Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Britain and its Empire during the First World War. The museum’s remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the museum aims ‘to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and “wartime experience”. read more…
Chester, is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 119,000 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100. Chester was granted city status in 1541. read more…
A narrowboat or narrow boat is a boat of a distinctive design, made to fit the narrow canals of Great Britain. In the context of British Inland Waterways, “narrow boat” refers to the original working boats built in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries for carrying goods on the narrow canals (where locks and bridge holes would have a maximum width of at least 7 feet (2.1 m); some locks on the Shropshire Union are even smaller). The term is extended to modern “narrowboats” used for recreation and more and more as homes, whose design is an interpretation of the old boats for modern purposes and modern materials. read more…
The Sherlock Holmes Museum is a privately run museum in London, dedicated to the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It opened in 1990 and is situated in Baker Street, bearing the number 221B by permission of the City of Westminster, although it lies between numbers 237 and 241, near the north end of Baker Street in central London close to Regent’s Park. read more…
The Camden markets are a number of adjoining large retail markets in Camden Town near the Hampstead Road Lock of the Regent’s Canal (popularly referred to as Camden Lock), often collectively named “Camden Market” or “Camden Lock”. Among products sold on the stalls are crafts, clothing, bric-a-brac, and fast food. It is the fourth-most popular visitor attraction in London, attracting approximately 100,000 people each weekend. A small local food market that has operated in Inverness Street since the beginning of the 20th century has lost stalls since local supermarkets opened; by mid-2013 all the foodstuff stalls had gone, leaving only stalls similar to those of the other markets, including fast food but not produce. Since 1974 a small weekly crafts market that has operated every Sunday near Camden Lock has developed into a large complex of markets. The markets, originally temporary stalls only, extended to a mixture of stalls and fixed premises. read more…
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The Gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its collection belongs to the public of the United Kingdom and entry to the main collection is free of charge. It is the fourth most visited art museum in the world, after the Musée du Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum. read more…
Manchester Listeni/ˈmæntʃɛstər/ is a city and metropolitan borough in North West England with an estimated population of 503,000. Manchester lies within the United Kingdom’s third largest urban area which has a population of 2,240,230. The local authority is Manchester City Council. Manchester is situated in the south-central part of North West England, fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south and the Pennines to the north and east. Inhabitants of Manchester are referred to as Mancunians or colloquially as Mancs. The city is notable for its architecture, culture, music scene, media links, scientific and engineering output, social impact and sporting connections. Manchester’s sports clubs include Premier League football teams, Manchester City and Manchester United. Manchester was the site of the world’s first railway station, and the place where scientists first split the atom and developed the first stored-program computer. Manchester is served by two universities, including the largest single-site university in the UK, and has the country’s third largest urban economy. Manchester is also the third-most visited city in the UK by foreign visitors, after London and Edinburgh, and the most visited in England outside London. Manchester has six designated Local Nature Reserves which are Chorlton Water Park, Blackley Forest, Clayton Vale and Chorlton Ees, Ivy Green, Boggart Hole Clough and Highfield Country Park. read more…
The Burlington Arcade is a covered shopping arcade in London that runs behind Bond Street from Piccadilly through to Burlington Gardens. It is one of the precursors of the mid-19th century European shopping gallery and the modern shopping centre. The Burlington Arcade was built “for the sale of jewellery and fancy articles of fashionable demand, for the gratification of the public”. read more…
