Wray Castle Wray Castle. The house was built in 1840 for a retired [Liverpolitan] surgeon, James Dawson, who built it along with the neighbouring Wray Church using his wife's fortune. After Dawson's death in 1875 the estate was inherited by his fifteen year old nephew, Edward Preston Rawnsley. In 1877 Edward's cousin, Hardwicke Rawnsley, took up the appointment of vicar of Wray Church. To protect the countryside from damaging development, Hardwicke Rawnsley, building on an idea propounded by John Ruskin, conceived of a National Trust that could buy and preserve places of natural beauty and historic interest for the nation. The house
British Army during the Victorian Era British Army during the Victorian Era The British Army during the Victorian era served through a period of great technological and social change. Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, and died in 1901. Her long reign was marked by the steady expansion and consolidation of the British Empire, and industrialisation and the enactment of liberal reforms (by both Liberal and Conservative governments) within Britain. The British Army began the period with few differences from the British Army of the Napoleonic Wars that fought at Waterloo. There were three main periods of the Army's development during the era. From the