Georgian Society for East Yorkshire

1 Aug 1714: On this day in 1714, Queen Anne, last of the Stuart monarchs died. All her children died in infancy and she was succeeded by her distant cousin George, the Elector of Hanover. (Numerous closer relatives were excluded from the line of succession as the 1701 Act of Settlement forbade Roman Catholics to take the throne). Anne's reign saw the ... (read more...)

1 Aug 1714: The Welsh painter Richard Wilson was born 309 years ago today. He was the first major British painter to primarily concentrate on landscape. His landscapes were acknowledged as an influence by Constable, John Crome and Turner. He died in 1782. (read more...)

3 Aug 1766: Jeffry Wyatt (who later changed his surname to Wyattville) was born this day in 1766, exactly twenty years after his uncle James Wyatt who trained him as a architect. In 1824 he began a programme of remodelling Windsor Castle for George IV. Parliament had voted a budget of £300,000 for the project: the final cost was over a million ... (read more...)

3 Aug 1746: The architect James Wyatt was born this day in 1746 at Blackbrook Farm, Weeford, Staffordshire. He produced a great deal of work in the fashionable neo-classical style which he said: "There has been no regular architecture since Sir William Chambers - the public taste corrupted by the Adams, I am obliged to comply with it." His designs include Heaton ... (read more...)

5 Aug 1778: Thomas Linley the Younger was a musical prodigy known in his life time as "the little Mozart". On this day in 1778 he died in a boating accident at Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire. It was reported in the Morning Chronicle on 11th August, "On Wednesday last Mr. Thomas Linley ... fell into a lake belonging to his Grace the ... (read more...)

12 Aug 1762: King George IV was born this day in 1762. (read more...)