Sights in England
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Design Museum
Housed in a 1930s-era warehouse, the rectangular galleries of the Design Museum stage a revolving program of special exhibitions devoted to contemporary design. Both populist and popular, past shows have ranged from Manolo Blahnik shoes to Formula One racing cars, the output of Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel and that miracle material, Velcro. The museum also hosts the annual Brit Insurance Design Awards for innovations in the field of design. The Blueprint Café has delicious views over Tower Bridge. The museum plans to move to a new site in the former Commonwealth Institute in 2014.
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Liverpool Cathedral
Liverpool's Anglican cathedral is a building of superlatives. Not only is it Britain's largest church; it's also the world's largest Anglican cathedral, and it's all thanks to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who made its construction his life's work. Sir Scott also gave us the red telephone box and the Southwark Power Station in London, now Tate Modern. The central bell is the world's third-largest (with the world's highest and heaviest peal), while the organ, with its 9765 pipes, is likely the world's largest operational model.
The visitor centre features the Great Space, a 10-minute, panoramic high-definition movie about the history of the cathedral. It's followed by your own…
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Abbey Remains
Just beyond the Great Gate is a peaceful garden where the Great Court was once a hive of activity. Just beyond is a dovecote that marks the only remains of the Abbot's Palace. The best-conserved remains of this once mighty abbey church are part of the western front and Samson Tower, which were borrowed by houses built into them. In front of Samson Tower is a beautiful statue of St Edmund by Dame Elisabeth Frink (1976).
The rest of the abbey spreads eastward like a ragged skeleton, with various lumps and pillars hinting at its immense size. Just north of the church lie more clustered remains of monastic buildings.
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Trinity College
Trinity College is one of the largest, wealthiest and most attractive colleges. It was established in 1546 by Henry VIII, whose statue peers out from the top niche of the great gateway (he’s holding a chair leg instead of the royal sceptre, the result of a student prank). Check the website for frequent free entry periods. The Great Court, the largest in either Cambridge or Oxford, incorporates some fine 15th-century buildings. Beyond the Great Court are the cloisters of Nevile’s Court and the dignified Wren Library, built by Sir Christopher in the 1680s.
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Castle
The town's crowning jewel is its splendid Castle, which snags an ideal defensive location atop a cliff above the river's elbow. One of a line of fortifications built along the Marches to ward off the marauding Welsh, it is now a great castle for hide-and-seek, with myriad nooks, ruined rooms and mysterious stairwells. The sturdy Norman keep was built around 1090 and has wonderful views.
The castle was transformed into a 14th-century palace by the notorious Roger Mortimer, who was instrumental in the grisly death of Edward II. The round chapel in the inner bailey was built in 1120 and is one of few surviving.
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walls
Berwick's superb walls were begun in 1558 to reinforce an earlier set built during the reign of Edward II. They represented state-of-the-art military technology of the day and were designed both to house artillery (in arrowhead-shaped bastions) and to withstand it (the walls are low and massively thick, but it's still a long way to fall).
You can walk almost the entire length of the walls, a circuit of about a mile. It's a must, with wonderful, wide-open views. Only a small fragment remains of the once mighty border castle, by the train station. The tourist office has a brochure describing the main sights.
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Plymouth Gin Distillery
This is the oldest producer of gin in the world – they've been making it here since 1793. The Royal Navy ferried it round the world in countless officers' messes and the brand was specified in the first recorded recipe for a dry martini in the 1930s. Tours wind past the stills and take in a tutored tasting before depositing you in the heavily beamed medieval bar for a free tipple. Between Easter and October, there are extra tours at 10.30am and 4.30pm.
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Imperial War Museum North
War museums generally appeal to those with a fascination for military hardware and battle strategy (toy soldiers optional), but Daniel Libeskind's visually stunning Imperial War Museum North takes a radically different approach. War is hell, it tells us, but it's a hell we revisit with tragic regularity.
The exhibits cover the main conflicts of the 20th century through a broad selection of displays, but the really effective bit comes every half-hour when the entire exhibition hall goes dark and one of three 15-minute films (Children and War, The War at Home or Weapons of War) is projected throughout. Visitors are encouraged to walk around the darkened room so as to get the…
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Hogarth’s House
Home between 1749 and 1764 to artist and social commentator William Hogarth, this house displays his caricatures and engravings, with such works as the haunting Gin Lane, Marriage-à-la-mode and a copy of A Rake’s Progress. Here you’ll also find the private engravings Before and After (1730), commissioned by the Duke of Montagu and bearing Aristotle’s aphorism Omne Animal Post Coitum Triste (Every creature is sad after intercourse). Although the house and grounds are attractive, Hogarth’s House has been closed for several years for refurbishment (an unfortunate fire during the current restoration delayed reopening); it was due to reopen in November 2011.
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Georgian House
This 18th-century house provides an evocative illustration of aristocratic life in Bristol during the Georgian era. The six-storeyed house belonged to West India merchant John Pinney, along with his slave Pero (after whom Pero's Bridge across the harbour is named). It's decorated throughout in period style, typified by the huge kitchen (complete with cast-iron roasting spit), the book-lined library and the grand drawing rooms. Look out for Pinney's cold-water plunge-pool in the basement.
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Kendal Museum
Founded in 1796 by the inveterate Victorian collector William Todhunter, this mixed-bag museum features everything from stuffed beasts and transfixed butterflies to medieval coin hoards. There's also a reconstruction of the office of Alfred Wainwright, who served as honorary curator at the museum from 1945 to 1974: look out for his pipe and knapsack.
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Brantwood
John Ruskin (1819–1900), the great Victorian polymath, philosopher and critic, was one of the formeost thinkers of 19th-century British society, expounding views on everything from Venetian architecture to the finer points of traditional lace-making.
In 1871 he purchased this impressive house overlooking Coniston, and spent the next 20 years expanding and modifying it. The house is a monument to Ruskin's belief in the value of traditional 'Arts and Crafts' over factory-made materials: he helped design everything from the furniture to the garden terraces, and even dreamt up some of the wallpaper designs. Look out for his enormous shell collection in the downstairs…
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Minack Theatre & Visitor Centre
Surely the world's most spectacularly located theatre, the Minack is carved into the cliffs overlooking Porthcurno Bay. The visitor centre recounts the story of Rowena Cade, the indomitable local woman who originally conceived the theatre and oversaw it until her death in 1983
From the original production in 1929, the Minack has grown into a full-blown theatrical venue, with a 17-week season running from mid-May to mid-September - though aficionados always bring umbrellas and blankets in case the British weather should take centre stage. The centre is closed when there's a matinée.
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Whitechapel Bell Foundry
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry has been standing on this site since 1738, although an earlier foundry nearby is known to have been in business in 1570. Both Big Ben (1858) and the Liberty Bell (1752) in Philadelphia were cast here, and the foundry also cast a new bell for New York City’s Trinity Church, damaged in the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The 1½-hour guided tours (maximum 25 people) are conducted on particular Saturdays and Wednesdays (check the website) but are often booked out a year in advance. During weekday trading hours you can view a few small but informative exhibits in the foyer and buy bell-related items from the shop.
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BALTIC – Centre for Contemporary Art
Once a huge, dirty, yellow grain store overlooking the Tyne, BALTIC is now a huge, dirty, yellow art gallery to rival London's Tate Modern. Unlike the Tate, there are no permanent exhibitions here, but the constantly rotating shows feature the work and installations of some of contemporary art's biggest show stoppers. The complex has artists in residence, a performance space, a cinema, a bar, a spectacular rooftop restaurant (you'll need to book) and a ground-floor restaurant with riverside tables. There's also a viewing box for a fine Tyne vista.
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Museum of Immigration & Diversity
This unique Huguenot town house was built in 1719 and housed a prosperous family of weavers, before becoming home to waves of immigrants including Polish, Irish and Jewish families, the last of which built a synagogue in the back garden in 1869. In keeping with the house’s multicultural past, it now houses a Museum of Immigration & Diversity, whose carefully considered exhibits are aimed at both adults and children. Unfortunately the house is in urgent need of repair and as such opens only infrequently (usually no more than a dozen times a year). Check the website for dates.
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Plymouth Mayflower
Runs through Plymouth's nautical heritage, providing the background to the Pilgrim Fathers' trip via interactive gizmos and multisensory displays.
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V&A Museum of Childhood
Housed in a renovated Victorian-era building moved from South Kensington in 1866, this branch of the Victoria & Albert Museum is aimed at both kids (with activity rooms and interactive exhibits, including a dressing-up box and sandpit) and nostalgic grown-ups who come to admire the antique toys. From teddies, doll’s houses and dolls (one dating from 1300 BC) to Meccano, Lego and computer games, it’s a wonderful toy-cupboard trip down memory lane. There’s a good cafe on the ground floor too.
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Karl Marx Memorial Library
Clerkenwell has quite a radical history. An area of Victorian-era slums (the so-called Rookery), it was settled by mainly Italian immigrants in the 19th century. Modern Italy’s founding father, Garibaldi, dropped by in 1836. During his European exile, Lenin edited 17 editions of the Russian-language Bolshevik newspaper Iskra (Spark) from here in 1902–03, while he lived in nearby Finsbury. Copies of the newspaper have been preserved in today’s library, along with a host of other socialist literature. Nonmembers are free to look around between 1pm and 2pm.
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Horse Guards Parade
In a more accessible version of Buckingham Palace’s Changing of the Guard, the mounted troopers of the Household Cavalry change guard here daily, at the official entrance to the royal palaces (opposite the Banqueting House). A lite-pomp version takes place at 4pm when the dismounted guards are changed. On the Queen’s official birthday in June, the Trooping of the Colour is also staged here.
Fittingly, as the parade ground and its buildings were built in 1745 to house the Queen’s so-called Life Guards, this will be the pitch for the beach volleyball during the London 2012 Olympics (see www.london2012.org).
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Chester Cathedral
Originally a Benedictine abbey built on the remains of an earlier Saxon church dedicated to St Werburgh (the city's patron saint), it was shut down in 1540 as part of Henry VIII's dissolution frenzy but reconsecrated as a cathedral the following year. Although the cathedral itself was given a substantial Victorian facelift, the 12th-century cloister and its surrounding buildings are essentially unaltered and retain much of the structure from the early monastic years. Your admission price includes a 45-minute audio tour of the building.
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North Yorkshire Moors Railway
The privately owned North Yorkshire Moors Railway runs for 18 miles through beautiful countryside to the village of Grosmont. Lovingly restored steam locos pull period carriages, resplendent with polished brass and bright paintwork, and the railway appeals to train buffs and day-trippers alike. For visitors without wheels, it's excellent for reaching out-of-the-way spots.
Even more useful, Grosmont is also on the main railway line between Middlesbrough and Whitby, which opens up yet more possibilities for walking or sightseeing.
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Ranger’s House (Wernher Collection)
This elegant Georgian villa in the southwest corner of Greenwich Park was built in 1723 and once housed the park’s ranger. It now contains a collection of 700 works of art (medieval and Renaissance paintings, porcelain, silverware, tapestries etc) amassed by one Julius Wernher (1850–1912), a German-born railway engineer’s son who struck it rich in the diamond fields of South Africa in the 19th century. The Spanish Renaissance jewellery collection is the best in Europe, and the rose garden fronting the house defies description.
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Mary Rose Museum
The remains of 16th-century warship and darling of Henry VIII, the Mary Rose, is the only such ship on display in the world - it's adjacent, and equally thrilling, to HMS Victory. This 700-tonne floating fortress sank off Portsmouth after a mysterious incident of 'human folly and bad luck' in 1545. In an astoundingly ambitious piece of marine archaeology, the ship was raised from its watery grave in 1982.
It now presents a ghostly image that could teach Hollywood a few tricks, its vast flank preserved in dim lighting, dripping and glistening in a constant mist of sea water.
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St Mary Redcliffe
Described as 'the fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England' by Queen Elizabeth I, St Mary Redcliffe is a stunning piece of perpendicular architecture with a soaring 89m-high spire, a grand hexagonal porch that easily outdoes Bristol cathedral in splendour, and a vaulted ceiling decorated with fine gilt bosses. The 14th-century south porch is carved with intricate birds and animals.
At the entrance to the America Chapel there is a whale rib presented to the church by John Cabot as a souvenir of his pioneering trip to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in 1497.
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