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William Currie (British Politician)
William Currie, (26 February 1756 – 3 June 1829), was an English land owner, distiller, banker and Member of Parliament for Gatton and Winchelsea. On his father's death in 1781, he inherited his father's 75% interest in the distilling partnership his father had started with Nathaniel Byles. He also became a partner in the family banking firm, replacing his father, but seems to have taken no active part, leaving the responsibilities to his brother Isaac. In 1792, Currie was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. He is chiefly remembered for the restoration of the village of East Horsley and its manor house, East Horsley Towers. Family He was the eldest son of William Currie (1721–1781) and Magdalen Lefevre (a great aunt of Charles Shaw-Lefevre, 1st Viscount Eversley), and was baptised at the Church of St. Dunstan's in Stepney on 4 March 1756. Currie married Percy Gore on 23 June 1794, the daughter of a banking partner, by whom he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winchelsea (UK Parliament Constituency)
Winchelsea was a parliamentary constituency in Sussex, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons from 1366 until 1832, when it was abolished by the Great Reform Act. History Boundaries Winchelsea was a Cinque Port, rather than a parliamentary borough, but the difference was purely a nominal one, and it was considered an egregious example of a rotten borough. The constituency consisted of the town and parish of Winchelsea, once a market town and port but by the 19th century much reduced in importance, a mile-and-a-half inland with its harbour destroyed. In 1831, the population of the constituency was estimated at 772, and the town contained 148 houses. History of corruption The right to vote was exercised by the freemen of the town, of whom by 1831 there were just 11, even though in theory the custom was that every son of a freeman and every freeholder in the town was entitled to his freedom. With so few voters, bribery was the rule rather than th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Frederick Currie, 1st Baronet
Sir Frederick Currie, 1st Baronet (3 February 1799 – 11 September 1875) was a British diplomat, who had a career in the British East India Company and the Indian Civil Service. His posts included Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, Member of the Supreme Council of India, Resident at Lahore and Chairman of the East India Company.''Burke's Peerage and Baronetage'', section Currie. He acted as an agent for the Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge, during the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-6 and was rewarded with a baronetcy in 1847 for his assistance in negotiating the Treaties of Lahore and Bhyrowal. Family background Currie was born on 3 February 1799 in Bloomsbury, Central London, the third of eight children of the brewer and banker Mark Currie of Upper Gatton, Surrey, and Elizabeth Currie née Close. The politician William Currie of East Horsley was his uncle and the diplomat Philip Currie, 1st Baron Currie, his first cousin, once removed. The Curries belonged to an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Of Commons Of The United Kingdom
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), members of Parliament (MPs), who are elected to represent United Kingdom constituencies, constituencies by the First-past-the-post voting, first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Dissolution of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Parliament is dissolved. The House of Commons of England began to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the Acts of Union 1707, political union with Scotland, and from 1801 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the Acts of Union 1800, political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and No ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotten And Pocket Boroughs
A rotten or pocket borough, also known as a nomination borough or proprietorial borough, was a parliamentary borough or constituency in England, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom before the Reform Act of 1832, which had a very small electorate and could be used by a patron to gain unrepresentative influence within the House of Commons. The same terms were used for similar boroughs represented in the 18th-century Parliament of Ireland. The Reform Act abolished the majority of these rotten and pocket boroughs. Background A parliamentary borough was a town or former town that had been incorporated under a royal charter, giving it the right to send two elected burgesses as Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. It was not unusual for the physical boundary of the settlement to change as the town developed or contracted over time, for example due to changes in its trade and industry, so that the boundaries of the parliamentary borough and of the physical settleme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sopwith Aviation Company
The Sopwith Aviation Company was a British aircraft company that designed and manufactured aeroplanes mainly for the British Royal Naval Air Service, the Royal Flying Corps and later the Royal Air Force during the First World War, most famously the Sopwith Camel. Sopwith aircraft were also used in varying numbers by the French, Belgian and American air services during the war. In April 1919, the company was renamed as the Sopwith Aviation & Engineering Company Limited. In September 1920, the company entered voluntary liquidation after an attempt to build motorcycles failed. The patents and other assets were bought by a new company, H.G. Hawker Engineering. Early years The Sopwith Aviation Company (based at Brooklands) was created in June 1912 by Thomas Sopwith, a wealthy sportsman interested in aviation, yachting and motor-racing, when he was 24 years old. Following their first military aircraft sale in November 1912, Sopwith moved to the company's first factory premises whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Sopwith
Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith, Order of the British Empire, CBE, Hon FRAeS (18 January 1888 – 27 January 1989) was a British aviation pioneer, businessman and yachtsman. Early life Sopwith was born in Kensington, London, on 18 January 1888. He was the eighth child and only son of Thomas Sopwith (a civil engineer and managing director of the Spanish Lead Mines Company in Linares, Jaén, Spain) and his wife, Lydia Gertrude Messiter. He was a grandson of mining engineer Thomas Sopwith (geologist), Thomas Sopwith. He was educated at Cottesmore School in Hove and at Seafield Park engineering college in Hill Head. On 30 July 1898, when he was ten years old and on a family holiday at the Isle of Lismore near Oban in Scotland, a gun lying across young Thomas's knee went off, killing his father. This accident haunted Sopwith for the rest of his life. Sopwith was interested in motor cycles, and he took part in the 100-mile Tricar trial in 1904, where he was one of four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives ''Don Juan (poem), Don Juan'' and ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage''; many of his shorter lyrics in ''Hebrew Melodies'' also became popular. Byron was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, before he travelled extensively in Europe. He lived for seven years in Italy, in Venice, Ravenna, Pisa and Genoa after he was forced to flee England due to threats of lynching. During his stay in Italy, he would frequently visit his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence to fight the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a folk hero. He died leading a campaign in 1824, at the age of 36, from a fever contracted after the First Siege of Missolonghi, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation. Lovelace was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and reformer Anne Isabella Milbanke. All her half-siblings, Lord Byron#Children, Lord Byron's other children, were born out of wedlock to other women. Lord Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever. He died in Greece when she was eight. Lady Byron was anxious about her daughter's upbringing and promoted Lovelace's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Lovelace remained interested in her father, naming her two sons Byron King-Noel, V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William King-Noel, 1st Earl Of Lovelace
William King-Noel, 1st Earl of Lovelace, (21 February 1805 – 29 December 1893), styled The Lord King from 1833 to 1838, was an English nobleman and scientist. He was the husband of Lord Byron's daughter Ada, today remembered as a pioneering computer scientist. Early life Lovelace was the eldest son of Peter King, 7th Baron King, and his wife, Lady Hester Fortescue, granddaughter of George Grenville. The politician the Hon. Peter John Locke King was his younger brother. Educated at Eton and Trinity, he entered the diplomatic service and became secretary to Lord Nugent. He succeeded in the barony in 1833 when his father died. He performed architectural work in his houses. First marriage In 1835, Lord King (as he then was) married as his first wife Ada Byron, the only daughter of the poet Lord Byron and his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke. He was created Viscount Ockham and Earl of Lovelace in 1838, and appointed Lord Lieutenant of Surrey in 1840, a post he held until his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inclosure Act
The inclosure acts created legal property rights to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, affecting 28,000 km2. History Before the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste". "Common" land was under the control of the lord of the manor, but certain rights on the land such as pasture, pannage, or estovers were held variously by certain nearby properties, or (occasionally) ''in gross'' by all manorial tenants. "Waste" was land without value as a farm strip – often very narrow areas (typically less than a yard wide) in awkward locations (such as cliff edges, or inconveniently shaped manorial borders), but also bare rock, and similar. "Waste" was not officially used by anyone, and so was often farmed by landless peasants. The remaining land was organised into a large number of narrow strips, ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Barry
Sir Charles Barry (23 May 1795 – 12 May 1860) was an English architect best known for his role in the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster (also known as the Houses of Parliament) in London during the mid-19th century, but also responsible for numerous other buildings and gardens. He is known for his major contribution to the use of Italianate architecture in Britain, especially the use of the Palazzo style architecture, Palazzo as basis for the design of country houses, city mansions and public buildings. He also developed the Italian Renaissance garden style for the many gardens he designed around country houses.Bisgrove, p. 179 Background and training Born on 23 May 1795Barry p. 4 in Bridge Street, Westminster (opposite the future site of the Big Ben, Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster), he was the fourth son of Walter Edward Barry (died 1805), Stationery, a stationer, and Frances Barry (née Maybank; died 1798). He was Baptism, baptised at St Margaret's, Wes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horsley Towers
Horsley Towers, East Horsley, Surrey, England is a country house dating from the 19th century. The house was designed by Charles Barry for the banker William Currie. The East Horsley estate was later sold to William King-Noel, 1st Earl of Lovelace who undertook two major expansions of the house to his own designs. Lovelace lived at the Towers with his wife, Ada, daughter of Lord Byron, a pioneering mathematician, friend of Charles Babbage and described as among the first computer programmers. In 1919, the Towers was purchased by Thomas Sopwith, the aviator and businessman, who named his plane, the Hawker Horsley, after his home. Now a hotel, wedding and conference venue set in parkland with a total area of about 50 acres, Horsley Towers is a Grade II* listed building. History William Currie was a banker and distiller, who had inherited a substantial fortune from his father, on the latter's death in 1781. In 1820, Currie engaged Charles Barry to replace the existing Georgian m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
