English History

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The little picturesque village of Upper Slaughter in Gloucester, England. It is famous for its beauty, strange name and also for being one of the only 14 villages in England who lost no men during the First and Second World War. These villages were known as the "Doubly Thankful" villages. 

The first ever electric tram on Kingston Bridge, London, 1906

A poster from the Underground Electric Railway Company in 1924. This particularly colourful poster illustrated the wide variety of contemporary London fashions at the time.

Navigators or "Navvies" building the London Underground in the late 1800's - early 1900's. Navvies were cheap labourers and mostly miners from Cornwall, or farmers from Scotland and Ireland. They were willing to go wherever there was work and found steady work with railway companies across Britain. Building the Underground was a long and dangerous process. There were many serious injuries and deaths during construction, including a horrific incident where two men were killed by an exploding boiler of a steam engine. They also had to contend with frequent floods. The Navvies also had a rather bad reputation of men who worked hard and played even harder, unwinding in the evenings with legendary drinking sessions that almost always ended in a mass brawl. The railway company was hit with several complaints from the police, landlords and members of the public, all of whom demanded that the men be properly managed. 

A young Queen Victoria inspects the 1st regiment of the Grenadier Guards circa 1851

Engineers on London's Crossrail project find and unearth 25 graves from victims of the Black Death dated from around 1350. Signs have been found of more burials across Charterhouse Square and also the foundations of a building, possibly a chapel. Further examination of the bones suggest that these people lived lives of hard labour, suffered malnutrition and that almost half grew up outside of London. 

An engraving from part of the intended bridge at Blackfriars London by Giovanni Battista Piranesi showing the techniques of bridge building in 1763.

St. Mary's Gate with Gloucester Cathedral in the background 

Two trams pass eachother in Leeds in 1956. A common sight, now long lost after the unfortunate scrapping of the traditional tram systems across England.

British troops wearing pith helmets looking on to Baghdad in Iraq, 11 June 1941 during the Anglo-Iraqi war. 

 An open sewer at the bottom of Grange Road, then a poor London slum c.a 1888

St Michael's Tower on top of Glastonbury Tor. The current tower was built along with a monastery in the 14th century after the previous church was destroyed by an earthquake in 1275. The earthquake of 1275 was felt from London to Wales,and was reported to have destroyed many houses and churches in England. The adjacent monastery was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 with the last Abbot being hung drawn and quartered at the tower along with two of his monks. There is evidence of Dark Age occupation of the site during the 5th to 7th centuries.