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These are featured pictures related to the United Kingdom which appear on Portal:United Kingdom.
Photo credit: Diliff
Leadenhall Market is a covered market in the City of London, located in Gracechurch Street. The market dates back to the fourteenth century.
The ornate roof structure, painted green, maroon and cream, and cobbled floors of the current building, designed in 1881 by Sir
Horace Jones (who was also the architect of
Billingsgate and
Smithfield Markets), make the building a tourist attraction. It was used to represent the area of London near the
Leaky Cauldron and
Diagon Alley in the film
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Photo credit: Andrew Dunn
The
Great Court of the
British Museum was reopened in
2000 by
Queen Elizabeth II after its redevelopment. The tesselated glass roof was designed by architects
Foster and Partners and covers the entire court, making it the largest covered square in Europe.
Photo credit: Chowells
The
Supermarine Spitfire was an iconic
British single-seat
fighter used by the
RAF and many Allied countries in the
Second World War.
Photo credit: Diliff
The
British Airways London Eye, sometimes called the
Millennium Wheel, was the first
observation wheel (a type of
Ferris wheel) to be built, and has been the only one in operation since its opening at the end of
1999. It stands 135
metres (443
feet) high on the western end of
Jubilee Gardens, on the
South Bank of the
River Thames in
Lambeth,
London, between
Westminster and
Hungerford Bridges. It is adjacent to London's
County Hall, and stands opposite the offices of the
Ministry of Defence.
Photo credit: Chowells
Another Place is a piece of modern
sculpture by
Antony Gormley, currently erected on
Crosby Beach,
Liverpool until the end of
2006. It consists of 100
cast iron figures which face out to sea, spread over a 2
mile stretch of the beach. Each figure is 189
cm tall (nearly 6
feet 2½
inches) and weighs around 650
kg (over 1400
lb). In common with most of Gormley's work, the figures are cast from moulds of his own body.
Photo credit: Chowells
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King (usually shortened to
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral) is a
Roman Catholic cathedral in
Liverpool,
England. Designed by Sir
Frederick Gibberd and consecrated in
1967, it replaced the Pro-Cathedral of
St. Nicholas, Copperas Hill. The cathedral stands on the site previously occupied by the Liverpool Workhouse, on
Hope Street. Facing it at the opposite end of Hope Street is the
Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool, the city's
Anglican cathedral.
Photo credit: Andrew Dunn
A Hansom cab is a kind of horse-drawn carriage first designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from Hinckley, Leicestershire, England. Originally known as the Hansom Safety Cab, its purpose was to combine speed with safety, with a low center of gravity that was essential for safe cornering.
Cab is a shortening of
cabriolet reflecting the design of the carriage. It replaced the
hackney carriage as a
vehicle for hire; with the introduction of clockwork mechanical
taximeters to measure fares, the name became
taxicab. Hansom cabs enjoyed immense popularity as they were fast, light enough to be pulled by a single horse, (making the journey cheaper than travelling in a larger four-wheel coach) and were agile enough to steer around horse-drawn vehicles in the notorious traffic jams of
nineteenth-century London.
Photo credit: Abubakr Hussain
Loch Lomond (pronounced LOW-mond) (Scottish Gaelic Loch Laomainn) is a Scottish loch located in both the western lowlands of Central Scotland and the southern Highlands. It is located in the council areas of Stirling, Argyll and Bute, and West Dunbartonshire, and its southern shores lie approximately 14 miles (23 km) north of Glasgow, the country's largest city.
It is approximately 37 kilometres long, and up to 8 kilometres wide, with an average depth of about 37 metres, and a maximum depth of about 190 metres. It has a surface area of approximately 71 square kilometres, and a volume of about 2.6 km
3. Its surface area is the largest of the lochs, and is second biggest after Loch Ness in terms of water volume in
Great Britain, although it is not the largest in the
British Isles - this distinction belongs to
Lough Neagh in
Northern Ireland.
Photo credit: Unknown U.S. soldier
The
Battle of Normandy was fought in 1944 between the
German forces occupying
Western Europe and the invading
Allied forces as part of the larger conflict of
World War II. Sixty years later, the
Normandy invasion,
codenamed Operation OVERLORD, remains the largest seaborne invasion in history involving almost three million troops crossing the
English Channel from
England to
Normandy in then German-occupied
France.
Photo credit: Sean Mack
The
Falkirk Wheel, named after the nearby town of
Falkirk in central
Scotland, is a rotating
boat lift connecting the
Forth and Clyde Canal with the
Union Canal, which at this point differ by 24 metres, roughly equivalent to the height of an eight storey building.
Photo credit: Dan Smith
Bentley Motors Limited is a
British based manufacturer of
luxury automobiles and
Grand Tourers. Bentley Motors was founded in
England on
January 18,
1919 by
Walter Owen Bentley, known as W.O. Bentley or just "W.O." (
1888–
1971). He was previously known for his successful range of
rotary aero-engines in
World War I, the most famous being the Bentley BR1 as used in later versions of the
Sopwith Camel. The company is currently owned by the
Volkswagen Group.
Photo credit: UK Government
The 1917
Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the
Third Battle of Ypres, was one of the major battles of
World War I, fought by
British,
ANZAC, and
Canadian soldiers against the
German army. The battle was fought for control of the village of
Passendale, (Belgium-French
Passchendaele on maps of that time), near the
Belgian town of
Ypres in
West Flanders.
Photo credit: Andrew Dunn
The
Palace of Westminster, also known as the
Houses of Parliament, is where the two Houses of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom (the
House of Lords and the
House of Commons) conduct their sittings. The Palace lies on the north bank of the
River Thames in the
London borough of the
City of Westminster.
The
Lindisfarne Gospels is an
illuminated Latin manuscript of the
gospels of
Matthew,
Mark,
Luke and
John. The manuscript was produced on
Lindisfarne in
Northumbria in the late
7th century or early
8th century, and is generally regarded as the finest example of the kingdom's unique style of religious art, a style that combined Anglo-Saxon and Celtic themes, what is now called
Hiberno-Saxon art.
Photo credit: Andrew Dunn
Stonehenge is a
Neolithic and
Bronze Age monument located near
Amesbury in the
English county of
Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) northwest of
Salisbury. It is composed of
earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones, known as
megaliths. There is some debate about the age of the
stone circle, but most
archaeologists think that it was mainly constructed between
2500 BC and
2000 BC. The older circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about
3100 BC. The site and its surroundings were added to the
UNESCO's list of
World Heritage Sites in
1986.
Photo credit: Diliff
The Radcliffe Camera is a building in Oxford, designed by James Gibbs in the English Baroque style and built in 1737–1749 to house the Radcliffe Science Library. The building was funded by a £40,000 bequest from John Radcliffe, who died in 1714. Nicholas Hawksmoor proposed making the building round.
After the Radcliffe Science Library moved into another building, the Radcliffe Camera became home to additional reading rooms of the
Bodleian Library. It now holds books from the
English,
History and
Theology collections, mostly
secondary sources found on
undergraduate reading lists. There is space for around 600,000 books in rooms beneath
Radcliffe Square.
Image credit: Mintguy & Fredrik
A
roundabout or
rotary is a type of
road junction (or
traffic calming device) at which
traffic streams circularly around a central island after first yielding to the circulating traffic. The first actual modern roundabout was constructed in
New York City in 1904, but the widespread use of roundabouts began when
British engineers re-engineered the traffic circle in the mid-
1960s to overcome its limitations of capacity and for safety issues. Roundabouts are statistically safer than both traffic circles and traditional intersections, though they do not cope as well with the traffic on
motorways or similar fast roads.
Photo credit: Andrew Dunn
Henry Moore's
Reclining figure (1951) is characteristic of Moore's
sculptures, with an abstract female figure intercut with voids. There are several bronze versions of this sculpture, but this one is made from painted
plaster, and
as of 2007 is sited outside the
Fitzwilliam Museum in
Cambridge (on loan from the
Henry Moore Foundation).
Robert Hooke's drawing of a
flea in his
Micrographia, a book of observations through various
lenses published in
1644. The book demonstrated the tremendous power of the new
microscope. On completing the book,
Samuel Pepys described it as: "the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life."
Photo credit: Paul Lomax
The
Millennium Bridge in
London is a footbridge linking the
Tate Modern art gallery at
Bankside to a path leading to
St Paul's Cathedral. It was the first new bridge to be built across the Thames in London since
Tower Bridge in 1894.
Photo credit: David Wilson Clarke
Angel of the North is a modern sculpture created by Antony Gormley, which is located in Gateshead, England.
As the name suggests, it is a
steel sculpture of an
angel, standing 20 metres (66 feet) tall, with wings of 54 metres (178 feet) — making it wider than the
Statue of Liberty's height. The wings themselves are not planar, but are angled 3.5 degrees forward, which Gormley has been quoted as saying was to create "a sense of embrace". It stands on a hill overlooking the
A1 road and the
A167 road into
Tyneside and the
East Coast Main Line rail route.
Portrait: Hans Holbein the Younger
Sir Thomas More (
7 February 1478 –
6 July 1535), also known as
Saint Thomas More, was an
English lawyer, author, and statesman. During his lifetime he earned a reputation as a leading
humanist scholar and occupied many public offices, including that of
Lord Chancellor from
1529 to
1532. More coined the word "
utopia", a name he gave to an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in a book published in
1516. He is chiefly remembered for his principled refusal to accept King
Henry VIII's claim to be supreme head of the
Church of England, a decision which ended his political career and led to his
execution as a traitor.
Photo credit: Lt. J. W. Brooke
The Battle of the Somme, fought in the summer and autumn of 1916, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. With more than one million casualties, it was also one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The Allied forces attempted to break through the German lines along a 25-mile (40 km) front north and south of the River Somme in northern France. One purpose of the battle was to draw German forces away from the Battle of Verdun; however, by its end the losses on the Somme had exceeded those at Verdun.
While Verdun would bite deep in the national consciousness of France for generations, the Somme would have the same effect on generations of
Britons. The battle is best remembered for its first day,
1 July 1916, on which the British suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead — at that time the bloodiest day in the history of the
British Army.
Photo credit: Diliff
The
British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the
Great Court of the
British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the
British Library. In 1997 this function moved to the new British Library building at
St Pancras, London, but the Reading Room remains in its original form. Designed by
Sydney Smirke on a suggestion by the Library's Chief Librarian
Anthony Panizzi, following an earlier competition idea by
William Hosking, the Reading Room was in continual use from
1857 until its temporary closure in
1997. The Reading Room's dome roof is metal framed, and the surface that makes up the ceiling is a type of papier mache. Access was restricted to registered researchers only; however, reader's credentials were generally available to anyone who could show that they were a serious researcher.
Photo credit: Diliff
Windsor Castle, at
Windsor in the
English county of
Berkshire, is the largest inhabited
castle in the world and, dating back to the time of
William the Conqueror, is the oldest in continuous occupation. The castle's floor area is approximately 45,000
square metres (about 484,000
square feet).
Photo credit: Diliff
The Clock Tower is a
turret clock structure at the north-eastern end of the
Houses of Parliament building in
Westminster,
London,
England. It is popularly known as
Big Ben, but this name actually belongs to the clock's main bell. The tower has also been referred to as
St. Stephen's Tower or
The Tower of Big Ben, in reference to its bell.
Photo credit: Diliff
30 St Mary Axe is a building in
London's main financial district, the
City of London. It is widely known by the nickname "
The Gherkin", and occasionally as
The Swiss Re Tower,
Swiss Re Building,
Swiss Re Centre, or just
Swiss Re, after its previous owner but principal occupier. It is 180
m (590
ft) tall, making it the second-tallest building in the City of London, after
Tower 42, and the
sixth-tallest in London as a whole. The design is by
Pritzker Prize-winner Sir
Norman Foster and ex-partner
Ken Shuttleworth and
Arup engineers. It was constructed by
Skanska of
Sweden between 2001 and 2004.
Photo credit: Diliff
Tower Bridge is a
bascule bridge in
London over the
River Thames. It is close to the
Tower of London, which gives it its name. It has become an
iconic symbol of London and is sometimes mistakenly called
London Bridge, which is the next bridge upstream. The bridge is owned and maintained by
Bridge House Estates, a charitable trust overseen by the
Corporation of London.
Photo credit: Diliff
Tower Bridge is a
bascule bridge in
London over the
River Thames. It is close to the
Tower of London, which gives it its name. It has become an
iconic symbol of London and is sometimes mistakenly called
London Bridge, which is the next bridge upstream. The bridge is owned and maintained by
Bridge House Estates, a charitable trust overseen by the
Corporation of London.
Photo credit: Diliff
Bath is a
city in
South West England most famous for its
baths fed by three
hot springs. It is situated 99
miles (159
km) west of
Central London and 13 miles (21 km) south east of
Bristol.
