Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain (4 page)

The problem came to a head at Cambridge in 1848 when two boys from Shrewsbury school, Henry de Winton and John Charles Thring, called a meeting of representatives of many schools at Parker’s Piece, an open space in Cambridge, to agree a common set of rules. This made the game very popular at Cambridge in matches between the colleges and in 1862 Thring drew up a set of ten rules for wider use. Some of them seem curious now, for example:

Rule 2. Hands may be used only to stop a ball and place it on the grounds before the feet

Rule 3. Kicks must be aimed only at the ball [i.e. not at opponents!]

Rule 5. No tripping up or heel-kicking allowed

Rule 9 states that ‘A player is out of play immediately he is in front of the ball’ which means that one is very restricted in passing the ball forward, more like Rugby than modern football. An alternative code was agreed for those who wished to handle the ball more freely, based on the practice at Rugby school. The rules of association football were later developed both at Cambridge and, in 1863, at a meeting at the Freemason’s Tavern in Great Queen Street, London which is sometimes cited as the origin of the game which is now, by some distance, the world’s most popular. But it all started on Parker’s Piece, in 1862, where football is still played.

Many places in Britain can claim distinctions of one kind or another. Each of the communities or locations listed below has at least two claims to distinction of an unusual kind.

L
iverpool has Britain’s largest cathedral which is second in size only to St Peter’s, Rome, in the Christian world. The city also has the largest clock faces in Britain on the Royal Liver Building, one of the three graces on the waterfront, the others being the Port of Liverpool Building and the Cunard Building, elegant examples of early 20th century architecture when Liverpool was at the height of its prosperity and second only to London as the world’s greatest port.

In the first decade of the 20th century Liverpool was for a short time the home of Alois Hitler, half-brother of the rather better-known Adolf. Alois married an Irish woman called Bridget Dowling and they lived at 102, Upper Stanhope Street, Toxteth, with their only child, William Patrick Hitler, until Alois abandoned the family and returned to Germany in 1914 where he remarried bigamously. Bridget and William Patrick emigrated to the United States in 1939 and Bridget tried to cash in on the notoriety of her brother-in-law by claiming, in a manuscript called
My brother in law Adolf
, that Adolf Hitler had visited the family in Liverpool in 1912 to avoid conscription into the Austrian army. There is no reason to believe that this is true and the book was never published. Ironically the family home in Toxteth was destroyed in the last German air raid on Liverpool in January 1942.

C
olchester in Essex is Britain’s oldest city: the first Roman town in Britain and its first capital (called Camulodunum) until it was sacked in AD 60 by 30-year-old Queen Boudicca (Boadicea), after which the capital was moved to Londinium. Colchester Castle, built by the Normans shortly after their invasion and conquest, also has the largest keep in Europe, one and a half times larger than the Tower of London’s White Tower.

W
ith a population of fewer than 3,000, Appleby in the county of Westmorland was the smallest county town in Britain until Westmorland was merged with Cumbria in 1974. It also holds the biggest horse fair in the world every June. It was established in 1685 and is a traditional gathering place for gypsy families to trade in horses and, in the case of eligible younger people, to seek partners.

I
n the 19th century Glasgow was the second largest city in the British Empire, exceeded in population only by London. It had more parks than any city of comparable size (today it has over 90) and it is now the curry capital of Britain, with 50 per cent of Glaswegians eating curry at least once a week.

C
anterbury has the oldest school in Britain in King’s School, reputedly founded by St Augustine in 600; England’s greatest medieval shrine, that of Thomas à Becket, murdered in 1170; and England’s oldest church still in regular use, the church of St Martin, the date of whose foundation is uncertain but probably dates from the late 600s. Probably older and still occasionally used is the remote little church of St Peter on the Wall, Bradwell, in Essex, built by St Cedd in 654. The oldest timber church in the world is also in Essex, St Andrew’s at Greensted-juxta-Ongar, which has been dated using dendrochronology to 845.

O
xford has Britain’s oldest university. Its precise origins are unclear. Some date it from 1167 when Henry II’s dispute with French king Philip Augustus made it impossible for English students to study in France; others suggest 1186 by which date Geraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) is recorded as lecturing to students. Oxford also has Britain’s smallest cathedral which doubles as the chapel of Christ Church, Oxford’s largest college. Cardinal Wolsey planned to found Cardinal College as a monument to himself and, in preparation for this, took over the church of St Frideswide. When Wolsey fell from favour with Henry VIII the king assumed responsibility for the foundation, named it Christ Church and gave St Frideswide to the first bishop of the new diocese of Oxford to be used as his cathedral while it continued to serve as chapel to the new college.

I
ona, a small island off the Isle of Mull on the western coast of Scotland, is home to the oldest Christian site in Britain. It became the home of St Columba when he was exiled from Ireland in 563. Columba brought Christianity to Scotland and to the English kingdom of Northumbria thirty-four years before St Augustine arrived at Canterbury from Rome in 597. It is likely that the beautifully illuminated
Book of Kells
, an 8th century text of the gospels, was produced at Iona and taken to Ireland to escape Viking raids. It is now in the library of Trinity College Dublin. Columba founded a monastery that later became the site of Iona Abbey which was rebuilt by the Iona Community from 1938. Led by George MacLeod (1895–1991) it re-established the traditions of Celtic Christianity and remains a thriving Christian community.