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Amongst Britain’s diverse population are adherents of all of the world’s major faiths. Religious devotion often requires a place of worship: churches, mosques, temples, synagogues and gurdwaras. A reference to the first purpose built mosque in the UK made me wonder when each of these religious buildings were first erected in Britain.

Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys is now into its fourth series on BBC Two. It continues to provide a rich harvest of facts and blog ideas to be reaped from Portillo’s deliciously awkward interviews. This week I saw him journey through Woking and visit the UK’s first purpose-built mosque – the Shah Jahan mosque. It made me wonder where other firsts might be for the major faiths followed in Britain.

With good timing, the Office for National Statistics had released a first cut of the 2011 census data, providing an overview of the demographic composition of the nation. The most common religions followed were (in order of number of adherents) Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism.

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A dowry is the money, goods, or estates that a wife brings to her husband at their marriage. The giving of dowries was a common practice in societies around the world and still continues in some countries and amongst certain classes. The ‘golden’ age of dowries was reached in European societies in the 15^th to 18^th centuries, when royal dowries amounted to colossal fortunes or exchanges of land that could change the course of history.

The wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton was heralded as a decisive break with the past. No matter that the Middletons had amassed a significant fortune from successful business ventures, they were, in the curious world of royal etiquette, commoners. That Kate had been educated at some of the UK’s most exclusive schools was irrelevant – Prince William was marrying outside of the gilded circle of the aristocracy.

But some traditions do not come to an end so easily. The news that Kate’s parents would contribute a ‘substantial’ amount to the cost of holding the wedding was reported around the world as Kate’s ‘six-figure dowry’. Whether this was truly a dowry or, as seems more likely, a nod to austerity and a way of involving the middle-class Middletons, it was a miniscule amount compared with dowries from Britain’s historic royal marriages.

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If you are reading this in the UK, have a look at the change in your pocket. One side features a portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II and the other continues the monarchical theme by displaying one of an array of heraldic badges, devices and national icons. Changing over the years, the choice of these designs tells us something of the importance of giving equal weight to the constituent countries (England and Scotland), principality (Wales) and province (Northern Ireland) of the United Kingdom.

Since 2008, the coins issued by the Royal Mint have featured the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, either whole (on the £1 coin) or in parts that make up an image of the whole when brought together. There are also special issues for both the £1 and £2 coin (the £2 coin will be featured in a forthcoming post).

The pre-2008 coins carried a much more interesting array of designs. The back of the pound coin had a number of designs, providing a feast of symbols to satisfy each of the component parts of the union. The 1983, 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008 issues featured a slightly amended version of the royal coat of arms used today. But in the intervening years a more regional approach was taken.

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During the darkest days of the First World War, the British Government feared a domestic enemy almost as much as the hated Hun. As men were slaughtered in the churning quagmires of the trenches, the demon drink stalked in the homes and factories of the home front. The restrictions and prohibitions that were put in place had a profound effect on domestic life which continues to be felt today.

It is a stark image designed to shame the indolent and contrast their easy lot with that of the trench-bound soldier. The ‘thirty-six-hours-a-week’ worker is shown leaning on a bar with a large tankard of beer. The ‘all-the-week’ worker, a soldier, rests against a trench wall taking a sip from a medicinal flask. Underneath the cartoon was an even starker editorial message:

“The drink question is becoming very serious amongst our workers at home. A minority of them are “holding up” necessary munitions or repairs by intemperate habits. Those who do this are simply fighting our brave men in the trenches as ruthlessly as the Germans are.”

This message echoed the official government line. In January 1915, Lloyd George told the Shipbuilding Employers Federation that Britain was: “fighting German’s, Austrians and Drink, and as far as I can see the greatest of these foes is Drink”. He hammered home the message, stating that: “drink is doing us more damage in the war than all the German submarines put together”.

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It is a Welsh nationalist’s fantasy – an independent country boasting two ancient universities to rival Oxford and Cambridge, a free church and a Parliament dating back to the fourteenth century. The Welsh language is the universal mother tongue and the nation stands as an equal to its larger neighbour, England. These were the plans of Owain Glyndŵr, the last native Welshman to hold the title of Prince of Wales. 

Wales has long lived under the shadow of England. The small principality has suffered the indignity of the English language dominating public and private life, of being conjoined as a single jurisdiction (unlike the Scots and Irish, Wales has not had its own legal code since the 16^th century) and is not even represented in the flag of the United Kingdom.

How different would it have been if the last great Welsh ruler of Wales had been successful in his revolt against English domination at the beginning of the 15^th century? Owain Glyndŵr was proclaimed Prince of Wales on 16 September 1400, triggering the last great rebellion in Wales.

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The Greyhound Racing Association faced a grave problem in the late 1930s. The British seemed to have fallen out of love with dog racing, leaving stadia half full and the former cash cow looking as thin and exhausted as, well, a greyhound. Promoters came up with a breathtaking array of ideas to revitalise interest but none were as startling as the plan devised by Archer Leggett. If dogs could be raced, then why not cats? Big cats. Very big cats. If anything could rekindle interest in the track, surely cheetah racing would?

Greyhound racing was one of the most popular pastimes for working Britons in the early twentieth century. Sixty years ago, no fewer than 77 stadia across the country attracted packed crowds for regular meets. London alone boasted 33 tracks, including world famous stands at White City, Walthamstow and Harringay Stadium.

Most are gone now; fewer than 30 survive in the UK and London has just two – Romford and Wimbledon. One of the saddest losses came with the demise of Harringay Stadium. The stadium had been at the heart of an entertainments complex that included the Harringay Arena and boasted a packed calendar of events.

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Ivan Pavlov’s research into classical conditioning and reflex systems made his pack of laboratory dogs world famous. However, not even their celebrity as stars of the scientific world could save them during the horrendous Siege of Leningrad. As conditions worsened, the successors to Pavlov’s original dogs were eaten by famished researchers.

Ivan Pavlov was a physiologist but is best remembered for his psychological observations that developed into classical conditioning theory. Pavlov had noticed that dogs in the laboratory would salivate when an assistant entered the room. Sometimes the assistants were bringing food, but sometimes they were not – the dogs would salivate regardless of any confirmatory sensations of food being present.

Pavlov asserted that the dogs had learned to associate the laboratory assistants with food, and to respond on sight of their white coats by salivating. Pavlov would go on to experiment with other, previously neutral stimuli. A metronome was put in motion and food was presented. After several trials, the dogs would salivate on hearing the metronome.

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York, Swindon, Crewe, Derby, Peterborough, Wolverton and Eastleigh are very different places, cities and towns spread across Britain. From ancient cathedral cities to metropolises that barely existed two centuries ago, they all share one thing; they are amongst Britain’s railway towns. 

Railway towns owed their economic success and booming populations to the arrival and patronage of the railways. To be a true railway town, it wasn’t enough to be served by the railways; instead, the railways forged entire communities by concentrating factories, workshops and repair yards in a single location.

It isn’t surprising that the railways had the power to create towns and even cities: by 1900 over 620,000 people (just under 5% of the entire population) worked for the railways. Millions more were dependent on their wages, spending and the ancillary economic growth they brought.

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In the build up to long planned invasion of Nazi occupied Europe, Operation Overlord, nervous tension dominated the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) headquarters. When a series of crossword clues appeared in the Daily Telegraph with answers that were closely guarded operational codewords, the spooks were spooked. Had the whole plan been blown by a puzzle?

The clue seemed innocuous: Red Indian on the Missouri. But the answer, Omaha, was the codename for the Normandy beach to be stormed by the 1^st US Assault Division. On its own, this wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows. But it was far from an isolated example.

In the weeks building up to D-Day, the Telegraph’s crossword puzzle had featured a series of answers taken straight from the codebook at SHAEF headquarters. Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword all appeared, all four codenames for other targeted Normandy beaches. These would be followed on 27 May 1944 with Overlord, on 30 May 1944 with Mulberry (the name of the artificial harbours to be floated on to the beaches) and on 1 June 1944 with Neptune – the codename for the naval assault on France.  

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The railways were the defining invention of the industrial revolutions, transforming the countries in which they were established. They found plenty of peaceful uses as conduits for commerce, passenger transportation and the emergence of travel, but were also used as weapons of war. In fact, they would be used by the British Army almost as soon as the first UK railways were open to the public.

Many inventions have their origins in military technology or have their peaceful uses subverted to serve warfare. Modern examples of the former include the Internet, which began life as the ARPANET and the Global Positioning System (GPS), both projects funded by the U.S. Department of Defence. The latter is demonstrated by telephone and radio, which revolutionised the global dissemination of information thereby benefitting commerce and bringing the world a little closer together but also massively improving military signalling and communications.

It is therefore no surprise that the armed forces of several European nations seized on the possibilities offered by the nascent railways of the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, the army had started to use trains almost as soon as they were made available for passengers.

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