1880 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Benjamin Disraeli , William Ewart Gladstone
• Parliament – 21st, 22nd

  Events

• January–March – great fog continues to engulf London.
• 21 January – an underground firedamp explosion at Fair Lady Pit, Leycett, in the North Staffordshire Coalfield, kills 62 coal miners.
• 2 February – the first successful shipment of frozen mutton from Australia arrives in London aboard the SS Strathleven.
• 8 March – the Conservative Party lose the general election to the Liberal Party.
• 3 April – Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance has its London debut at the Opera Comique on the Strand.
• 18 April – William Ewart Gladstone succeeds Benjamin Disraeli as Prime Minister. This is Gladstone's second term as Prime Minister.
• 19 April – Second Anglo-Afghan War: British victory at the Battle of Ahmed Khel.
• 20 April – Victoria University chartered and incorporates Owens College, Manchester.
• 20 May – foundation stone laid for Truro Cathedral in Cornwall, the first to be built on a new site since the 13th century.
• 15 July – an underground firedamp explosion at Risca Colliery in the Crosskeys district of Monmouthshire kills 120 coal miners and 69 horses.
• 27 July – Second Anglo-Afghan War: Afghan victory at the Battle of Maiwand.
• 2 August – Time in the United Kingdom: Greenwich Mean Time adopted as the legal standard throughout Great Britain by the Statutes Act.
• 26 August – Elementary Education Act enforces school attendance up to the age of ten in England and Wales.
• 1 September – Second Anglo-Afghan War: British victory at the Battle of Kandahar.
• 6–8 September – first cricket Test match held in Britain.
• 8 September – an underground explosion at Seaham Colliery, County Durham, kills 164 coal miners.
• October – Irish tenants ostracise landholder's agent Charles Boycott.
• 29 October – Wells lifeboat disaster: RNLI life-boat Eliza Adams of Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, capsizes on service; 11 of 13 crew lost.
• 17 November – the University of London awards the first degrees to women.
• 10 December – an underground firedamp explosion at Naval Steam Colliery, Penygraig, in the Rhondda, kills 101 coal miners.
• 15 December – first performance of a play by Henrik Ibsen in English, The Pillars of Society at the Gaiety Theatre, London.
• 16 December
• * High Court of Justice reorganised into the Chancery, Queen's Bench and the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Divisions, with abolition of the Common Pleas and Exchequer Divisions.
• * The Boers declare independence in Transvaal triggering the First Boer War.
• 20 December – First Boer War: British forces defeated in the Action at Bronkhorstspruit.
• 24 December – first festival of Nine Lessons and Carols devised by Edward White Benson, at this time Bishop of Truro.

  Undated

• Foundation of the David Greig provision merchant chain in London.
• A. & R. Scott begin producing the predecessor of Scott's Porage Oats in Scotland.

  Publications

• Benjamin Disraeli's novel Endymion
• Amelia Edwards' novel Lord Brackenbury.
• Thomas Hardy's novel The Trumpet-Major.

  Births

• 28 January – Herbert Strudwick, cricketer
• 17 February – Reginald Farrer, botanist
• 1 March – Lytton Strachey, writer and biographer
• 17 April – Leonard Woolley, archaeologist
• 25 May – Alf Common, footballer
• 21 June – Josiah Stamp, 1st Baron Stamp, economist
• 12 August – Radclyffe Hall, author and poet
• 13 August – Mary Macarthur, trade unionist
• 16 September – Alfred Noyes, poet
• 22 September – Christabel Pankhurst, suffragette
• 23 September – John Boyd Orr, physician and biologist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• 15 October – Marie Stopes, birth control advocate, suffragette and palaeontologist
• 2 November – John Foulds, classical music composer
• 9 November – Giles Gilbert Scott, architect
• 10 November – Jacob Epstein, American-born British sculptor
• 25 November – Elsie J. Oxenham, children's novelist

  Deaths

• 6 May – Charles Meredith, Welsh-born politician in Tasmania
• 15 August – Adelaide Neilson, actress
• 18 September – Fitzroy Kelly, lawyer and politician, last Chief Baron of the Exchequer
• 5 October – William Lassell, astronomer
• 22 December – George Eliot, writer