West Park United Reformed Church was originally built as West Park Congregational Church in 1862. It was one of the first buildings erected as part of an expansion scheme when a new railway line connected Harrogate to York and Leeds.
The two-light windows on the south side of the church on Victoria Avenue have coped gables above, and on the exterior of those gables are twelve sculpted heads of historical characters, including this one of Joseph Priestley.
Joseph Priestley
"Joseph Priestley FRS (24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist who published over 150 works. He has historically been credited with the independent discovery of oxygen in 1774 by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it. Although Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele also has strong claims to the discovery, Priestley published his findings first. Scheele discovered it by heating potassium nitrate, mercuric oxide, and many other substances about 1772.
During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community.
Priestley's science was integral to his theology, and he consistently tried to fuse Enlightenment rationalism with Christian theism. In his metaphysical texts, Priestley attempted to combine theism, materialism, and determinism, a project that has been called "audacious and original". He believed that a proper understanding of the natural world would promote human progress and eventually bring about the Christian millennium. Priestley, who strongly believed in the free and open exchange of ideas, advocated toleration and equal rights for religious Dissenters, which also led him to help found Unitarianism in England. The controversial nature of Priestley's publications, combined with his outspoken support of the French Revolution, aroused public and governmental suspicion; he was eventually forced to flee in 1791, first to London and then to the United States, after a mob burned down his Birmingham home and church. He spent his last ten years in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.
A scholar and teacher throughout his life, Priestley also made significant contributions to pedagogy, including the publication of a seminal work on English grammar and books on history, and he prepared some of the most influential early timelines. These educational writings were among Priestley's most popular works. It was his metaphysical works, however, that had the most lasting influence, being considered primary sources for utilitarianism by philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer."
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Priestley Lunar Crater
"Priestley is a lunar impact crater that is located on the far side of the Moon from the Earth, in the low southern latitudes. It lies to the southeast of the flooded crater Kugler.
This is a worn crater with a rim and inner wall that have been softened and have lost the sharp features of a young crater. The satellite crater Priestley X lies across the northern rim and part of the inner wall. There is a small, relatively fresh crater on the inner wall to the south-southwest. An old crater-like feature is attached to the southwestern outer rim, and shares part of its rim with Priestley. The inner wall is narrower in the southeast than elsewhere. Within the interior is a level, featureless floor.
A depression in the surface to the south of Priestley has been flooded with lava, leaving a level plain with a low albedo. This flooded area stretches to the west and then to the northwest, and is about four times as long as Priestley is wide."
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5577 Priestley Asteroid
5577 Priestley (1986 WQ2) is an inner main-belt asteroid discovered on November 21, 1986 by Duncan Waldron at Siding Spring, Australia.
Named for Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), an English clergyman who was the first to publish an account of his discovery in 1774 of the element oxygen.
The number 5577, corresponding to the number of this minor planet, is also the wavelength in angstroms of the main emission line of green auroral light, due to triply-ionized oxygen.
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