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Themes Explorers and Adventurers Nobel Prize Winners
Actors/Actresses and Directors Famous People Places of Interest
Anglo-Saxons and Danes Historic Events Prime Ministers
Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty Inventors and Scientists Royal Consorts and Heirs
Artists and Architects Monarchs World Heritage Sites
Composers National Parks Writers and Poets

Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire lies in north-central England.



 Towns include the county seat of Nottingham.

Anglo-Saxons and Danes
Once part of the kingdom of Mercia. Occupying a large part of central England, Mercia stretched from Wales in the west to the kingdom of the East Angles (East Anglia) in the east and from the West Saxon kingdom of Wessex in the south to Northumbria in the north.

Famous People
It was in Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood was reputed to have lived.

 Robin Hood

Historic Events

Rebellions and Plots
In 1811 the Luddite movement began in Nottingham spreading the following year to Lancashire and Yorkshire. Organized groups of craftsmen, feeling that their livelihoods were at threat by the introduction of new textile machinery, destroyed the machines. In 1813 many of the leaders were either executed or transported to Australia, ending the protest.

Important Events
In 1642 Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham signalling the beginning of the English Civil Wars, a series of battles between supporters of the monarchy and supporters of Parliament. The First Civil War ended with his surrender at Newark in 1646. The wars came to end in 1651 when his son, the future Charles II, was defeated at the Battle of Worcester.

 Charles I



Monarchs

House of Plantagenet
House of Plantagenet
In 1216, a year after signing the Magna Carta at Runnymede, King John died at Newark Castle. The last of the three Angevin Kings from the House of Plantagenet, he had ruled England since 1199. He is buried in Worcester Cathedral in Worcestershire.

 King John


Nobel Prize Winners

Physiology or Medicine
The electrical engineer Godfrey N. Hounsfield was born in Newark in 1919. In 1979 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with the American Allan M. Cormack for developing the computer-assisted-tomography or CAT scan.


Prime Ministers
Prime Ministers
The Duke of Portland Prime Minister in 1783 and 1807-09, was born as William Bentinck in the county in 1738, possibly at Welbeck Abbey, the family seat and his childhood home.

 Duke of Portland

Royal Consorts and Heirs

House of Plantagenet
Eleanor of Castile died in 1290 at Harby. She became the first wife of the future Edward I in 1254 and Queen on his accession in 1272. She was buried in Westminster Abbey. She is the mother of Edward II.

 Royal consorts buried at Westminster Abbey




Writers and Poets
The writer and natural philosopher Margaret Cavendish died in 1673 at Welbeck Abbey. In 1645 she had married the Marquis of Newcastle, William Cavendish and later they became the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle. Often ridiculed for her writing style and opinions she continued to publish unperturbed and was rewarded for her perseverance when in 1667 she became the first woman to be invited to the Royal Society, an event which would not be repeated for another 300 years. She was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Margaret Cavendish
 Famous people buried at Westminster Abbey



In 1824 Lord Byron was buried at Hucknall Torkard near his ancestral home of Newstead Abbey. He had been refused burial at both Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral due to his political beliefs after dying of fever at Missolonghi in Greece while en route to aid the Greek struggle for independence against Turkey.

Lord Byron


 There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and the music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-18)

If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.
When we two parted (1816)

Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
Manfred (1817)



 D.H. Lawrence was born as David Herbert Lawrence at 8a Victoria Street in the mining village of Eastwood in 1885.

D.H. Lawrence

Be a good animal, true to your instincts.
The White Peacock (1911)

Men! The only animal in the world to fear!
Mountain Lion (1923)

The writer Alan Sillitoe - author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - was born in Nottingham in 1928.

Alan Sillitoe

I'm me, and nobody else; and whatever people think I am, that's what I'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958)



County Links Genealogy in England




Genealogy Links


Record Offices
and Archives
Nottingham University Manuscripts & Special Collections
Societies
Nottinghamshire Local History Association
Thoroton Society