Alexander Pope dies and Pope's Villa and grounds are bought by Sir William Stanhope.

Charles Edward Stuart lands at Eriskay in the Hebrides, launching the Forty-Five Rebellion

Charles Edward Stuart gathers support for the Forty-Five Rebellion on his way south from the Hebrides and reaches Edinburgh

Charles Edward Stuart marches as far south as Derby, but then turns back

Charles Edward Stuart and his 5000 Scots are routed at Culloden, bringing the Forty-Five Rebellion to an abrupt end

Tartan and Highland dress are banned by the British government, in a prohibition not lifted until 1782

Horace Walpole rents a small house, known locally as Chopp'd Straw Hall, with 5 acres of land.

Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence which grows into the longest novel in the English language

Cambridge Park is enlarged by Martha Ashe the property having been in the Ashe family since 1657.

Walpole buys the house and grounds which the deeds call Strawberry Hill.

Henry Fielding introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones

Horace Walpole begins to create his own Strawberry Hill, a neo-Gothic fantasy, on the banks of the Thames west of London

Horace Walpole forms a 'Committee of Taste' with friends John Chute and Richard Bentley, and creates his 'little Gothic castle' over the next 50 years, giving rise to the style 'Strawberry Hill Gothic'.

A bridge is opened at Westminster

English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard

Richard Owen Cambridge, after whom the house is named, buys Cambridge Park.

English gardener Lancelot Brown sets up in business as a freelance 'improver of grounds', and soon acquires the nickname Capablity Brown

Britain is one of the last nations to adjust to the more accurate Gregorian calendar, causing a suspicious public to fear they have been robbed of eleven days

English obstetrician William Smellie introduces scientific midwifery as a result of his researches into childbirth

Walpole adds the library and refectory or great parlour to Strawberry Hill.

The first, highly decorative, Hampton Court Bridge with seven steep sided arches opens and replaces the ferry and the ford used in the drier season

David Garrick, famous Shakespearian actor, leases and then buys what was known as Hampton House, now Garrick's Villa, as a country retreat and place to entertain friends

Richard Hoare moves into Barn Elms, beginning a long period of close involvement of the famous banking family in the affairs of Barnes

Scottish chemist Joseph Black identifies the existence of a gas, carbon dioxide, which he calls 'fixed air'

Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language