Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain (6 page)

W
orcester is noted for its beautiful cathedral, its porcelain and its association with Edward Elgar. However it is also the home of the world’s oldest daily newspaper. Founded in 1690 as the
Worcester Postman
it became
Berrow’s Worcester Journal
when the new proprietor, Harvey Berrow, changed the name in 1753. The cathedral also contains the oldest effigy of an English monarch, that of King John, who was buried there in 1216.

B
irmingham – England’s second-largest city – has a greater mileage of canals than any other European city, since it is the hub of the British canal system. It was also the home of the first large-scale manufacturing establishment in the world: the Soho works of Matthew Boulton and James Watt whose mechanized plant was a blueprint for similar establishments which underpinned the Industrial Revolution pioneered in Britain.

W
hat’s in a name? Quite a lot if the name is Londonderry. One of the oldest inhabited towns in Ireland, it was originally called Derry, the old Irish word for the oaks which grew in the area. In 1613 James I, who wished to encourage English and Scottish Protestants to settle there, changed the name to Londonderry. The name has been a matter of dispute between the Catholic and Protestant citizens of Northern Ireland ever since. The City Council is at present attempting officially to change the name of the city back to its original Irish form by application to the Privy Council. It was the last walled city to be built in Europe, the walls being constructed between 1613 and 1619 to reassure the English and Scottish settlers who were fearful of their Catholic neighbours. In 1867 it became the home of Mrs C F Alexander (1818–1895), creator of well-known hymns such as
Once in Royal David’s City
and
All Things Bright and Beautiful
. Her husband was the Bishop of Derry.

E
aling, in west London, was the subject of the first English census in 1599. This was a list of all 85 households in the village giving the names of the inhabitants, together with their ages, relationships and occupations. No-one knows why it was taken, 202 years before the first full British census in 1801. The results may be seen in The National Archives not far away in Kew. Ealing is also the home of the world’s oldest film studios. Established in 1896, it later became associated with the Ealing comedies such as
Passport to Pimlico
and
The Lavender Hill Mob
as well as with classic war films like
The Cruel Sea
. From 1955 to 1995 the studios were owned by the BBC which made such 1970s series as
Colditz
and
Porridge
there. In 2000 the studios were bought by a new owner and have been used for making such films as the 2002 production of Oscar Wilde’s
The Importance of being Earnest
.

T
rebetherick in Cornwall contains the church of St Enodoc which for almost three centuries was submerged in drifting sand except for a portion of the tower. Once a year the rector of the nearby parish of St Miniver would descend through an opening in the tower beneath the bent steeple, accompanied by parishioners, to conduct a service in order to keep the church in use and, importantly, maintain its right to collect tithes. By 1864 the dunes were cleared away and the church has remained open ever since. The small churchyard contains two remarkable graves. The first is that of the former poet laureate Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984) who loved Trebetherick. The second is that of Fleur Lombard (1974–1996) the first female fire-fighter to die on peacetime active service while tackling a fire which arose from an arson attack in Bristol. She was posthumously awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal.

These islands have had more than their share of colourful rulers. Kings, queens and princes have followed one another over the centuries in a rich tapestry of inheritance, invasion, war and murder – within which truth has often been interwoven with myth. Regal or roguish, here are some of the more celebrated and notorious royals.

S
ince William the Conqueror there have been 41 monarchs of Great Britain, including the present Queen Elizabeth II. They include one dual monarchy (William and Mary, who reigned from 1689 until William’s death in 1702), and two kings who were never crowned: Edward V, one of the murdered ‘Princes in the Tower’; and Edward VIII who abdicated in December 1936 after reigning for less than a year. However, some of the coronations which did take place were, to say the least, eventful.

The Princes in the Tower were almost certainly murdered, probably on the orders of their uncle Richard III. Other candidates have been largely eliminated because Richard III had the unparalleled misfortune of having his character assassinated by William Shakespeare in one of his most memorable plays,
Richard
III. However the princes did not disappear completely. During the reign of Henry VII, who defeated Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, young men occasionally appeared claiming to be one of the princes or a close relative and thus, by some people’s reckoning, the rightful king of England. In 1491 one of these appeared in Cork and announced that he was Richard, Duke of York, the younger brother of Edward V. He was recognized by some European monarchs who were enemies of Henry VII and landed in Cornwall in 1497. His rebellion swiftly petered out and Henry spared his life when the impostor confessed that he was really Perkin Warbeck, born in Tournai, France. He was sent to the Tower but escaped. Henry, by now thoroughly fed up with him, had him hanged at Tyburn. A more comical pretender was Lambert Simnel, son of an Oxford tradesman, who in 1487 claimed to be Richard III’s nephew and was actually crowned as Edward VI in Dublin. Manipulated by others who hoped to gain by making him king, he gathered an invading army which was defeated near Newark. Henry VII, realising that he was a dupe, pardoned him and gave him a job in the royal kitchens where he lived out an uneventful life.

B
oudicca was the wife of Prasutagus, ruler of the Iceni tribe of the area now known as East Anglia who had ruled as a nominally independent ally of Rome. He left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman Emperor but when he died his will was ignored and oppressive taxes were imposed on the Iceni. When Boudicca protested the Roman governor Paulinus had Boudicca flogged and her daughters were raped by Roman slaves. In AD 60, while Paulinus was leading a campaign in Anglesey, Boudicca led the Iceni in rebellion. They destroyed the Roman city of Camulodunum (Colchester) and routed a Roman legion which was sent to suppress the uprising. Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans) swiftly followed, razed to the ground, with many thousands of Romano-British subjects perishing in the mayhem. Paulinus gathered his forces and overcame those of Boudicca in a battle which was known as the Battle of Watling Street and was probably fought somewhere near Wroxeter in Shropshire. The crisis caused panic in Rome and prompted Nero to consider withdrawing all Roman forces from Britain but Paulinus’s eventual victory over Boudicca secured the province for a further 300 years. Boudicca then died, possibly by her own hand. A persistent legend places her grave beneath platforms 9 and 10 of Kings Cross station in London. Her reputation underwent a revival during the 19th century when Queen Victoria was compared with her and statues were raised to her memory.