greatbritain

UNIT 7

CAPITAL CITIES AND TOWNS

LONDON

London is the capital of Great Britain, its political, economic and commercial centre. London stretches for nearly 30 miles from north to south and for nearly 30 miles from east to west. The population of London with its suburbs is more than 9 million.

The capital of Great Britain is situated on the banks of the river Thames. The Thames is a short river, but rather deep, so the oceangoing ships can go up the Thames as far as London. London is one of the world’s largest seaports.

London was founded almost 2 thousand years ago and consists of many parts and districts, these districts are very different from one another. The largest and most important of them are the City, the Westminster, the West End and the East End.

The City isn’t large, it’s about 1 square mile in area and only 10 thousand people live here. But about half a million people come to the City every morning to work in the offices, shops and banks. It is the financial and business centre of the whole Great Britain. It is here that the Bank of England, the Royal Stock Exchange, the official residence of the Lord Mayor — the Mansion House — are situated. Here, too, you can find the headquarters of the world’s largest companies and corporations. The famous Saint Paul’s Cathedral is also in the City. The City is not only the centre of business, it is the birthplace of London.

The other historical centre of London is the area round the Houses of Parliament and the Westminster Abbey. It is called the Westminster and is the real capital of England, of the whole United Kingdom. Whitehall is a street of government offices and leads to the Palace of Westminster which is the official name of the Houses of Parliament. Not far from it there is Downing Street. Number 10 Downing Street is the official residence of the Prime Minister

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of Great Britain, and it is here that all the Cabinet meetings take place.

The West End is the finest residential area of London. Only well-to-do people live in this part of the capital. Here you can find the best theatres, concert-halls, cinemas, the most fashionable restaurants and hotels, the largest department stores. There are a lot of parks and gardens here. The famous Piccadilly Circus is the heart of the West End of London.

The East End used to be a working area of London, and the dockland used to be a busy port. Ships from all over the world docked and unloaded cargo there. After the 1960s the London docks went into decline. The docks were too small to handle the large modern container ships and the loading and unloading facilities were out of date.

However, since the 1980s, a new dockland area has developed in the East End, with modern offices and homes, marinas, a new railway system and even a small airport. The rich newcomers, so called yuppies, have reconstructed the old houses, cafes and restaurants and built modern ones. They have pushed up house prices and the cost of living.

London is a modern city with heavy traffic. Its main methods of transport are buses, underground trains and taxis. The London underground is called the Tube. English buses are double-decked and mostly red.

London is famous for its places of interest, such as the Palace of Westminster with the Big Ben,

St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square with the tall Nelson Monument, the Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery and many others. Thousands of tourists come to London every day.

EDINBURGH

Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is located in southern Scotland near the southern shores of Firth, an arm of the North Sea that cuts into the Scottish lowlands. Edinburgh is situated in

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a rough valley and is dominated by the basalt cliffs of Castle Rock. The original burgh, now known as the Old Town, arose in the 12th century with Edinburgh Castle as its focus.

The medieval town of Edinburgh was built on the eastern part of Castle Rock below the castle walls. The tiny chapel od St. Margaret, on the rocks’s highest point, is the oldest surviving building. It dates back from the 12th century but possibly incorporates some 11th – century construction. The castle’s cliff-hanging ramparts are mainly of 18-th century origin. Palace Yard, or Crown Square, occupies much of the summit of Castle Rock. Two east-west roads form the main axes of the city: the Royal Mile, which descends Castle Hill and links the castle with the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and Princess Street, along which stretch the Princess Street Gardens.

The Georgian-style New Town arose in the 18th and 19th centuries on the territory of the partly drained North Loch (lake) which stood at the base of Castle Rock. The city has expanded also to the south of the Old Town, beyond the Meadows, which occupy the site of the drained South Loch.

Edinburgh is of secondary industrial importance among northern European cities; its main industries are the processing of food, beverages, and tobacco; engineering, including ship repair and marine engineering; electronics and the manufacture of electrical goods; the manufacture of paper; printing and publishing. It is Scotland’s centre of medicine, law, banking, insurance, and tourism. Edinburgh’s port of Leith handles imports of grain, foodstuffs, and wood products; exports include coal, iron, steel and whisky. Granton, Edinburgh’s other port, is the home of the fishing fleet.

The city is the centre of of Scottish culture, education, and national identity. Edinburgh’s institutions of higher education include the University of Edinburgh (founded in 1583), known for its schools of medicine and law; Heriot-Watt University; the Edinburgh College of Art; and the New College of the Church of Scotland. The National Library, National Gallery, the Scottish National Zoological Park, and the Royal Scottish Museum also are located in Edinburgh. The city was the birthplace of Sir Walter

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Scott and of the Encyclopedia Britannica (first edition begun in 1768) . Edinburgh’s annual international festival of the arts includes a panoply of theatre, dance, music, and visual arts presentations.

Local, regional, and national bus services are extensive, and the growing number of private motor vehicles has contributed to urban congestion. Edinburgh is served by Britrail, the national system; its Waverley railway station is the second largest in Britain. The city’s ports of Leith and Granton are located 3 and 5 km, respectively, to the north, and its international airport is 8 km west at Turnhouse. The population of Edinburgh is some 500,000.

CARDIFF

Cardiff is the capital of Wales and its largest city. It is located on the Bristol Channel at the mouth of the River Taft, about 150 miles (240 km) west of London. Cardiff constitutes a separate county, which is part of the historic county of Glamorgan. The population of Cardiff is about 330,000.

Cardiff dates back to the times when Romans came to the River Taft more than 2,000 years ago; they built a small port and strengthened it in the face of seaborne attacks from Ireland. The town began its continuous existence with the arrival of the Normans in the 11th century. The Normans built a fortification on the site of the Roman fort during their expedition of 1090–1093 against the Welsh. By 1150 a stone keep was erected on the mound – one of the finest surviving examples of its type in the country. Outside the castle a small walled town grew up. Cardiff acted as a market centre and small port for the coastal plain nearby.

Cardiff’s expansion stemmed from the development of coal and iron ore mines located to the north of it, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. The town started developing rapidly and continuously over the next 100 years as an exporter of coal from South Wales. A basin and dock were constructed at Cardiff, then the railways arrived and connected Cardiff with the industrial and mining hinterland. Cardiff’s port was repeatedly expanded, and by 1913 Cardiff had become the largest coal-exporting port in the

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world. The coal trade fell off dramatically after 1918 and in1963 ceased altogether, but Cardiff remained the largest city in Wales.

Cardiff is the most important administrative, shopping, and cultural centre in the country, as well as the headquarters for many national organisations and government departments. It is also an important industrial centre, mainly for food processing, engineering, and other light industries, and a hub for commerce and other services.

Cardiff is also an educational centre, the University of Wales is situated in the city.

The historic buildings of Cardiff are the castle, Llandaff Cathedral, and the medieval parish church of St. John. The other notable buildings are the city hall, the law courts, the Welsh National Museum, The Welsh National War Memorial and th University of Wales. The docklands of the former port were redeveloped during the 1990s. The city airport is at Rhoose, 12 miles west.

BELFAST

Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland. It is situated on the River Lagan, at its entrance to Belfast Lough (inlet of the sea) . After passing the Government of Ireland Act in 1920 it became the seat of the government of Northern Ireland. Its population is about 300,000.

The citiy’s name is derived from the Gaelic Béal Feirste, which means ‘Mouth of the Sandback’ or ‘Crossing the River’. Belfast’s modern history began in 1611 when Baron Arthur Chichester built a new castle there. He did much to encourage the growth of the town. By the late 1730s the castle was destroyed, but Belfast was beginning to acquire economic importance as a bridge town and a port. It became the market centre of the Ulster linen industry, developed by the French Huguenot refugees under the patronage of William III of Great Britain at the end of the 17th century. By that time the town was a busy port with small shipbuilding interests.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the chief shipbuilding firm has been Harland and Wolf, builders of the ill-fated “Titanic”. Their

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yard now covers vast territory and contains facilities for building vessels up to 300 metres in length. Since 1975 the firm has been completely owned by the Northern Ireland department of commerce and produces steel plates for bridges as well as supertankers. At the same time Belfast has continued to develop as a port.

A Roman Catholic civil rights campaign was inaugurated in Ulster in 1968, and from 1969, street riots and increasing violence took place in Belfast. The riots were marked by an increased use of firearms and bombs by both Catholic and Protestant extremists and by the slaying civilians, police, and soldiers by the Provisional (radical) fraction of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) gangs. Unremitting violence continued into the 1980s.

The city is the shopping, retail, educational, commercial, entertainment, and service centre for Northern Ireland. Chief exports are ships, aircraft, agricultural produce and livestock, and linen textiles. Other industries include tobacco and food processing.

Educational institutions in Belfast include Queen’s University of Belfast, the Presbyterian College, and the Royal Academic Institution. Nearby is Stormont, the seat of the Government of Northern Ireland.

One of the first things that must strike the visitor to Belfast, if he comes here by sea up the landlocked waters of Belfast Lough or descends upon the city from the hills by the road that leads from Aldergrove Airport, is that Belfast is beautifully situated.

It lies in a broad natural amphitheatre, gracefully surrounded by hills, and looks down a deep inlet of the sea. As the central area of Belfast consists of very marshy ground, the centre of the city is built like Amsterdam on piles driven into mud. It is a tight-packed area of industrial and commercial buildings, but the residential suburbs of the city on the hillsides are open and attractive.

The mass of the city’s buildings are late Victorian or belong to the present century. The City Hall with its lofty dome is one of the chief landmarks. There are a number of public and ecclesiastical buildings worth seeing, including the huge Law Courts and the Protestant (Church of Ireland) Cathedral.

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The Albert Memorial clock in High Street, built nearly a hundred years ago, is Belfast landmark. The “Albert’s” great night is New Year’s Eve, when celebrating crowds gather around it and many a bottle is splintered against its massive walls.

The Museum and Art Gallery of Belfast houses an art gallery which is particularly rich in modern Irish painting, a fine collection of Irish silverware, and exhibits which give a vivid picture of Ulster history, geology, and animal life.

The Transport Museum is administered by the Belfast Corporation. It houses one of the finest collections of transport vehicles in Europe. Flanking the Ulster Museum is one of Belfast’s oldest and most pleasant parks, the Botanical Gardens, which was originally owned by a private society but has been the property of the public for about seventy years. Its main features are the conservatory of the tropical greenhouses, and the rosewalks.

To the north and west of the city lie the Belfast Hills. The most commanding viewpoint among these, though not the highest, is the Cave Hill.

OXFORD

Oxford is a great university town of England. It is situated between the upper River Thames, known in Oxford as the Isis, and the Cherwell, just north of their confluence. The first written mention of the town was in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 912.

Following the Norman conquest Oxford became a garrison town with a castle, a wall and a moat. As it was situated on the Thames and commanded a ford, it played a part in the defence of the Thames. The remains of the Norman castle and part of the mediaeval city wall can still be seen in New College Gardens.

The beginnings of the university can be traced to the same period. The exact time of the university foundation is not known, but by the end of the 12th century Oxford was already known as a centre of learning with a corporation of teachers. In 1209 a quarrel occurred between them and the town authorities which resulted in a dispersal of some of the students and masters to Cambridge.

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Fights between ‘town and gown’ were frequent. The best known is the riot which occurred in 1355.

Oxford is known as the “City of Spires” because of its beautiful skyline of Gothic towers and steeples. Most of these belong to the university, which is the oldest in England. The earliest colleges of Oxford were University College (1249), Ballot (1263), and Merton (1264). The other university buildings were mostly built in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Each college is built around two or three quadrangles, with a chapel, hall, library, and walled gardens.

There are now twenty-one colleges for men and four for women at Oxford. Besides there are numerous other educational institutions not directly connected with the university. Oxford Polytechnic, one of the England’s newest major institutions of higher education, was founded in 1970.

Oxford is famous for its architecture, which includes some of the most perfect examples of English mediaeval Gothic and is also known for the beauty of its surrounding countryside.

CAMBRIDGE

Cambridge lies at the extremeties of the region on the east bank of the Cam, a tributary of the Ouse. Its great and ancient university is also well known.

Modern Cambridge has retained the appearance of a university city to a greater degree than Oxford and is described as the only true university town in England. University and college buildings provide nearly all the outstanding features of the architectural scene. As it stands on the Cam on the boundary between the Fends and the Scarplands of the South Midland it gets a particular advantage as a market centre. The beauty of the city is enhanced by a large number of open spaces and by the river which is chiefly used for pleasure boating.

The first written reference to Cambridge is found in the AngloSaxon Chronicle under the year 875. The site of the earliest settlement was probably near a great bridge which has existed from a very early date. The history of the university may be said to begin

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in 1209 when following disturbances at Oxford mentioned above between the scholars and townspeople a number of the scholars migrated to Cambridge.

Cambridge is a leading centre of research-based industry, but its industrial development has been on a much smaller scale than in Oxford. The industries it has acquired are mainly concerned with electrical goods, including radio and television sets, printing and instrument making. To a great extent it includes industries dependent on university connections. Several of its second-hand bookshops enjoy international reputation and there are numerous establishments specialising in the sale of antiques.

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