Did you know that Bakewell in the Peak District is where the idea of 'England' began? This is a little-known story we're particularly fond of, given we've been based in the wonderful market town of Bakewell for nearly 20 years.
Historians have classified the Wirral as the 'Birthplace of England', after the bloody Battle of Brunanburh (present-day Bromborough) in the year 937, which brought together the might of England's combined armed forces for the very first time to fight against the fearsome armies of Norway and Scotland.
The Kingdom of England emerged from the gradual unification of the early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdoms known as the Heptarchy: East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex.
The first historical mention of the region is from the Massaliote Periplus, a sailing manual for merchants thought to date to the 6th century BC, and Pytheas of Massilia wrote of his voyage of discovery to the island around 325 BC.
England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had extensive cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century.
Tall and imposing, this early human species is the first for whom we have fossil evidence in Britain: a leg bone and two teeth found at Boxgrove in West Sussex. Living here about 500,000 years ago these people skilfully butchered large animals, leaving behind many horse, deer and rhinoceros bones.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) is an island country that sits north-west of mainland Europe. It is made up of mainland Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) and the northern part of the island of Ireland (Northern Ireland). It has numerous smaller islands.
Over 400 years of mass migration from the northern Netherlands and Germany, as well as southern Scandinavia, provide the genetic basis of many English residents today. The people after which England is named made up more than three quarters of the nation's genetic ancestry during the early Middle Ages.
This tiny nation on the Italian peninsula holds the Guinness World Record for the oldest existing republic in the world. With a total area of just 24 square miles (62.2 square kilometers), San Marino is one of the smallest countries in the world but has managed to hang onto its independence for centuries.
The earliest evidence of human occupation around 900,000 years ago is at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast, with stone tools and footprints probably made by Homo antecessor. The oldest human fossils, around 500,000 years old, are of Homo heidelbergensis at Boxgrove in Sussex.
Athelstan (or Æthelstan) is considered by many as the first king to rule over the whole of England. Born around AD 895, he was the grandson of Alfred the Great and the son of Edward the Elder and Ecgwynn. King Athelstan presenting a book to Saint Cuthbert from Bede's 'Life of St Cuthbert'.
The first reference that England has to a capital city is Colchester. It is recorded by the Romans as a centre of power and the home of Catus Decianus, the governor of Britannia. As such, Colchester was named the first capital of Roman Britain.
The Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons were a people who inhabited Great Britain from 450 to 1066; their reign saw the creation of a unified English nation, culture, and identity, setting the foundation for modern England.
Æthelstan is regarded by some modern historians as the first true king of England. The title "King of the English" or Rex Anglorum in Latin, was first used to describe Æthelstan in one of his charters in 928. The standard title for monarchs from Æthelstan until John was "King of the English".
Estonia, a small European country located near the Baltic Sea, is ranked as the cleanest country in the world. It scored 75.7 in the EPI 2024 report. It ranks highest due to its greenery, freshwater sources, clean air and water. The second country on the list is Luxembourg; it scores 75.1 in the EPI 2024 report.
As far as the world knew, Sanskrit stood as the first spoken language because it dated as back as 5000 BC. New information indicates that although Sanskrit is among the oldest spoken languages, Tamil dates back further. Tamil dates as far back as 350 BC—works like the 'Tholkappiyam,' an ancient poem, stand as evidence.
In terms of age, civilizations in other parts of the world precede China. Writing systems in Egypt and Mesopotamia predate Chinese writing by a thousand years. The world's first city, Uruk, in modern-day Iraq, dates back seven thousand years. Even in comparison to Europe, China isn't that old.
They estimated that the ancestry of the present-day English ranges between 25% and 47% Continental North European (similar to historical northern Germans and Danish), 11% to 57% similar to the British Late Iron Age, and 14% to 43% IA-like (similar to France, Belgium and neighbouring parts of Germany).
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands.
White British is an ethnicity classification used for the White population identifying as English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish, or British in the United Kingdom Census. In the 2011 census, the White British population was 49,997,686, 81.5% of Great Britain's total population.
When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during the Iron Age, whose descendants formed the major part of the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, Bretons and considerable proportions of English people.
When Northern Ireland was formed in 1920, it was decided, partly because of where Catholic and Protestant populations lived, to only include six of the nine counties of Ulster within the new state. Thus, the remaining three counties eventually formed part of the Irish Free State.
Although the official surname of the Royal Family is Mountbatten-Windsor, some members of the family use different 'surnames'. These stem from the senior title of the head of each branch of the family. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex can, and do, use the 'surname' Sussex.
