Burland

Coordinates: 53°04′59″N 2°34′59″W / 53.083°N 2.583°W / 53.083; -2.583

Burland is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, about 2½ miles west of Nantwich. The civil parish also includes the small settlements of Burland Lower Green, Burland Upper Green, Hollin Green and Stoneley Green, as well as parts of Gradeley Green and Swanley. The eastern part of the village of Ravensmoor also falls within the civil parish (also in the parish of Baddiley).

According to the 2001 census the civil parish had a total population of 582.

History

The civil parish formerly had populations of 371 (1801), 627 (1851), 581 (1901) and 546 (1951).

Geography and transport

The A534 (Wrexham Road) between Nantwich and Wrexham crosses the civil parish east–west.

The Llangollen branch of the Shropshire Union Canal, just south of Hurleston Junction, runs north–south through the civil parish, immediately to the east of Burland village. The canal is crossed by Wrexham Bridge (carrying the A534) and the grade-II-listed Swanley Bridge, which dates from around 1793, as well as three footbridges: Bethills Bridge, Stoneley Green Bridge and Platt's Bridge. North of Swanley Bridge lies Swanley Lock No. 2; the grade-II-listed lock dates from 1805 and is in blue-and-red brick with stone copings.

John Burland

John Boscawen Burland CBE FREngFRS (born 4 March 1936) is an Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Investigator at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Imperial College London.

Early education

John Burland attended Parktown Boys' High School and then received a First Class Honours BSc degree in Civil Engineering from Witwatersrand University in 1959. Then he moved to the University of Cambridge where he carried out research in Soil Mechanics under the supervision of Professor Kenneth H. Roscoe which led to the award of a PhD degree in 1967. His thesis title was Deformation of soft clay. He then moved to Imperial College London where he served as Professor of Soil Mechanics for over 20 years and Head of the Geotechnics Section.

Achievements

Burland is best known as the engineer who prevented the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over, for which he was awarded the Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Francis I by the Duke of Castro. He was also involved in ensuring that the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben were unharmed by the extension of the London Underground Jubilee line.

Brian Burland

Brian Burland (23 April 1931 – 11 February 2010) was a Bermudian writer, who was the author of nine acclaimed novels that typically dealt with colonialism, family strife and race. He was also a published poet. Burland was the first Bermudian novelist to receive international acclaim.

Early years

Brian Berkeley Burland was born in Bermuda in 1931, to Gordon Burland and his wife Honor (née Gosling), and was one of four siblings. His was a privileged family background, but from an early age Brian was very conscious of Bermuda's racial inequalities and empathised with black Bermudians: "An important figure in his early life was Sarah Hinson, his black Bermudian nanny who... appears in his novel The Flight of the Cavalier as a heroic figure. Burland’s family honoured his request to be buried next to her at St. Paul’s Church, Paget."

Education

Burland began his education at Saltus Grammar School in Hamilton, Bermuda, before being sent to England in 1944 as a boarder to Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. His experiences on the ship crossing the Atlantic crossing during World War II would be evoked in his early novel A Fall from Aloft (1968). Burland subsequently attended the University of Western Ontario in Canada, where he took a graduate English course, but dropped out without graduating. Travelling to Ireland, he began working on his first novel.