Sir Christopher WrenFRS was an English architect, astronomer, mathematician and physicist who was one of the most highly acclaimed architects in the history of England. Known for his work in the English Baroque style, he was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including what is regarded as his masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710.
Belton House is a Grade I listed country house in the parish of Belton near Grantham in Lincolnshire, England, built between 1685 and 1687 by Sir John Brownlow, 3rd Baronet. It is surrounded by formal gardens and a series of avenues leading to follies within a larger wooded park. Belton has been described as a compilation of all that is finest of Carolean architecture, said to be the only truly vernacular style of architecture that England had produced since the Tudor period. It is considered to be a complete example of a typical English country house; the claim has even been made that Belton's principal façade was the inspiration for the modern British motorway signs which give directions to stately homes.
John Wilkins was an Anglican clergyman, natural philosopher, and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death.
The Palace of Whitehall – also spelled White Hall – at Westminster was the main residence of the English monarchs from 1530 until 1698, when most of its structures, with the notable exception of Inigo Jones's Banqueting House of 1622, were destroyed by fire. Henry VIII moved the royal residence to White Hall after the old royal apartments at the nearby Palace of Westminster were themselves destroyed by fire. Although the Whitehall palace has not survived, the area where it was located is still called Whitehall and has remained a centre of the British government.
The Coronation Chair, also known as St Edward's Chair or King Edward's Chair, is an ancient wooden chair on which British monarchs sit when they are invested with regalia and crowned at their coronations. It was commissioned in 1296 by King Edward I to contain the Stone of Scone, which he had captured from the Scots. The chair was named after Edward the Confessor and for centuries it was kept in his shrine at Westminster Abbey. The Coronation Chair was last used at the Coronation of King Charles the III and Queen Camilla at Westminster Abbey in 2023.
Sir David Nicholas Cannadine is a British author and historian who specialises in modern history, Britain and the history of business and philanthropy. He is currently the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, a visiting professor of history at Oxford University, and the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He was president of the British Academy between 2017 and 2021, the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. He also serves as the chairman of the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in London and vice-chair of the editorial board of Past & Present.
John Ward, also known as Birdy or later as Yusuf Reis, was an English pirate who later became a Corsair for the Ottoman Empire operating out of Tunis during the early 17th century.
John Martin Robinson FSA is a British architectural historian and officer of arms.
Hinton Ampner is a village and country house estate with gardens and former civil parish, now in the parish of Bramdean and Hinton Ampner, in the Winchester district, in the county of Hampshire, England. It is near Alresford and eight miles due east of Winchester. The village lies on the north slope of a long chalk ridge, with the house and church at its highest point. The area is part of the broader Hampshire Downs, a large area of predominantly chalk downland. The nearest large river is the River Itchen to the west of the area. To the north west of Hinton is the village of Cheriton and New Cheriton. The village of Kilmeston is to the south.
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the wall to the west. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief.
Sir Ralph Verney, 1st Baronet DL, JP was an English baronet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1690.
Captain William Rainsborough, usually spelt Rainsborowe, was an English Captain and Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy, English ambassador to Morocco and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1642.
This timeline of the history of piracy in the 1620s is a chronological list of key events involving pirates between 1620 and 1629.
Simon John Thurley, is an English academic and architectural historian. He served as Chief Executive of English Heritage from April 2002 to May 2015. In April 2021, he became Chair of the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Siemen Danziger, better known by his anglicized names Zymen Danseker and Simon de Danser, was a 17th-century Dutch privateer and Barbary corsair based in Ottoman Algeria. His name is also written Danziker, Dansker, Dansa or Danser.
The Long Week-End is a social history of interwar Britain, written by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge. It was first published in 1940, just after the end of the period it treats.
Sir Francis Verney was an English adventurer, soldier of fortune, and pirate. A nobleman by birth, he left England after the House of Commons sided with his stepmother in a legal dispute over his inheritance, and became a mercenary in Morocco and later a Barbary corsair.
William Dickinson was an English architect.
Crowhurst Place, Crowhurst, Surrey, England is a medieval hall house dating from the early 15th century. In the 20th century, the house was reconstructed and enlarged by George A. Crawley, firstly for himself and subsequently for Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough. It is a Grade I listed building.
Portrait of Sir Christopher Wren is an oil on canvas portrait painting by the German-born British artist Godfrey Kneller of the English architect Christopher Wren, from 1711. Wren, a polymath, is best known for his design of St Paul's Cathedral along with multiple other buildings in the English Baroque style. It was painted during the reign of Queen Anne, when the cathedral that Wren had designed many years earlier was nearing completion. He is shown as a veteran, established personality, at the age of seventy nine. His right hand holds a pair of compasses and rests on a plan of St Paul's.
