1905 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Edward VII
• Prime Minister
• * Arthur Balfour
• * Henry Campbell-Bannerman
• Parliament – 27th

  Events

• 1 January – East Coast gales: Great Yarmouth flooded and pier at Scarborough washed away.
• 5 January – the play The Scarlet Pimpernel opens at the New Theatre in London and begins a run of 122 performances and numerous revivals.
• 16 February – at Haulbowline Base in Ireland, two explosions on board HM Submarine A5, due to gasoline fumes after refueling, kill six of the eleven crew.
• February – Alf Common becomes the first £1,000 footballer in his transfer from Sheffield United to Middlesbrough.
• 10 March
• * An underground explosion at Cambrian Colliery in Clydach Vale kills 33.
• * Chelsea Football Club founded.
• 20 March – the title Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is officially recognized by Edward VII by a royal warrant.
• 29 March – carmaker Vauxhall opens a factory at Luton, Bedfordshire, as its main manufacturing base following expansion from London.
• 6 May – the Naval, Shipping and Fisheries Exhibition opens in Earl's Court to mark 100 years since the Battle of Trafalgar
• 12 May – first public protest by suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, at Westminster.
• 23 May – first performance of George Bernard Shaw's 1903 play Man and Superman at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
• 29 May – the recently formed Chelsea F.C. are elected to the Football League for the 1905–06 football season; on 2 September they play their first match, at the new Stamford Bridge stadium.
• 1 June – General Post Office London to Brighton horse-drawn parcel post coach makes its last run, being replaced by a motor lorry the following day.
• 9 June – Charlton Athletic F.C. is founded.
• 15 June – Princess Margaret of Connaught marries Gustaf, Crown Prince of Sweden.
• 29 June – the Automobile Association inaugurated.
• July – the British Red Cross Society formally inaugurated.
• 3 July – release of Cecil Hepworth's short silent drama film Rescued by Rover presenting a significant advance in film techniques.
• 11 July – National Colliery disaster at Wattstown in the Rhondda: an underground explosion kills 120, with just one survivor.
• 12 August – first running of the Shelsley Walsh Speed Hill Climb, the world's oldest motorsport event to have been staged continuously on its original course
• 25 August – 'Ancient Order of Druids' initiate neo-druidic rituals at Stonehenge.
• 26 September – Newbury Racecourse first used.
• 3 October – HMS Dreadnought is laid down, revolutionizing battleship design and triggering an international naval arms race.
• 13 October – Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst interrupt a Liberal Party rally at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and choose imprisonment when convicted, the first militant action of the suffragette campaign.
• 18 October – London County Council's new street at Kingsway and redevelopment of Aldwych are opened.
• 21 October – Henry Wood first conducts a performance of his Fantasia on British Sea Songs at a Trafalgar Day concert in London.
• 26 October – aspirin sold in the UK for the first time.
• 5 November – Edward VII declares his eldest daughter The Princess Louise, Duchess of Fife, the Princess Royal. He also orders that the daughters of Princess Louise, Lady Alexandra Duff and Lady Maud Duff are to be styled as Princesses of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the style Highness.
• 19 November – 39 men die in a fire at a model lodging house in Watson Street, Glasgow.
• 28 November – Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin in Dublin as a political party whose goal is independence for all of Ireland.
• 4 December – Conservative Party splits over tariff reform lead to the resignation of Balfour as Prime Minister. Campbell-Bannerman takes over for the Liberal Party, pending a general election in the new year.
• 6 December – ”Jacky” Fisher promoted to Admiral of the Fleet.

  Publications

• E. Clerihew Bentley's first published collection of clerihews Biography for Beginners, illustrated by G. K. Chesterton.
• Angela Brazil's first novel A Terrible Tomboy.
• Arthur Conan Doyle's anthology The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
• E. M. Forster's novel Where Angels Fear to Tread.
• Robert Hichens' novel The Garden of Allah.
• W. J. Locke's novel The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne.
• H. E. Marshall's Our Island Story: A Child's History of England.
• Baroness Orczy's historical novel The Scarlet Pimpernel.
• H. A. Vachell’s school story The Hill.
• H. G. Wells' novel Kipps.

  Births

• 2 January – Michael Tippett, composer
• 6 January – Idris Davies, Anglo-Welsh poet
• 1 February – Joan Morgan, actress
• 4 February – Hylda Baker, actress
• 10 February – Rachel Thomas, actress
• 16 February – Oliver Franks, public figure
• 26 February – Kathleen Guthrie, artist
• 18 March – Robert Donat, actor
• 28 March – Audrey Withers, magazine editor
• 30 March – Albert Pierrepoint, hangman
• 3 May – Sebastian Shaw, actor
• 16 May – H. E. Bates, novelist
• 12 July – Prince John
• 25 July – Denys Watkins-Pitchford, writer
• 23 August – Constant Lambert, composer
• 4 September – Mary Renault, novelist
• 29 September – Marie Hartley, writer
• 4 October – Leslie Mitchell, announcer
• 15 October – C. P. Snow, novelist and physicist
• 29 October
• *Henry Green, novelist
• *Berthold Wolpe, calligrapher, typographer and illustrator
• 26 November – Emlyn Williams, dramatist and actor
• 5 December – Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, peer, politician and reformer
• 21 December – Anthony Powell, novelist

  Deaths

• 9 April – Frederic Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, British general
• 5 May – Edwin Bibby, wrestler
• 3 June – Hudson Taylor, British missionary
• 25 July – Tom Spencer, joint founder of retailer Marks & Spencer
• 14 August – Simeon Solomon, artist
• 18 September – George MacDonald, Scottish author and poet, Christian minister
• 19 September – Thomas John Barnardo, philanthropist
• 13 October – Henry Irving, stage actor
• 6 November – George Williams, founder of the YMCA
• 10 November – Rowland Williams, poet and archdruid
• 14 November – Robert Whitehead, marine engineer
• 5 December – Henry Eckford, British horticulturist
• 9 December – Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, British scholar and politician
• 17 December – Robert Jones Derfel, poet and dramatist