Thomas Cubitt completes Osborne House, designed as a quiet retreat for Victoria and Albert on the Isle of Wight

English photographer Frederick Scott Archer publishes the details of his collodion process, a marked improvement on the earlier calotype negative

English textile magnate Titus Salt begins to build Saltaire as a model industrial village for his workers

Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, built in London in six months, is the world's first example of prefabricated architecture

Marian Evans (her new spelling of her name) moves to London and gets a job as subeditor of Westminster Review

In London's Great Exhibition numerous examples of Pugin's designs and craftsmanship are displayed by different exhibitors

The Great Exhibition attracts six million visitors to London's new Crystal Palace in a period of only six months

After the establishment of the Royal Botanical Gardens, a library and herbarium is opened at Hunter’s House on north-west side of Kew Green.

The first Metropolis Water Act is passed which forbids the taking of water by the water companies from the tidal Thames and this leads to the establishment of what was to become Hampton Waterworks

Queen Victoria opens the new Houses of Parliament, designed by Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Pugin

Scottish physicist William Thomson formulates the second law of thermodynamics, concerning the transfer of heat within a closed system

The church of St Mary Magdalen in Mortlake, designed in Gothic style by Gilbert Blount, is completed

The Mortlake brewery, after passing through several hands, is acquired by the Phillips family

London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases

The hypodermic syringe with a plunger is simultaneously developed in France and in Scotland

The Fleet sewer is in need of repair

The Russian revolutionary and exile Alexander Herzen spends much of this year in St Helena Terrace before moving to Twickenham

English physician John Snow proves that cholera is spread by infected water (from a pump in London's Broad Street)

Britain and France enter the war between Turkey and Russia, on the Turkish side

A London editor decides to send a reporter, William Howard Russell ('Russell of The Times'), to the Crimean front

Florence Nightingale, responding to reports of horrors in the Crimea, sets sail with a party of twenty-eight nurses

An inconclusive battle at Balaklava includes the Charge of the Light Brigade, with British cavalry recklessly led towards Russian guns

Within six weeks of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea, Tennyson publishes a poem finding heroism in the disaster

Calling themselves Mr and Mrs Lewes, Marian and George move into lodgings at 7 Clarence Row in East Sheen

Marian Evans (George Eliot) and G.H. Lewes move into lodgings at 8 Parkshot in Richmond, with Mrs Croft as their landlady