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UK posts
Iconic London Skate Park May Be Turned Into Chain Of Shops
May 19th, 2013 at 4:00PM: A famous skate park on the South Bank of London may be turned into yet another stretch of retail sameness. Underneath the Southbank Centre, which is home to several performing arts centers, is a covered area that looks like a cross between a cellar and an overly graffittied parking lot. It's been a meeting ground for skateboarders for 40 years. Every day you can see them doing tricks on the ...
Archaeologists Digging At Lincoln Castle Uncover Early Christian Community
May 17th, 2013 at 3:00PM: Lincolnshire County Council
Archaeologists excavating at Lincoln Castle have discovered the remains of an early Christian community, according to a Lincolnshire County Council press release.
The team, which was digging inside the castle to clear the way for an elevator shaft, found the remains of a church that dates back at least 1,000 years. Inside a sealed niche in the wall they found human ...In Fine Style: The Art Of Tudor And Stuart Fashion Opens At The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace
May 15th, 2013 at 1:00PM:
The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace, London, is putting on a fashion show, although the fashions are more than 400 years out of date.
"In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion" examines the luxurious clothing and jewelry worn by British monarchs and members of their court. It focuses on the two dynasties of the 16th and 17th centuries with everything from ornamental armor for a ...Go Hiking: It's Better For You Than You Thought
May 8th, 2013 at 3:00PM: Not feeling healthy? Go hiking. Two new studies from the UK show that a hike, or even a good walk around the city streets, boosts mental and physical health.
A new survey by Ramblers, the British walking charity, found that a quarter of adults in Britain walk for an hour or less a week. And when they're talking about walking, they don't mean hitting the trails in the local nature reserve, they ...London's Courtauld Gallery Shows Off German Miniature Bibles
May 2nd, 2013 at 9:00AM:
The Courtauld Gallery in London has opened a new exhibition of two of the smallest Bibles you'll ever see.
"Dess Alten Testaments Mittler" and "Dess Neuen Testaments Mittler" are tiny illustrated Bibles produced by two sisters from Augsburg, Germany, in the late 17th century. It was a time of increased private devotion, when people looked for more from religion than the rituals in the church. ...World's Biggest Book Fair Coming To London
Apr 23rd, 2013 at 4:00PM: Love books? You'll want to be in London this June when seven book fairs will all take place over a nine-day period.
Billed as the world's largest book fair in a press release by the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, it runs June 8-16 and features not only rare books and first editions but also maps, photographs and ephemera.
London has several annual and monthly fairs, but ...Stonehenge Site 3000 Years Older Than Previously Thought, Excavation Reveals
Apr 20th, 2013 at 9:00AM:
Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have found that habitation in the area started at least 3,000 years before the famous monument was built.
The BBC reports that a team of archaeologists working at Amesbury next to a stream a mile from Stonehenge have found evidence that hunter-gatherers were frequenting the site well before Stonehenge was started around 3000 B.C.
The site is the ...Who Has Europe's Dirtiest Currency?
Mar 27th, 2013 at 3:00PM:
Think about how many hands the average dollar bill passes through; all jokes about "dirty money" aside, it's practically impossible for the money that you carry in your wallet to be clean. But some bills are dirtier than others.
Researchers at Oxford put European currencies and banknotes to the test, finding that British pounds are actually cleaner than Euros. On average European bills and ...Live A Day In The Life Of 'Downton Abbey' At These English Castles
Feb 14th, 2013 at 10:00AM:
The British TV series "Downton Abbey" has taken America by storm with millions of viewers tuning in each week to watch the lives of the wealthy Crawley family unfold. The glamorous outfits, the decadent dinners, the lavish estate – it's a splendorous life most of us can only dream of.
But take a trip to England and you'll see that sprawling country estates like Downton Abbey are very ...Ashmolean Museum In Oxford Receives Major Gift Of Renaissance Art
Feb 4th, 2013 at 12:00PM:
Oxford's Ashmolean Museum has received a major bequest in the form of nearly 500 works of Renaissance gold and silver from the collection of Michael Wellby (1928–2012), the museum has announced.
Wellby was a well-known antiques dealer specializing in German and Flemish silver of the 16th and 17th centuries. He ran a shop in London for many years. As is typical with antiques dealers, he ...Ancient 'Toilet Paper' Discovered In Fishbourne Roman Palace
Jan 31st, 2013 at 2:00PM:
An examination of some strange ceramic disks found at the Fishbourne Roman Palace is changing how we look at some of the most private aspects of Roman life.
Excavations at the palace in the past 50 years have uncovered dozens of pieces of broken pottery that had been deliberately shaped into flat disks. Archaeologists tentatively called them gaming pieces but were never convinced that was ...Reassembling The Skeletons Of Medieval Royalty
Dec 24th, 2012 at 2:00PM:
A team of scientists from Bristol University are using DNA analysis to identify the remains of early medieval English royalty.
The bones are kept in several mortuary chests in Winchester Cathedral and include the remains of King Cnut, a Norse ruler who conquered England and ruled it from 1016-1035. The other remains are of Emma, his queen, and later kings Harthacnut, Egbert, Ethelwulf and ...Totnes: South Devon's Alternative Village
Oct 13th, 2012 at 11:00AM:
Totnes, an Elizabethan town in the South West English county of Devon, isn't your average West Country village. Totnes is what is increasingly known as a Transition Town – in fact, it is a model Transition Town.
What is a Transition Town, you ask? A Transition Town is a municipality focused on sustainable local economic growth by encouraging the use of local resources and local ...London Construction Reveals Medieval Graves, Bronze Age Road
Oct 7th, 2012 at 2:00PM: London is built on layers of its own past. Occasionally they poke through to the present, like the old Roman walls and the Temple of Mithras. Now two current construction projects have revealed glimpses of the city's previous epochs.
Work to build a leisure center at Elephant and Castle has uncovered some 500 medieval skeletons, the London Evening Standard reports. They were interred in 25 ...Police Hunt For Lion In English Countryside (And Fail To Find One)
Aug 27th, 2012 at 1:00PM:
A mysterious beast stalks the fields of Essex, England.
Over the weekend local police received calls from a number of eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen a lion in the fields near the village of St. Osyth. One person even snapped a predictably blurry and inconclusive picture of the beast. I'm not a wildlife expert but it looks like a house cat to me.
Police took the sightings seriously ...A Drive Through Rural Oxfordshire And Buckinghamshire
Aug 25th, 2012 at 10:00AM:
England is so much more than its cities.
Most itineraries take in London and one or two more: Oxford or Cambridge, Brighton or Bath. While I love all these places, and live part time in Oxford, it's the countryside that I truly enjoy. Glimpsed from the motorway it makes a pretty backdrop, but get off onto the country lanes and you'll find villages filled with history, old inns with great ...London's Favorite Historic Home: The Soane Museum
Aug 16th, 2012 at 3:00PM: London has preserved the homes of many of its famous residents, such as that of Charles Dickens and the Benjamin Franklin house. One local favorite is often overlooked by out-of-towners because its owner has been all but forgotten outside of England.
Sir John Soane (1753-1837) was the most celebrated architect of his day. He worked on numerous important commissions such as the Bank of England, ...Traditional Scottish Music At A Pub In Kirkwall, Orkney
Aug 13th, 2012 at 9:00AM:
I always feel like a trip isn't over until I've stopped writing about it. My wife feels the same way. So we were a bit down when I finished my series on our visit to the Orkney Islands.
To cheer ourselves up, I decided to share a video with all of you of an excellent cafe/pub/music venue in Kirkwall called The Reel. In summers they have three or more concerts a week of traditional Scottish ...
6-Year-Old Saves Manet Painting For UK (With A Little Help)
Aug 9th, 2012 at 3:00PM: Last weekend my family and I visited the Ashmolean Museum here in Oxford. My 6-year-old son loves this place because of all the headless statues, the bow you can use to shoot deer in the Prehistoric Europe room, and the gold coin of the Roman emperor Julian, who he's named after.
In the European art section we came across several paintings by Manet. One was "Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus," ...Gadling Blogger Snaps Photo Of Nessie (Not Really)
Aug 6th, 2012 at 3:00PM:
On my recent trip to Scotland, I took this shocking photo of a strange creature out in the water. Is it Nessie?
Well, no, it isn't. I won't tell you what it is, except that the truth is hidden in one of the answers to the poll below. Vote for your most likely candidate and I'll post the SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT MY NESSIE PHOTO a week from now.
Sorry for shouting, I got carried away.
While I ...
