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Kathryn Summerwill

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Posts by Kathryn Summerwill

The Night Nottingham Castle Burned

On the evening of Monday 10 October 1831, people gathered by the banks of the River Leen to watch the spectacular sight of Nottingham Castle, ablaze, sparks flying. The scene was captured by artist Thomas Allom and engraved by R. Sands. The mounted print, 25cm by 31cm in size, shows a pair of men dancing …

Anne Vaux: recusant!

If you’ve been watching the BBC drama Gunpowder, you will be aware of the historical character Anne Vaux, played by Liv Tyler. Anne was unmarried and wealthy, and fiercely devoted to Roman Catholicism, at a time when Catholics were being persecuted for their faith. According to her biographies in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography …

Discovering John Achard

This is a guest post by UoN student Megan Shore about her CLAS student placement at Manuscripts and Special Collections in March-July 2016. I did a work placement in Manuscripts and Special Collections in the last semester of my final year. I heard about the placement from the employability team in the School of Cultures …

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A new view: changes to our Manuscripts Online Catalogue

After ten years of faithful service, our Manuscripts Online Catalogue has had a facelift. Our new CalmView website, like our old catalogue, allows users to search over 250,000 records describing our rich manuscript and archive collections. However, beyond a cosmetic refresh, the launch of CalmView has allowed us to bring thousands of records relating to …

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How does it feel now you’ve won the war?

Guest blog by Dr Richard Gaunt It’s the name of a bridge and a railway station in London, an island in the South Shetland Islands, several townships and cities across Australia, a region in Ontario, Canada and – for good or ill – the title of the most famous song ever to have won the …

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The Countess, the Castle and the Captain

An interesting collection of documents has recently been catalogued and made fully available to researchers. The Bentinck family, Counts of the Holy Roman Empire, were cousins of the Dukes of Portland (see their family tree) The first Count, William Bentinck (1704-1774), inherited the Dutch lordships of Rhoon and Pendrecht. In 1733 he married Charlotte Sophie, …

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Happy birthday to George Green Library!

The Science and Engineering Library is about to start looking all brand new and shiny, but in fact it is 50 years since it opened its doors to students and staff at The University of Nottingham. It opened during the summer vacation of 1964, construction having been begun two years earlier, in September 1962. The …

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Nobel prizewinner at The University of Nottingham

Today’s glittering ceremony in Oslo honours the Nobel prizewinners of 2014. Unfortunately, none of them are from our University this year, although in 2004 Nottingham alumni were awarded two Nobel awards: the Nobel Prize for Medicine was given to Sir Peter Mansfield for his pioneering work in Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and an additional Nobel Prize …

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MRI Scanning and George Green

One of the University of Nottingham’s biggest success stories in recent years has been its association with the development of Magnetic Resonance techniques. Sir Peter Mansfield pioneered work on MRI in Nottingham in the 1970s, and invented the current method of producing an image of a slice through the inside of a human body using magnetic …

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George Green and his windmill

Tomorrow sees the first of a series of lunchtime talks associated with our new exhibition, George Green: Nottingham’s Magnificent Mathematician. The brick tower mill which dominates the Sneinton skyline was built by George Green’s father in around 1807. Green worked there – with the assistance of a mill manager – until he entered Cambridge University …

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