The Church of St John's, dedicated to St John the Baptist and designed by Edward Lapidge, is completed in Hampton Wick

HMS Beagle sails from Plymouth to survey the coasts of the southern hemisphere, with Charles Darwin as the expedition's naturalist

English scientist Michael Faraday reports his discovery of the first law of electrolysis, to be followed a year later by the second

English mathematician Charles Babbage builds a sophisticated calculating machine, which he calls a 'difference engine'

English author Frances Trollope ruffles transatlantic feathers with her Domestic Manners of the Americans, based on a 3-year stay

After several rejections by Britain's House of Lords, the Reform Bill finally passes and receives royal assent

Mendelssohn's concert overture The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) has its premiere in London's Covent Garden

20-year-old English artist Edward Lear publishes Family of the Psittacidae, a collection of his paintings of parrots

Britain suffers first cholera epidemic

Edward Collins buys the Richmond Friary Site, stretching to the river Thames and St Helena Wharf

27-year-old Isambard Kingdom Brunel wins his first major appointment, as chief engineer to the Great Western railway

30-year-old Robert Stephenson is appointed chief engineer to the London and Birmingham railway

The Tories in Britain adopt a reassuring name for an uncertain future – Conservatives

St John's, originally a daughter-chapel of St Mary's Hampton, is declared an independent parish and the chapel is given the status of a Church

Six farm labourers, from Tolpuddle in Dorset, are transported for seven years to Australia for administering unlawful oaths in the forming of a union

In London a great fire destroys most of the Palace of Westminster, including the two houses of parliament

Edward Collins builds ten brick-arch boathouses on St Helena Wharf in Richmond, replacing the previous wooden boatsheds

The St Helena Boathouses are mostly let to the three major Richmond lightermen families of Downs, Jackson and Wheeler, for storage of freight and coal

English architect and designer Augustus Welby Pugin plays a major part in the second stage of the Gothic Revival

St Helena Terrace is built beside the Thames, on land sold by the Crown in 1833

Fox Talbot exposes the first photographic negatives, among them a view looking out through an oriel window in Lacock Abbey

Henry Bevan buys Cambridge Park with 30 acres of land and enlarges the mansion which becomes known as Cambridge House.

English artist Edward Lear begins a series of travels, sketching around the Mediterranean and in the Middle East

24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837)

The Tolpuddle Martyrs are brought back to England from Australia after public protest leads to their sentences being remitted