Tuesday, April 6, 2010

#185 United Kindom...Thanks Jacqueline!


The 44p stamp is from 2000 Millennium issue showing Torrs Walkway & New Mills.

New Mills is a town in Derbyshire, England. It is sited at the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett, on the border of Cheshire. The town stands above the Torrs, a 70 feet (21 m) deep gorge, cut through Woodhead Hill Sandstone of the Carboniferous era. It is situated at the north western edge of the Peak District, England's first national park.

New Mills was first noted for coal mining, and then for cotton spinning and then bleaching and calico printing. New Mills was served by the Peak Forest Canal, three railway lines and the A6 trunk road. Redundant mills were bought up in the mid twentieth century by a children's sweet manufacturer. New Mills was a stronghold of Methodism.

The 50p stamp is from 2008 Cathedrals issue showing Gloucester Cathedral.

Gloucester Cathedral originated in 678 or 679 with the foundation of an abbey dedicated to Saint Peter(dissolved by King Henry VIII).

The foundations of the present church were laid by Abbot Serlo (1072–1104), later to become the first Dean of Exeter. Walter Gloucester (d. 1412) the abbey's historian, became its first mitred abbot in 1381. Until 1541, Gloucester lay in the see of Worcester, but the separate see was then constituted, with John Wakeman, last abbot of Tewkesbury, as its first bishop. The diocese covers the greater part of Gloucestershire, with small parts of Herefordshire and Wiltshire. The cathedral has a stained glass window containing the earliest images of golf. This dates from 1350, over 300 years earlier than the earliest image of golf from Scotland. There is also a carved image of people playing a ball game, believed by some to be one of the earliest images of medieval football.

The cathedral, built as the abbey church, consists of a Norman nucleus (Walter de Lacy is buried there), with additions in every style of Gothic architecture. It is 420 feet (130 m) long, and 144 feet (44 m) wide, with a fine central tower of the 15th century rising to the height of 225 ft (69 m) and topped by four delicate pinnacles, a famous landmark. The nave is massive Norman with an Early English roof; the crypt, under the choir, aisles and chapels, is Norman, as is the chapter house. The crypt is one of the four apsidal cathedral crypts in England, the others being at Worcester, Winchester and Canterbury.

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