"Достопримечательности Великобритании"
методическая разработка по английскому языку (8 класс) по теме

Hello, dear friends! We welcome you to London on a sightseeing tour. While our nice red double-decker is taking us to the central square of London, just a few words about the history of the city.

London is a very old city. Roman troops conquered south-east England in the summer of AD 43, the Emperor Claudius and his white elephants crossed the Thames at the site of London. They caked the place Londinium, and it became the capital of Britain. The Romans surrounded the place by the wall (the Roman wall), which was built about 200. Its fragments can be still seen. London stands on the river Thames  which was played a big role in the history of the city. Due to the river it developed into a major port and trading centre and it was by way of the river that various invades – the Romans, the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans – sailed to the site on which present-day London stands.

When the Normans invaded England in 1066, they built a castle by the river to keep the Londoners under control. This was how the now famous Tower of London was founded.

Today London is the capital of the country, a huge port and one of the most beautiful and interesting cities in the world with a population of over 7 million people.

And now we’ve come to Trafalgar Square.

1. Trafalgar Square.

The Square was named in commemoration of the victorious naval battle of Trafalgar in 1805. on October 21 a combined French and Spanish fleet was attacked by the English under Admiral Nelson and was destroyed. This ended the possibility of an invasion and established England’s superiority on the sea. Lord Nelson was fatally wounded in the battle.

In 1829 John Nash (1752-1835) laid out Trafalgar Square. The Nelson’s Column was erected in 1842. the total height of the monument is 184 feet and the statue of Admiral Nelson is 17 feet tall. Its pedestal is decorated with bas-reliefs of famous naval battles. The metal for these bas-reliefs was cast from cannon captured from the French.

Four bronze lions that look down the square from the bottom of the monuments are the work of the English architect Sir Edwin Landseer. They symbolize the four parts of the UK: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Trafalgar Square is one of the busiest places in London. The square is the place where demonstrations and mass rallies for peace, disarmaments and for working people’s rights are held. At weekends Londoners love to come to the Square to feed the pigeons.

Not far from Trafalgar Square you can see Parliament Square with the Houses of Parliament on the left. This building dated only from the 19th century, but it stands on the site of the palace founded by Edward the Confessor in 1050.

The Palace of Westminster was used both as a royal residence and as a Parliament house until King Henry VIII ceased to reside there in 1512. Almost at the same time the Palace of Westminster also lost its other non-parliamentary residents, the canons of St. Stephen’s, for in 1547 the college of canons was dissolved and the chapel abandoned.

Parliament in its 18th century setting was brought to a dramatic conclusion by the events of 16 October 1834. On that day the whole building caught fire, and 24 hours later, most of the remainder of the palace was a smoking and blackened ruin. It was decided to erect a new Palace of Westminster on the old historic site, and to plan it so as to serve the needs of Parliament.

The foundation stone of the new building designed by the architect Sir Charles Barry and his assistant W. N. Pugin, was laid in 1840. The House of Lords Chamber was ready for use in 1847, and the House of Commons Chamber in 1850. The Clock Tower was completed in 1858, and the Victoria Tower, then the highest tower in the world (98 m high), was finished in 1860. When Parliament is sitting, the Union Jack is flown at the top of the Tower from 10 a.m. to sunset. It is also flown on special occasions. When the Sovereign comes, it is replaced by the Royal Standard. The palace contained over 1000 rooms, a hundred staircases and 2 miles of corridors, and covered an area of 8 acres. Construction of the second tower – the Clock Tower – was completed in 1858. the Tower is 318 feet high. You have to go up 374 steps to reach the top. The clock came into service in 1859 and its bell was nickname “Big Ben”. Its name probably derives from Sir Benjamin Hall, who was the First Commissioner of Works when it was hung, and whose name was inscribed on the first bell. Above the belfry a lantern is lit after dark whenever Parliament is sitting.

2. Buckingham Palace.

And now we are coming to Buckingham Palace which is the official London residence of Her Majesty The Queen and is one of the best known symbols of the British monarchy.

Buckingham House – the building now completely enveloped by Buckingham Palace – was built for John, Duke of Buckingham, between 1702 and 1705. it was sold to the crown in 1762 for the sum of  __ 28 000 and just a year later King George III bought it for his nineteen-year old wife. Although King George III modernized and enlarged the house in the 1760s and 1770s, the transformations that give the building its present character were carried out by the architects John Nash, Edward Blore and James Pennethorne. The first Queen to live there was the young Queen Victoria, who moved in on 13 July 1837, three weeks after her accession on the throne. Even though many of the ill-fitting, lavatories were unventilated and bells did not ring, the Queen loved the Palace (Edvard Blore finally put the finishing touches to it in 1847).

Buckingham Palace is certainly one of the most famous buildings in the world, known to millions as the Queen’s home. Yet it is very mush a working building required for the administration of the modern monarchy.

In some ways the Palace resembles a small town. It has a police station, two post offices, a hospital, a bar, two sports clubs, a disco, a cinema, and a swimming pool. There are 600 rooms and three miles of red carpet. The kitchens sometimes serve up to 600 meals a day. It takes 3 days to prepare the table and 3 days to do the washing-up. The post-office deals with over 100 000 items every year. There is a special three-man security team equipped with a fluoroscope, which examines every piece of mail that arrives at the Palace.

Buckingham Palace is not only the home of the Royal Family, where the children are born, brought up and get married, it is also the work-place of an army of secretaries, clerks and typists, telephonists, carpenters and plumbers. There are gardeners, chauffeurs and engineers, cooks, kitchen hands, footmen, butlers, steward, maids and cleaners, policemen and soldiers and even two clockmakers who wind and maintain the Palace’s 300 clocks. The business of monarchy never stops and the light is often shining from the window of the Queen’s study late at night.

All the offices of those closest to Her Majesty are located on the ground floor corridor immediately beneath her private apartments. Official visitors enter the Palace by the Privy Purse door, on the right viewed from the Mall.

There can hardly be a single one of the 600 or so rooms in the Palace that is not in more or less constant use.

The senior member of the Royal Household is the Lord Chamberlain. His responsibilities include overseeing all the departments of Household. There are more than 200 domestic staff employed at Buckingham Palace and each one comes under the jurisdiction of the Master of the Household.

Above the State Entrance is the central balcony where the Royal Family appear on occasions of national importance. When the queen is in the residence, the flag is flying over the Palace.

Nearly every morning London’s most popular ceremony, The Changing of the Guard, takes place on the forecourt.

3. St. Paul Cathedral

Our next stop is St. Paul’s Cathedral. We’d better stop aside and have a look at the sheer beauty of this magnificent Cathedral.

St. Paul is the patron saint of London. St. Paul’s Cathedral was built between 1675 – 1710 and was the fifth church on the same site. The earliest wooden cathedral was erected in AD 604 for Mellitus, Bishop of the East Saxons. Mellitus was one of the second wave of missionaries sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great.

The Saxon church was destroyed by fire and rebuilt a number of times. After the last disaster in 1087, the Normans undertook to construct a massive church whose size and style reflected the importance of London. This church, known as old St. Paul’s and built in Gothic style, was the heart of everyday life in the city of London. It was the largest church in England and the third largest in Europe. But the Great Fire of London destroyed the Cathedral in 1666. sir Christopher Wren was chosen in 1669 to design and construct a new St. Paul’s. He was not only an architect, but also a Latinist, scientist, anatomist, astronomer, mathematician and engineer. The first building that he design was Pembroke  College, Cambridge. It was in 1664-1669, was the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.

Wren’s first design of St. Paul’s was rejected as it was thought to be untraditional. His second design was more ambitious and a model was made for ___ 600. While the King approved, the Church authorities disagreed. Finally, King Charles II issued a warrant of approval to allow the project to proceed. A tax was put on coal coming into the Port of London to pay for rebuilding St. Paul’s. The Cathedral was largely created and carved from stone from the royal quarries at Portland in Dorset.

St. Paul’s is a cathedral church, the main church of a diocese. It is where the Bishop of London has his throne or “cathedra”. It weighs 17 tones and rings daily for five minutes at 1 o’clock. The Cathedral clock Big Tom is of similar size to Westminster’s Big Ben. Music plays a large part in the life of the Cathedral. The organ was rebuilt in 1872.

There is also a Library in St. Paul’s. it has remained unchanged since its completion in 1709. the Library has some 13 000 books, sermons and pamphlets.

Three recurring symbols can be found in St. Paul’s: a sword, a pelican and the heads of winged cherubs. Nearly 150 full and part-time staffs are needed to run St. Paul’s.

Between two or three million visitors a year visits St. Paul’s Cathedral.

4. The Tower.

The name, the Tower of London, has long been used for the whole of the great fortress and palace founded by William the Conqueror. It belonged originally, however, to the central square tower, now called the White Tower. The strategic position gave the Tower control of the River Thames and London Bridge as well as the city itself.

The foundations of the White Tower were laid in about 1078, and the work was directed by Gundulf, a monk from Bee in Normandy. But Tower was still unfinished. His son, William II, continued the work, which was completed in about 1097. Additional buildings and defenses were constructed during the reign of kings Richard I, Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, Richard II, Henry VIII covering a long period from the 12th century to the end of the 16th. Waterloo Barracks and the Royal Fusiliers Museum were built in the 19th – 20th centuries.

During its long history the Tower has served as a fortress, a palace, a mint and a state prison. It was historically a place of murder and execution. Visitors are reminded of the grim history of the Tower by the Traitor’s Gate, the river entrance through which prisoners passed. A lot of notable and noble persons were executed in the Tower: Henry VI, last of the House of Lancaster, was imprisoned here when the Wars of the Roses brought to power the House of York, he was kept in the oratory on the upper floor of the White Tower and was murdered in 1471 while at prayer. Later, two young princes Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York, were murdered in the Bloody Tower. It is believed that their uncle, Gloucester, who became Richard III, had them smothered as they slept. Later, Henry VIII had two of his wives executed on Tower Green: Anne Boleyn, tried on a charge of adultery, was beheaded in 1536. She was followed in 1542 by Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Sir Thomas More was imprisoned in the lower chamber of the Bell Tower. He was executed for his refusal to accept King Henry VIII as head of the Church in England. Lady Jane Grey, the “nine days Queen”, a young victim of politics, was beheaded on the Tower Green in 1554. the same year, future Queen Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn’s daughter, was imprisoned in here by her half-sister, Vary I, Henry VIII’s elder daughter. In 1601 Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was also executed on the Green. Dreadful instruments of torture were invented and used in the Tower. Here are some of them: the rack, which made its victims “a foot longer”; iron shackles; iron gloves; manacles; an iron cage that compressed head, hands and feet, the portcullis mechanism which is still in working order.

The last person to be beheaded in the Tower, as well as in England, was Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat. He was publicly executed on Tower Hill in 1747.

Those mentioned above are only a few of the victim beheaded and executed in the Tower of London. No wonder ghosts are to be wondering here at night.

Today the Tower is Britain’s most famous museum. Its working day finishes every night at 10 o’clock with the ancient Ceremony of the Keys. It’s an unusual and interesting tradition. At 9.53 p.m. the Chief Warder leaves the Byward Tower, carrying in one hand a candle lantern and in the other The Queen’s Keys, and goes to Traitor’s Gate where an escort awaits him. He hands the lantern to a member of the escort and they move to the outer gate, the first to be locked. Then , the doors of the Middle and Byward Towers are locked and the procession retraces to the Bloody Tower, where a sentry calls, “Halt! Who goes there?” the Chief Warder answers, “The Keys”. “Whose Keys?” comes the question. “Queen Elizabeth’s Keys’. Pass Queen Elizabeth’s Keys. All’s well”. The Keys are delivered to the Queen’s House and the guard is dismissed.

5.  London Museums.

London Museums are another  tourist attraction.

The most important collection of historical paintings in the UK is housed at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, which covers the major European schools since the 13th century.

The National Gallery started with a small collection of 38 paintings. They were bought by the British government from the estate of merchant John Angerstein (1735-1823) soon after his death, in 1824. Initially the collection was exhibited in the merchant’s house at Pall Mall. In 1838 it was reopened to the public in its present building. Masterpieces by such great painters as Hogarth, Constable. Gainsborough and Reynolds are exhibited here, during the war, the walls of the National Gallery building were destroyed in some places. But the pictures were taken to Wales and put in a deep cave at the foot of a mountain. They were saved.

The most comprehensive collection of antiquities is to be found at the British Museum in Great Russell Street. The Museum was founded in 1753. It has many departments covering a vast variety of subjects. One of its most interesting sections is the National Library. It has more than 6 million books. The library receives nearly two thousand books and papers daily. The National Library of the British Museum has a copy of every book printed in the English language. There are also some of the first English books printed by Caxton, who lived in the 15th century and made the first printing press in England. The British Museum has a wonderful art gallery, too. It gas unique collections of sculpture, drawings and paintings of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Normans, Africans, Chinese, Indians. There are also a fine collection of Greek art and beautiful Chinese vases in the Museum.

6. Windsor Castle.

The story of London and its marvelous sights won’t be complete without visiting Windsor Castle. It has belonged continuously to the sovereigns of England since the days of Norman Conquest over 900 years ago and its present occupant, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, is a descendant of its founder. It was not as a stone-walled castle but as a typical Norman stronghold of earth and timber that it first existed, one of many constructed by the forces of William the Conqueror to control the country after his invasion of 1066.

The Castle is divided into three Wards: the Lower, Middle and Upper Wards.

Crowning the Middle Ward is the Round Tower, built as the main stronghold of the castle by King Henry II in the 12th century. The Round Tower formed the central feature of the original fortress with its surrounding dry moat, walls and towers. The tower is not strictly circular in form: its widest diameter measures 103 feet and its narrowest is 94 feet. The Union Jack is flown from the top of the Round Tower, and is replaced by the much larger Royal Standard when the Queen visits the castle.

Besides the Round Tower stand the twin towers of the Norman Gate, built by King Edward III in the 14th century.

7. The Upper Ward.

The Norman Gate leads into a small courtyard in the Upper Ward known as Engine Court. On the left is a gallery constructed by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century, followed by a building erected a century earlier as quarters for the Royal Family. Engine Court looks on the vast open courtyard known as Quadrangle where the Changing of the Guard takes place.

To the left of the Quadrangle can be seen the State Apartments and the State Entrance and on the right are the Private Apartments of the Queen. The North Terrace can be reached either by walking  down the steps beneath the Royal Library, or from Middle Ward through an opening in the outer wall of the castle. The North Terrace, built by King Charles II in the 17th century, commands a panoramic view of the Thames Valley, with Eton College and the Chiltern Hills beyond.

8. The Lower Ward.

To reach the Lower Ward the visitor must return along the North Terrace to Middle Ward and the foot of the Round Tower. On the right stands the Albert Memorial Chapel. It stands on the site of the earlier chapel built by King Henry III in 1240. The richly decorated interior of the chapel was created for Queen Victoria in 1863-73 as a memorial to her husband, Albert, the Prince Consort, who died in 1861 at the age of only 42. The chapel is the work of Sir George Gilbert Scott and houses a marble effigy of Prince Albert, whose tomb is in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore.

St. George’s Chapel is situated further down the hill on the right. The Chapel was founded in 1475 by King Edward IV as the chapel of the Order of the Garter and completed 50 years later by King Henry VIII. The chapel is in regular use on great ceremonial occasions and the most important of these is the service of the Order of Garter. This historic pageant takes place in early June. The order, which was founded in 1347 by King Edward III, is Britain’s highest order of chivalry. Queen May’s Dolls’ House must be the most magnificent doll’s house in the world, an English country mansion in miniature. The house, designed by the famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens as a gift for Queen Mary, was intended to be a work of the finest English craftsmanship, a model of an early 20th century royal residence perfect in every detail.

Built on a scale of 1 to 12, the house is miracle of scale and accuracy. It has electric lighting, hot and cold running water, and fully-operating lift and door locks. It boasts an electric vacuum cleaner, an electric iron and a Singer sewing-machine. The exterior of the house has sliding sash windows.

In the morning of Friday 20 November 1992 a terrible fire broke out. It swept through the northeast wing of Windsor Castle.

The fire caused millions of pounds worth of damage. A brave rescue operation, however, saved the art treasures from the flames.

Windsor Castle is an ideal weekend residence for the Queen. As a young princess the Sovereign was evacuated here to safety with her sister Princess Margaret in 1940, and the princesses lived at Windsor throughout the Second World War.

Nowadays the Royal Family come to Windsor to enjoy outdoor activities, such as riding, carriage-driving, polo and shooting in the Great Park. Prince Charles often plays polo at Smith’s  Lawn during the season. Ascot week in June is greatly enjoyed, as well as the Royal Windsor Horse Show and the traditional Garter procession and service. All these events are highly popular with the public too, attracting huge crowds.