4. The Story of London.

London is the biggest city in Britain. About seven million people live there and it is an eighth part of the population of the United Kingdom! London is also an international centre for business, finance and tourism.

London’s history goes back to the time when the Romans invaded Britain in AD43. There were some settlements all along the river Thames before the roman conquest, but London was a Roman creation.

Britain remained a Roman colony for nearly 400 years. During that time the Romans built a lot of fortifications. Some big roads were built to link London with other Roman settlements.

In Ad 60 there was a rebellion against the Romans. Boadicea, the Queen of the east Angles, rebelled and her army captured and destroyed some Roman towns and London was razed to the ground. Boadicea was defeated only when attacked by the main Roman forces.

London was rebuilt and in the second century a wall was erected to protect the inhabitants. Soon London grew to become the fifth largest city in the Roman Empire.

The Saxons were mainly farmers and they learnt rather slowly to use London as a port. But in the eighth century London was already mentioned in a chronicle as “a market for many nations who come to it by land and sea”. Government of the city at that time was by a general meeting of the citizens which met three times a year. It was presided over by the Bishop of London.

By 1200 London grew to the boundaries which are still the official limit of the City of London, the core of the Metropolis.

The first mayor of London probably took office in 1192. The city usually supported strong, orderly government, especially at such critical moments as the disposition of Edward II in 1327, the peasants revolt in 1381, and the rebellion headed by Jack Cade in 1450.

The first permanent bridge across the Thames was built in the very beginning of the 13^th century. It was called London bridge and it was quite different from modern bridges which are just structures for cars, pedestrians or trains. The nineteen arches of the original London Bridge were of varying breadth and they rested on piers of different sizes! The widest arch was thirty four feet (10.4 metres), the narrowest- fifteen feet (5 meters) wide. On the largest pier, in the middle of the river, stood a chapel and there was a drawbridge with a defensive tower closer to the north bank. The most interesting thing is that London bridge was a choice residential site! There were houses and shops along the roadway, many of which projected out over the river. London bridge remained the only crossing of the Thames at London until the 1740s, when Westminster bridge was built .

Nowadays there are more than twenty bridges in London.

London had a population of over 200 000 at the turn of the 17^th century and this figure nearly doubled by its close. The capital’s size and importance attracted more and more traders. Alongside the wealth , beauty and knowledge went poverty , disease and dirt. Plagues struck and the greatest plague hit London in the late autumn of 1664. In 1666 the Great Fire swept through the city, destroying everything in its path, including the plague.

At the beginning of the 19^th century London’s population was just under one million . By 1901 this figure had risen to four and a half million. The expansion of the Metropolis was as dramatic as the growth of the British Empire. When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 she became Empress of the Empire which occupied a third part of the world. By 1914 the British had spread their rule to a fourth of the globe.

One of the highlights of Victorian London was the Great Exhibition of 1851 held in Hyde park. It was visited by over six million people and the profits were devoted to the establishment of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

London suffered little material damage in the First World War, but the nazi air raids of World War II reduce a third of the city to rubble.

Post-war reconstruction and new development restored much of London’s magnificence. It was decided by the manufacturing, shipping and wholesale trade were moved to other places outside Inner (Central) London. A Green belt was created and subsequent growth went beyond it.

London’s administrative boundaries were moved further out into the country to incorporate all its former satellites - independent communities situated near it. They became outer boroughs of greater London and increased the area of the British capital to 1580 square kilometers.

To the international visitor London is a much smaller place , of course. Tourism concentrates on an area defined by the main attractions: Westminster abbey, the tower of London, The British museum, the national Gallery, Madame Tussaud’s, St Paul’s, Trafalgar square and Oxford Street with its shopping, all of which can be explored on foot within a couple of days.

TASK:

I. Learn the following words:

Fortification укрепление

Link связывать

Rebellion восстание

Rebel восставать

Destroy уничтожать

Raze to the ground сравнять с землей

Erect возводить

Preside председательствовать

Core ядро

Metropolis столица, столичный город

Orderly хорошо установленный, организованный, законный.

Deposition смещение (с должности), свержение с престола

Head возглавлять

Varying разный, различный

Pier бык (моста), устой

Chapel часовня

Drawbridge подъемный, разводной мост

Pedestrian пешеход

Defensive оборонительный

Choice самый лучший, престижный

Residential жилой

Site место, площадка, участок

Project выступать (над, из)

The turn of the century начало века

Trader торговец

Alongside около, рядом с

Disease болезнь

Strike поражать

Sweep проноситься

Expansion расширение, рост

Dramatic поразительный, потрясающий

Highlight самое интересное событие, ключевой момент

Profit доход

Devote направлять, передавать (деньги на что-либо)

Establishment основание, создание

Reduce уменьшать

Reduce to rubble превратить в обломки

Post-war послевоенный

Restore восстанавливать

Magnificence величие, великолепие

Manufacturing промышленное производство

Wholesale оптовая торговля

Subsequent последующий

2. Make the plan of the text.

3. Retell the text in 10-15 sentences.

5. Sydney

Australian port city, capital of New South Wales. It is built around a beautiful natural harbour, Port Jackson, on the south-eastern coast of the continent. Sydney (metropolitan population c. 3.7 million) is Australia’s largest city and was the first European settlement on the continent. Founded in 1788 by Captain Arthur Phillip as a penal colony at Sydney Cove, it experienced haphazard development from its earliest days. Urban plans were drafted in 1788 and 1790 but not realized, and in 1807 Surveyor James Meehan was instructed to regularize the existing street pattern, including the principal road (now George Street) that led south from the cove along the Tank Stream to the brickfields. Among the earliest substantial structures was the first Government House (1789; destr.), a simple Georgian building of brick with stone dressings by James Bloodworth. In 1788–9 a second settlement was established at Rose Hill (now Parramatta), c. 22 km up-river from Sydney Cove, where more fertile farmland was found. Australia’s first formal urban plan (1790, by Lt William Dawes) was drawn up for Parramatta, which, at the end of 1791, was more important than Sydney; a new Government House was built there c. 1800, probably by Bloodworth.

Under the governorship (1810–21) of Lachlan Macquarie, new civic ambitions for Sydney were expressed in a variety of works. Building standards were imposed, the streets were straightened and widened, wharves were constructed in Cockle Bay (now Darling Harbour), roads to Parramatta (Parramatta Road) and South Head (Oxford Street) were constructed, lands on the eastern side of Sydney were set aside for public use (now the Domain and Hyde Park), and public squares were created (e.g. Macquarie Place). Public buildings were also erected, many designed by Francis Greenway, a trained architect who arrived as a convict in 1814 and went on to raise local professional and technical standards to European levels; his buildings include Hyde Park Barracks (1817 and the church of St James (1819), Queen’s Square, which are simple, well-proportioned classical structures.

By 1822, when the population had reached c. 12,000, Sydney had an infrastructure that enabled commerce to flourish among its free settlers and emancipists. Increasing wealth came from agriculture and trade: Sydney was a regular port of call for ships trading between Europe, China and India, as well as a refitting port for whalers. Prosperous merchants began to build fine mansions in the suburbs, particularly to the east of the city (e.g. Elizabeth Bay House, 1835, by John Verge). In 1837 the first Building Act was passed, intended to control fire; this proscribed projections and imposed requirements for party walls and parapets, thus changing the appearance of the town and curtailing the organic style of colonial building characterized by verandahs. After 1840, terraced houses became the standard housing type, fitting the regulations with economy; from the late 1850s they were frequently decorated with lavish cast-iron detailing (e.g. houses in Paddington). In 1842 Sydney was incorporated as a city, and its growth was marked by the construction of classical and Greek Revival public buildings (e.g. Darlinghurst Court House, 1836, by Mortimer Lewis) and Gothic Revival churches (e.g. St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral, 1837–74, by James Hume and Edmund Blacket; and St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, begun 1865, by William Wilkinson Wardell). Blacket also designed the fine Gothic Revival main building and Great Hall (completed c. 1860) of the University of Sydney. Other notable public buildings were erected by James Barnet (e.g. General Post Office, 1866–86) and W. l. Vernon (e.g. Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1885–1909).

The outbreak of plague (1900) in the Rocks area on the west side of Sydney Cove, where the first convict structures had been built, led to new urban planning proposals for the city (1909), based on City Beautiful concepts and concentrating on the improvement of public transport. The construction of Sydney Harbour Bridge (1925–32; by Ralph Freeman), with one of the longest single-span steel arches in the world, subsequently linked the western point of Sydney Cove with the North Shore, where both commercial and residential development expanded. Popular styles for housing in the early 20th century were the Federation style, Colonial Revival and California bungalow styles. A more rugged approach was adopted by Walter Burley Griffin, who built several houses in a model bushland suburb at Castlecrag in the 1920s, as well as a series of municipal incinerators (e.g. at Willoughby, 1934). After World War II a housing shortage and congestion in the city led to the Cumberland County Planning Scheme (1951), followed by the Sydney Outline Plan (1968), which projected future development on the flat plain to the west of Sydney. Many housing estates were subsequently built there, followed by industry and commerce, and by the 1990s the western suburbs housed more than 30% of Sydney’s total population. In other suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly on the North Shore, housing was influenced by the Sydney school, which integrated buildings with their natural bushland settings.

In the centre of Sydney, the lifting of height restrictions in 1957 was followed by several commercial construction cycles, and the city’s skyline was dramatically altered by the erection of skyscrapers, some of the most prominent were built by Harry Seidler. Sydney’s best-known building, the Opera House which is sited on the eastern point of Sydney Cove was also begun at this time (competition design 1957; completed 1973). In 1962 the comprehensive redevelopment of the historic Rocks area was proposed, with several schemes (unexecuted) recommending tower blocks to replace the 19th-century terraces and warehouses; the area was subsequently restored and selectively redeveloped by the Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority. The most important project of the late 20th century, however, was the redevelopment of the run-down waterfront area around Darling Harbour, to the west of the centre, where the Sydney Exhibition Centre, Sydney Aquarium and National Maritime Museum (all by Philip Cox), a retail complex and hotels were constructed in the 1980s, connected to the city centre by a monorail. A tunnel providing a second harbour crossing was opened in the early 1990s.

Sydney was an important artistic centre from colonial times, with such painters as Thomas Watling and Conrad Martens depicting the city’s many wooded bays and recording its early development. The harbour remained an enduring subject for painters, as seen in the later work of Lloyd Rees. The New South Wales Society of Artists was founded in 1895, while Sydney’s first important art school was founded in 1892 by Julian Rossi Ashton; it was followed by the East Sydney Technical College (founded 1923). Australian modernism flowered in Sydney. John Young (1880–1946) and Basil Burdett (1897–1942) founded the Macquarie Galleries (1925); George W. Lambert and Thea Proctor (1879–1966) founded the Contemporary Art Group (1926); Dorrit Black established the Modern Art Centre (1931); and the Sydney Art Group (1945) was formed to counter declining standards in the Society of Artists. Sydney’s principal gallery is the state-run Art Gallery of New South Wales, founded in 1874 with a policy favouring the collection of Australian works. Other notable art museums include the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (founded 1879), with an extensive collection of decorative arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (founded 1989), which moved to the former Maritime Services Building at Circular Quay in 1992. The latter houses the important collection of international contemporary art established with the bequest from John Joseph Wardell Power to the University of Sydney (received in 1962), where the Power Institute of Fine Arts was also created. Of international repute is the Sydney Biennale, first held in the Sydney Opera House (1973).

TASK:

1. Answer the questions:

1. Where is Sydney situated?

2. It was the first European settlement on the continent, wasn’t it?

3. What do you know about the history of Sydney?

1. Retell the text.