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Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, are among the Royal Parks of London. The gardens are shared by the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and sit immediately to the west of Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park, in western central London known as the West End of London, West End. The gardens cover an area of 107 hectares (265 acres). The open spaces of Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park, and St. James's Park together form an almost continuous "green lung" in the heart of London. Kensington Gardens are Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England, Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Background and location Kensington Gardens are generally regarded as being the western extent of the neighbouring Hyde Park from which they were originally taken, with West Carriage Drive (The Ring) and the Serpentine Bridge forming the boundary between them. The Gardens are fence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kensington Palace From Across Long Water
Kensington is an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around west of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Gardens, containing the Albert Memorial, the Serpentine Gallery and Speke's monument. South Kensington and Gloucester Road are home to Imperial College London, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Albert Hall, Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Science Museum. The area is also home to many embassies and consulates. Name The manor of ''Chenesitone'' is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086, which in the Anglo-Saxon language means "Chenesi's ton" (homestead/settlement). One early spelling is ''Kesyngton'', as written in 1396. History The manor of Kensington, in the county of Middlesex, was one of several hundred granted by King William the Conqueror (1066–1089) to Geoffrey de Montbray (or Mowbray), Bishop of C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Bridgeman
Charles Bridgeman (1690–1738) was an English garden designer who helped pioneer the naturalistic landscape style. Although he was a key figure in the transition of English garden design from the Anglo-Dutch formality of patterned parterres and avenues to a freer style that incorporated formal, structural and wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plurale tantum, plural) are Earth, Earth's natural environments that have not been significantly modified by human impact on the environment, human activity, or any urbanization, nonurbanized land not u ... elements, Bridgeman's innovations in English landscape architecture have been somewhat eclipsed by the work of his more famous successors, William Kent and Lancelot "Capability" Brown. Career Little is recorded of the early life of Charles Bridgeman. He was born in 1690 and raised in modest circumstances. His father was a gardener who is reported to have worked at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire for the Ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Pan Statue
The statue of Peter Pan is a 1912 bronze sculpture of J. M. Barrie's character Peter Pan. It was commissioned by Barrie and made by Sir George Frampton. The original statue is displayed in Kensington Gardens in London, to the west of The Long Water, close to Barrie's former home on Bayswater Road. Barrie's stories were inspired in part by the gardens: the statue is at the place where Peter Pan lands in Barrie's 1902 book ''The Little White Bird'' after flying out of his nursery. Six other casts made by Frampton have been erected in other places around the world. Statue in Kensington Gardens The sculpture stands about high. It has a tall conical form, like a tree stump, topped by a young boy, about life size for an eight-year-old, blowing a thin musical instrument like a trumpet or flute, sometimes interpreted as pan pipes. The sides of the stump are decorated with small figures of squirrels, rabbits, mice, and fairies. Barrie had intended the boy to be based on a photograph of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hanning Speke
Captain John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15 September 1864) was an English explorer and army officer who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and was the first European to reach Lake Victoria (known to locals as ''Nam Lolwe'' in Dholuo and ''Nnalubaale'' or ''Ukerewe'' in Luganda). Life Speke was born on 4 May 1827 at Orleigh Court, Buckland Brewer, near Bideford, North Devon. In 1844 he was commissioned into the Bengal Army and posted to Company rule in India, British India, where he served in the Bengal Native Infantry, 46th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry under Hugh Gough, 1st Viscount Gough, Sir Hugh Gough during the Punjab campaign and under Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde, Sir Colin Campbell during the First Anglo-Sikh War. He was promoted lieutenant in 1850 and captain in 1852. He spent his leave exploring the Himalayan Mountains and Mount Everest and once crossed into Tibet. In 1854 h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serpentine Gallery
The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Westminster, Greater London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, and Serpentine North, previously known as the Sackler Gallery. The gallery spaces are within five minutes' walk of each other, linked by the bridge over the Serpentine Lake from which the galleries get their names. Their exhibitions, architecture, education and public programmes attract up to 1.2 million visitors a year. Admission to both galleries is free. The CEO is Bettina Korek, and the artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist. Serpentine South Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, was established in 1970 and is housed in a listed building, Grade II listed former tea pavilion built in 1933–34 by the architect James Grey West. Notable artists whose works have been exhibited there include Man Ray, Henry Moore, Je ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941. It is host to more than 390 shows in the main auditorium annually, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, sports, awards ceremonies, school and community events, and charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. Over its 153-year history, the hall has hosted people from various fields, including meetings held by suffragettes, speeches from Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Albert Einstein, fights by Lennox Lewis, exhibition bouts by Muhammad Ali, and concerts from regular performer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Memorial
The Albert Memorial is a Gothic Revival Ciborium (architecture), ciborium in Kensington Gardens, London, designed and dedicated to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort, Prince Albert of Great Britain. Located directly north of the Royal Albert Hall, it was commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her husband, who died in 1861. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, it takes the form of an ornate canopy or pavilion tall over the high altar of a church, sheltering a statue of the prince facing south. It took over ten years to complete, the £120,000 cost (the equivalent of about £15,000,000 in 2025) met by public subscription. The memorial was opened in July 1872 by Queen Victoria, with the statue of Albert ceremonially "seated" in 1876. It has been Grade I listed since 1970. Commission and design When Albert, Prince Consort, Prince Albert died on 14 December 1861, at the age of 42, the thoughts of those in government and public life turned to the form and shape of a suitab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition that took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. It was the first in a series of world's fairs, exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century. The event was organised by Henry Cole and Prince Albert, husband of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom. Famous people of the time attended the Great Exhibition, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michael Faraday (who assisted with the planning and judging of exhibits), Samuel Colt, members of the Orléanist royal family and the writers Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and William Makepeace Thackeray. The future Arts and Crafts proponent William Morris, then a teenager, later said he refused to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pirate Ship, Diana, Princess Of Wales Memorial Playground, Kensington Gardens 7 June 2011
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, and vessels used for piracy are called pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples of such areas include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term ''piracy'' generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in the ai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paddington
Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough of the County of London, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Paddington station, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel opened in 1847. It is also the site of St Mary's Hospital and the former Paddington Green Police Station. Paddington Waterside aims to regenerate former railway and canal land. Districts within Paddington are Maida Vale, Westbourne and Bayswater including Lancaster Gate. History The earliest extant references to ''Padington'' (or "Padintun", as in the ''Saxon Chartularies'', 959), historically a part of Middlesex, appear in the documentation of purported tenth-century land grants to the monks of Westminster by Edgar the Peaceful as confirmed by Archbishop Dunstan. However, the documents' provenance is much later and likely to have been forged after the 1066 Norman Conquest. There is no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
River Westbourne
The Westbourne or Kilburn, also known as the Ranelagh Sewer, is a culverted small Tributaries of the River Thames#Tributaries, River Thames tributary in London, rising in Hampstead and Brondesbury Park and which as a drain unites and flows southward through Kilburn, London, Kilburn and Bayswater (west end of Paddington) to skirt underneath the east of Serpentine (lake), Hyde Park's Serpentine lake then through central Chelsea under Sloane Square. It passes centrally under the south side of Ranelagh Gardens, Royal Hospital Chelsea's Ranelagh Gardens before discharging into Inner London's combined sewer system, with exceptional discharges (to be abated by a 2021-completion scheme) into the Tideway#Inner London, Inner London Tideway. Since the latter 19th century, the population of its catchment has risen further but to reduce the toll it places on the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works and related bills its narrow Drainage basin, basin has been assisted by private soakaways, and pub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serpentine (lake)
The Serpentine (also known as the Serpentine River) is a Reservoir#Recreation, recreational lake in Hyde Park, London, England, created in 1730 at the behest of Caroline of Ansbach, Queen Caroline. Although it is common to refer to the entire body of water as the Serpentine, the name refers in the strict sense only to the eastern half of the lake. Serpentine Bridge, which marks the boundary between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, also marks the Serpentine's western boundary; the long and narrow western half of the lake is known as the Long Water. The Serpentine takes its name from its snakelike, curving shape, although it only has one bend. Originally fed by the River Westbourne and Tyburn Brook in the 1730s, the lake's water was then pumped from the River Thames, Thames in the 1830s. The water is now pumped from three boreholes within Hyde Park, the most recent being installed in May 2012 as part of the 2011–2012 restoration of the lake. The Serpentine provided a focal p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
