I Never Knew That About the English

by Desconhecido

  Clarkson died at Ipswich in Suffolk in 1846 and is buried in the church at Playford, on the outskirts of the town.

  Born in Cambridge

  SIR JOHN BERRY ‘JACK HOBBS’ (1882–1963), the FIRST ENGLISH CRICKETER TO BE KNIGHTED (the first cricketer was Australian Don Bradman).

  JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883–1946), MOST INFLUENTIAL ENGLISH ECONOMIST OF THE 20TH CENTURY and creator of the influential Keynesian economic theory, which advocates government intervention to mitigate the ups and downs of the free market. A founder of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

  Thomas Clarkson’s Monument, Wisbech

  MICHAEL RAMSEY (1904–88), 100th Archbishop of Canterbury.

  SIR CHRISTOPHER COCKERELL (1910–99), inventor of the hovercraft.

  RONALD SEARLE, cartoonist and creator of St Trinian’s, born 1920.

  SIR RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH, film actor, producer and director, born 1923. In 1982 he won two Oscars with the film Gandhi, for Best Picture (as producer), and for Best Director.

  OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN, pop singer and star of the film adaptation of Grease, born 1948.

  Cheshire

  ENGLAND’S FAVOURITE ARCHITECTURE

  ∗ BLACK-AND-WHITE ∗ CRANFORD

  ∗ OLDEST CARILLON IN ENGLAND ∗ JODRELL BANK

  Little Moreton Hall, the most perfect black-and-white house in England.

  CHESHIRE FOLK

  Charles Dodgson ∗ James Prescott Joule ∗ John Speed ∗ Sir Joseph Whitworth ∗ George Formby ∗ Dixie Dean ∗ Sir Henry Cotton ∗ Fred Perry ∗ Glenda Jackson ∗ Ian Botham ∗ Michael Owen

  County Palatine

  Cheshire is one of England’s two County Palatines, along with County Durham. It was established by William the Conqueror to defend the English western border against the Welsh, and was ruled by the Earls of Chester who were given wide-ranging royal powers (‘palatine’, or ‘from the palace’) and autonomy over their own affairs within Cheshire. The palatinate remained in place until 1830, and today Earl of Chester is one of the titles of the monarch’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales.

  Magpie County

  Cheshire is the premier home of the black-and-white timbered architecture so beloved of the English. Even today, the most popular choice of style for new housing is mock Tudor.

  In Tudor England, there was no longer any need for fortified stone houses, and the middle classes were becoming wealthy enough to build houses for themselves. In Cheshire, and other western counties, wood, particularly oak, was plentiful and the construction material of choice. The wooden frames were in-filled with wattle, a mesh of vertical wooden stakes interwoven with thin branches, and covered in daub, a clay or mud plaster mixed with straw. For weather-proofing the timbers were painted black and the plaster white. As properties were often taxed on street frontage, the ground floor would be as narrow as possible with the upper floor overhanging, giving a top-heavy look. And because the buildings were made of wood, which bent and settled over time, genuinely old timber-framed houses often appear alarmingly crooked, which is part of their charm.

  Little Moreton Hall

  Perhaps the supreme example of black-and-white Tudor architecture, and a true English icon, is LITTLE MORETON HALL, near Congleton, begun in 1450 by the Moretons and then continued in stages over the next 150 years. The hall remained in the ownership of the Moreton family until handed over to the National Trust in 1938.

  The beautiful 14th-century black-and-white timbered church at LOWER PEOVER is reputed to be THE OLDEST AISLED WOODEN CHURCH IN EUROPE. MARTON, a few miles away, claims THE OLDEST HALF-TIMBERED CHURCH IN USE IN EUROPE, dating from 1343 – and what was once ENGLAND’S BIGGEST OAK TREE, still standing but with the trunk split into four by age.

  Cranford

  KNUTSFORD, near Macclesfield, is Mrs Gaskell’s ‘Cranford’. Her most popular novel, Cranford is a collection of light-hearted stories about the genteel ladies who live in this ‘pleasant little country town’. ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810–65) grew up in Knutsford herself, in what is now called Gaskell Avenue, close to the heath. Her fine brick house is marked with a plaque and she is buried in the town’s Brook Street Unitarian chapel. It is still possible to recognise Knutsford, or Cranford, from her book as it has retained its tranquil, very English, Georgian air and appearance. Although Mrs Gaskell’s novels were considered by some to be a bit light and frothy, they found popularity across the world and had some unlikely fans. That frivolous Russian author Dostoyevsky admitted that Mrs Gaskell’s Mary Barton was his inspiration for Crime and Punishment.

  Eaton Hall

  In 1677 SIR THOMAS GROSVENOR of EATON HALL, Eccleston, married Mary Davies, heiress to the Ebury farm estate outside London, now Belgravia and Mayfair. This laid the fortune of the Grosvenor family, now Dukes of Westminster and, after the Crown, England’s largest and richest landowners. Despite all their properties in London, Eaton Hall remains ‘the jewel in the Grosvenor crown’. There has been an Eaton Hall since the 15th century, and the house has been rebuilt several times, with perhaps the most celebrated expression being the immense Victorian neo-Gothic creation by Alfred Waterhouse. The clock tower, 178 ft (54 m) high, is all that survives of that Eaton Hall and contains THE OLDEST CARILLON OF BELLS IN ENGLAND. The rest of the house was knocked down in the 1970s and replaced with a modern, concrete structure by John Dennys, the 5th Duke’s brother-in-law. This in turn was altered and encased in a new façade in 1989.

  Jodrell Bank

  JODRELL BANK, west of Macclesfield, was England’s first proper space observatory. Begun just after the Second World War, it was set up by Dr Bernard Lovell of Manchester University to study cosmic rays. When it was built in 1947, the 218 ft (66 m) reflecting aerial was THE BIGGEST RADIO TELESCOPE IN THE WORLD. It was at Jodrell Bank that radio noise from the Great Nebula in Andromeda was heard – the first time an extragalactic radio source had ever been detected. Jodrell Bank soon became valuable as a world source for satellite and spacecraft tracking – it was thanks to Jodrell Bank that the West knew what was really going on in the Soviet Union space programme. The original telescope was replaced in 1957 by an even bigger radio telescope, a 250 ft (76 m) steerable dish which still sits quietly on its gantry, looming over Cheshire countryside and listening to the Heavens.

  Well, I never knew this

  about

  CHESHIRE FOLK

  Charles Dodgson

  1832–98

  ‘The happy spot where I was born’ is how CHARLES DODGSON remembers DARESBURY, near Runcorn, where he came into the world in 1832. Now better known as LEWIS CARROLL, author of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, the most famous children’s story in the English language, Dodgson spent his formative years in Daresbury, where his father was the vicar. There is a memorial window to him in the church, depicting many of the characters from his tales, including the CHESHIRE CAT, who could make its whole body disappear, save for the grin.

  James Prescott Joule

  1818–89

  JAMES PRESCOTT JOULE, THE MAN WHO GAVE HIS NAME TO THE UNIT OF ENERGY, was born in SALE. His ambition in life was to replace the steam engine with the electric motor by improving the latter’s efficiency. Joule was the first to establish and measure the link between the heat created by an electrical current and mechanical energy. He also discovered that when a gas is rapidly expanded it has a cooling effect, the principle used in modern-day refrigeration.

  John Speed

  1552–1629

  Sometimes considered the first true English historian, as opposed to just chronicler, JOHN SPEED was born in FARNDON, in west Cheshire. He spent most of his life as a tailor, but at the age of 48, when his 18 children had left home, he was finally able to devote time to his passion – making maps. He began by making the first accurate maps of the English counties, and the first town plans, along with written descriptions and the genealogy of the leading families in each county. He then wrote a history of England based on this research. John Speed’s collection of maps, which form
ed THE FIRST ENGLISH ATLAS, proved immensely popular, and were, in their own way, as important a legacy of the Elizabethan era as the works of Shakespeare.

  Sir Joseph Whitworth

  1803–77

  STOCKPORT is the birthplace of the man who brought us precision engineering, SIR JOSEPH WHITWORTH. He was the first to come up with a method of producing a true flat surface, and a system of measurement accurate to within one millionth of an inch. In 1841 he developed the first standardised system for screw threads, which was adopted by the railway companies and became ‘BRITISH STANDARD WHITWORTH’ or BSW. As anyone who owns an older British car knows, until the 1970s much of British industry used Whitworth precision tools and measurements, but since Britain’s entry into the European Union, metric measurements have been adopted.

  GEORGE FORMBY (1904–61), singer, comedian and ukulele player, was born in WARRINGTON. His most famous song was ‘Leaning on a Lamppost’.

  DIXIE DEAN (1907–80), THE ONLY PLAYER IN ENGLISH FOOTBALL TO SCORE 60 GOALS IN ONE SEASON (for Everton in 1927–28), was born in BIRKENHEAD.

  SIR HENRY COTTON (1907–87), the first golfer to be knighted, was born in HOLMES CHAPEL.

  FRED PERRY (1909–95), the last English tennis player to win the Wimbledon men’s singles title (in 1934, 35 and 36), was born in STOCKPORT.

  GLENDA JACKSON, actress and MP, was born in BIRKENHEAD in 1936. She won two Best Actress Oscars, for Women in Love in 1969 and A Touch of Class in 1973.

  IAN BOTHAM, holder of the record for the highest number of Test wickets ever taken by an English cricketer (383), was born in HESWALL in 1955.

  MICHAEL OWEN, the youngest footballer to play for England in the 20th century, was born in CHESTER in 1979. He scored a memorable hat-trick in a 5–1 defeat of Germany in 2001.

  Cornwall

  KING ARTHUR ∗ CRADLE OF WIRELESS

  ∗ COME TO GOOD ∗ A CORNISH ECCENTRIC

  ∗ JIGGING JOGGING EVERYWHERE ∗ PASTY

  Gryll’s Gate in Helston, landmark on the route of the ancient Furry Dance.

  CORNWALL FOLK

  Richard Trevithick ∗ Humphry Davy ∗ Sir John Betjeman ∗ Daphne du Maurier ∗ Arthur Quiller Couch ∗ Rosamund Pilcher ∗ Richard and John Lander

  Kernow

  Cornwall possesses mainland England’s most southerly point (the Lizard) and most westerly point (Land’s End). Surrounded on three sides by sea, Cornwall, the old kingdom of Kernow, is also England’s most isolated county, and the native population are largely from Celtic stock, as in Wales and Ireland.

  King Arthur

  Wherever you roam in Cornwall you are never far from KING ARTHUR.

  TINTAGEL on the bleak north coast, with its dark cliff-top castle ruins, is where legend says King Arthur was born on a stormy night, after Arthur’s father, King Uther Pendragon, seduced the Duke of Cornwall’s wife Igema, with the help of the wizard Merlin. Even though the 12th-century castle was built 600 years too late, the setting is romantic and persuasive, and there is evidence that the site was used from the 4th century or even earlier. Below the headland, reached by clambering down the rocks to the beach, is a large cave known as Merlin’s Cave, where the wizard is said to have plotted with Uther Pendragon.

  Arthur may well have lived in the early 5th century, when the Romans were abandoning Britain and Anglo–Saxon mercenaries were sweeping the remaining Romano–British Celts westwards. A brave Celtic Christian warrior emerged from the west to lead the resistance against the pagan invaders, and had some success in halting their advance, with a famous victory at Mount Badon, thought to be near Bath.

  There is no doubt that the legend of King Arthur is based on such a Celtic leader, and Arthur has become a symbol of hope and courage for the English in adversity. In medieval times the warrior Arthur became associated with the code of chivalry brought over from France by the Plantagenet kings (chivalry being derived from the French word ‘chevalier’ meaning knight), and the tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table fused the soldier with the chevalier to create the definitive British hero, claimed by Welsh and English alike.

  The Cradle of Wireless

  The world’s first transatlantic radio signals were sent to Newfoundland from Poldhu Cove, on the Lizard, south of Helston. On a bare, windy cliff top near Mullion are the scant remains of the wireless station from where the signals were transmitted on 12 December 1901, using equipment invented by the ‘father of the wireless’ Guglielmo Marconi. Against all the prevailing wisdom Marconi proved that radio waves could be sent over long distances and follow the curvature of the Earth. Radio, television and the internet all owe their existence to this remarkable achievement, and a memorial and museum on the spot tell the story.

  Not far away is the GOONHILLY EARTH SATELLITE STATION, BRITAIN’S FIRST EARTH SATELLITE STATION. It was completed in 1962 and exchanged the first intercontinental picture transmissions with the US via a space satellite.

  Come to Good

  The quaint little thatched Meeting House, embowered in trees and set in a hollow at Come to Good, a hamlet south of Truro, was built in 1710 and is one of the oldest Quaker meeting houses in the world. Come to Good, from the Cornish ‘Cwm Ty Quoit’, means ‘house in the wooded combe’. It is a simple white cob hut lined with plain wooden benches and a small gallery, a friendly place where meetings are still held regularly.

  A Cornish Eccentric

  Few people wept when the REV FREDERICK DENSHAM, Vicar of Warleggan, on Bodmin Moor, died in 1953. He was known as the rudest clergyman in Cornwall and he was so abusive to his parishioners that for ten years they refused to attend services at the pretty, 15th-century village church. Unbothered, he made himself a congregation of cardboard figures, which he propped up in the pews, and on Sundays would harangue them with fiery sermons. Thought to survive on a diet of nettles and gruel, he got rid of all his furniture in case it was stolen and, just to be doubly sure, encircled the vicarage with barbed wire.

  Come to Good Meeting House

  Daphne du Maurier is thought to have based the Rev Francis Davey, the mad vicar in her novel Jamaica Inn, on the Rev Densham.

  Helston

  Dancing here, prancing there, Jigging, jogging everywhere

  The HELSTON FURRY DANCE is one of the oldest of all the English festivals, a Cornish-style May Day ritual that celebrates the end of winter and the coming of spring, and has its origins in pagan times. It is always held on 8 May, except when that is a Sunday or Monday, in which case it takes place the previous Saturday. The name ‘Furry’ comes from the old Cornish or Celtic word ‘feur’, meaning festival.

  Helson prepares for its big day for weeks beforehand. Houses and public buildings are decorated with spring foliage, bluebells, gorse, sycamore, hazel and laurel; gardens are tidied up, school-children are rehearsed. Then, at 7 a.m. on the day, the Town Band strikes up and the Early Morning Dance begins, with dancers bedecked in lilies-of-the-valley pirouetting in and out of people’s houses and gardens.

  This is followed at 8 a.m. by the Hal-An-Tow, when English folk heroes such as Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, St Michael and St George move through the town re-enacting battles where Good triumphs over Evil, while singing the traditional Hal-An-Tow song:

  With Hal-an-Tow! Jolly Rumble, O!

  For we are up as soon as any day, O!

  And for to fetch the Summer home,

  The Summer and the May, O,

  For Summer is a-come, O,

  And Winter is a-gone, O

  The Children’s Dance starts at 10 a.m., when over 1,000 children, all dressed in white, dance in procession, and then at noon the Furry Dance itself begins. This is by invitation only. The Mayor, wearing his chain of office, leads the procession along the streets and in and out of shops and houses, banishing winter and ushering in summer. All the ladies wear long dresses with hats and gloves and the men are in full morning dress, complete with top hats.

  Then, at 5 p.m., it is time for the final event, the Evening Dance, when e
veryone is invited to dance, residents and visitors alike, and the whole town rocks.

  BOB FITZIMMONS, THE FIRST BOXER EVER TO BE WORLD MIDDLEWEIGHT, LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT AND HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION, was born in Wendron Street, Helston, in 1863. His birthplace is marked by a plaque.

  Helston was THE MOST SOUTHERLY POINT EVER REACHED BY THE RAILWAYS in England. The town is no longer served by trains, the nearest station being at Camborne.

  Cornish Pasty

  The CORNISH PASTY evolved as a convenient way of providing tin miners with a complete meal that was easy to handle while working down in the dark, narrow mine tunnels. Originally, the pasty would have meat and vegetables in one half and fruit in the other half, and would have the miner’s initials raised on the casing so that it could be recognised by touch. The traditional filling is beef, onion and potato, but nowadays any filling is considered acceptable – except fish. Cornish fishermen refuse to take pasties to sea with them as they are thought to bring bad luck. The Devil, apparently, is fearful of entering Cornwall in case he ends up as a filling in a Cornish pasty.

  Well, I never knew this

  about

  CORNISH FOLK

  Richard Trevithick

  1771–1833

  A tiny chapel marks the site of RICHARD TREVITHICK’S birthplace in CARN BREA, near Camborne. Trevithick grew into a giant of a man, celebrated for being able to throw a sledgehammer over an engine shed. He invented THE WORLD’S FIRST PASSENGER-CARRYING STEAM-ENGINE, and on Christmas Eve 1801 his ‘PUFFING BILLY’ clattered through the streets of Camborne, carrying THE FIRST PASSENGERS EVER MOVED BY STEAM. The engine then puffed and wheezed up Beacon Hill, the steepest hill in Camborne, a feat beyond most horse-drawn carriages, and there is a plaque in memory of this historic feat at the bottom of the hill.