam, at about 80km north of London, Cambridge is a university city, widely known as the home of the University of Cambridge, founded in 1209 and consistently ranked one of the top five universities in the world. The area was inhabited since the Bronze Age and then in Roman times, but only under Viking rule it became an important trading centre. The first town charters were granted in the 12th century, but city status wasn't conferred until 1951.

1852 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - The map of Cornwall

Cornwall is a ceremonial county of England, located in a peninsula bordered by the Celtic Sea, the English Channel, and the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. It has a population of 536,000, its administrative centre, and only city in Cornwall, being Truro, although the town of St Austell has the largest population. The Duchy of Cornwall is one of two royal duchies in England, the other being the Duchy of Lancaster. The eldest son of the reigning British monarch inherits possession of the duchy and title of Duke of Cornwall. The current duke is Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales.

1506 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Barnsley Road, Stairfoot, circa 1900-1910

Barnsley Road, Stairfoot, circa 1900-1910

Now, Ardsley is a small village approximately 5km east from Barnsley and forms part of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley of South Yorkshire. The earliest written evidence for the existence of Ardsley dates from the 12th century, and its name derives from the Saxon word leah (meaning a forest clearing or meadow), together with the personal name Eored, therefore means "Eored’s forest clearing". Stairfoot is also an urban village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, surrounded by Kendray and Ardsley, which gets its name from a house called "the Stares Foot" which stood very close to the Black Bull. The original "stair" was probably a stepped causeway built for the packhorses on the salt route from Cheshire to Doncaster (now the main Doncaster Road, which lead into Barnsley town centre).

1436 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Map of South Devon

Devon (archaically known as Devonshire) is a county in South West England, reaching from the Bristol Channel to the English Channel. It is divided informally into North Devon and South Devon. In a narrower sense "South Devon" is used to refer to the part of Devon south of Exeter and Dartmoor,  including Plymouth, Torbay and the districts of South Hams, West Devon and Teignbridge. Its name derives from Dumnonia, the homeland of the Dumnonii Celts. The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain resulted in the partial assimilation of Dumnonia into the Kingdom of Wessex during the 8th and 9th centuries. The border with Cornwall was set by King Æthelstan on the east bank of the River Tamar in 936 AD. The county town is Exeter, in antiquity the most south-westerly Roman fortified settlement in Britain.

1425 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - The Old Light on Lundy Island

Lundy is the largest island in the Bristol Channel, lying 19km off the coast of Devon, approximately one third of the distance across the channel between England and Wales. It is 5 km long from north to south by about 1.2 km wide, and its highest point is at 142m. There are two ways to get to Lundy, in the summer months with a passenger ferry, and in the winter months with the helicopter. As of 2007, there was a resident population of 28 people, including volunteers (it is a Marine Conservation Zone, because of its unique flora and fauna). There are 23 holiday properties and a camp site for visitors. Its history, begun in Neolithic, was extremely interesting and tumultuous. It was along time a refuge for people in trouble with the rules and even with the law, a source of problems and disputes.

0831 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Winter light over Oxford

Even if in nowadays has a diverse economic base, Oxford is known worldwide mainly as a university town and home of the University of Oxford, the oldest in the country and in the English-speaking world. Its buildings demonstrate examples of every English architectural period since the arrival of the Saxons, being known as the "city of dreaming spires", a term coined by Matthew Arnold in reference to the harmonious architecture of Oxford's university. This postcard illustrates well what wanted to say the poet.

0762 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Canterbury Cathedral, St. Augustine's Abbey, and St. Martin's Church (UNESCO WHS)

In 597 arrived in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Kent Saint Augustine, with 40 monks and some Frankish priests, sent by Pope to Christianize Bretwalda (King) Æthelberht, who was married a Christian princess, Bertha, daughter of Charibert I the King of Paris. Because the main town of the kingdom was Canterbury, the saint founded an episcopal see here and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, a position that now heads the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Because Christ Church Cathedral, the ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey, and St Martin’s Church "reflect milestones in the history of Christianity in Britain", they were included among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1988.