Understanding the British History Timeline
August 7th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline Kenny
I have not been posting to this blog lately because I have been busy writing the last major section for Cotswolder - Towns and Villages of the Cotswolds. I am having a lot of fun going through my old trip journals, dragging out the guidebooks and looking over maps to remember all the great things to see and do in the Cotswolds. A Cotswolds friend, Kazz, is helping by driving around and taking photos of all the main Cotswolds towns (but it has been overcast a lot lately and she has to wait for sunny days).
Reading about the Cotswolds, I keep coming upon historical references that are confusing. For example, the church in Windrush is Perpendicular*. (The photo shows the double row of beaked heads on the Norman doorway in the Windrush church.) I keep forgetting what this means (I eventually found the explanation on a page that Valerie wrote for Cotswolder about the History of the Cotswolds). I know that Georgian Bath was built in the the mid to late 1700s, and that it has something to do with King George, but again I was confused**. I did some more research and wrote British History and Architecture Timeline.
There are some great web resources with more information than my brief timeline. I have these listed with the article but here they are for easy reference.
Resources for British History
- BBC - History: Detailed explanation for each era of British history, with a very good interactive timeline.
- British Monarchy
- Britain Express - English History
- Britain Express - English Monarchs
Resources for British Architecture
- Britain Express - English Architecture
- Wikipedia - Gothic Architecture
- The Black and White Village Trail - Herefordshire: Get a brochure from Hereford Tourism outlining the 40-mile driving route through north-west Herefordshire to see the Tudor Black and White buildings.
*Perpendicular is a period of Gothic Architecture from the late Middle Ages (1380 - 1520).
**The Georgian era was from 1714 to 1836 during the reigns of George I, II, III and IV and George IV’s son, William IV. The Regency Period, from 1811 to 1820, started when George the III’s son, the Regent, took over when his father was ill.
