Daresbury Laboratory

Coordinates: 53°20′35″N 02°38′26″W / 53.34306°N 2.64056°W / 53.34306; -2.64056

Daresbury Laboratory is a scientific research laboratory based at Sci-Tech Daresbury science and innovation campus near Daresbury in Cheshire, England. The laboratory began operations in 1962 and was officially opened on 16 June 1967 as the Daresbury Nuclear Physics Laboratory by the then Prime Minister of United Kingdom, Harold Wilson. It is run by the Science and Technology Facilities Council with around three hundred full-time staff. The present director is Prof. Susan Smith.

Facilities

Daresbury Laboratory is renowned for its world leading scientific research in fields such as accelerator science, bio-medicine, physics, chemistry, materials, engineering and computational science.

Employing around 300 staff, the facilities are used by scientists and engineers, from both the university research community and industrial research base.

The laboratory is based at Sci-Tech Daresbury, one of two national science and innovation campuses, which supports scientists, researchers and industry by providing a collaborative and innovative environment to perform cutting-edge research.

Daresbury

Coordinates: 53°20′24″N 2°37′55″W / 53.34°N 2.6319°W / 53.34; -2.6319

Daresbury is a village, civil parish and ward in the unitary authority of Halton and part of the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is covered by the Weaver Vale constituency. At the 2001 Census, the population of the parish was 216, with a total ward population of 3,906.

The most notable attributes of Daresbury are that it was the birthplace (some 1.5 miles south of the village) of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson), and that the Science and Technology Facilities Council Daresbury Laboratory had a synchrotron research facility called the Synchrotron Radiation Source, closed in August 2008.

Controversy arose in the late 1990s when Diamond, a new synchrotron light source planned to be built at the Laboratory, went instead to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot in Oxfordshire.

Daresbury has become a place of pilgrimage because of the Lewis Carroll association. There is a recently completed Lewis Carroll Visitor Centre. The parish church, All Saints, has a Lewis Carroll window, including an image of the Cheshire Cat.

Daresbury (Mersey flat)

Daresbury was a Mersey flat that is now in a ruinous condition. It lies, partly submerged, in Sutton Lock on River Weaver in Cheshire, England. The lock and its contents are designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Mersey flats

Mersey flats were sailing barges that were used in the inland waterways of Northwest England. They were carvel-built with rounded bilges and sterns, and had a shallow draught. As originally built, the flats had a single mast that could be lowered or lifted out. Typically they were about 70 feet (21.3 m) long by 14 feet (4.3 m) wide. Some flats were larger and could be used as small coasters. Other flats were unrigged and were designed to be pulled by horses or tugs, but strong enough to survive conditions on the river estuaries. The waterways in which the flats were used were the rivers Mersey, Dee and Weaver, and canals and navigations such as the Bridgewater Canal, the Sankey Canal, the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, the Weaver Navigation, the Rochdale Canal, the Chester Canal and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

Daresbury (house)

Daresbury, earlier known as Daresbury Rookery is one of the finest grand houses in Christchurch, New Zealand. Designed in the English Domestic Revival style, it is one of the best designs of Samuel Hurst Seager.

History

Daresbury was designed by Samuel Hurst Seager for the wine and spirits merchant George Humphreys. It was built between 1897 and 1901. It is regarded as Seager's best large house. Originally, the house was set on 10 hectares (100,000 m²), with the land having been subdivided off the Deans family. It was initially added to until 1910, when it had 50 rooms and five live-in staff.

Jane Deans had planted 100 blue gums in 1862 on the property. Rooks were nesting in the trees, hence the name Daresbury Rookery. The trees became infested by chalcid wasps and the rooks left in the 1930s. A snow storm in 1945 further damaged the trees. The last gum tree was cut down in 1952.

Between 1940 and 1950, Daresbury was the official residence of the Governor-General. Over time, the land was subdivided, with 20 sections sold in 1954. Today, the building sits on 0.91 hectares (9,100 m²).