Equatorial mountings: The English mounting
 

In the English mounting, the telescope is suspended inside the bearings of both the declination and polar axes. It is illustrated in figure 1. The telescope is able to swing between the frame which forms part of the polar axis. In this design, the suspended weight is kept down to the basic minimum of the telescope itself and is used for large telescopes. It has a disadvantage in that, in this form, it cannot be used to observe the region of the sky around the pole. This is no real disadvantage for observatories which are located in low latitudes. A modified version of the English mounting, which allows polar observations, puts the telescope outside the frame of the polar axis, on the end of the declination axis but this then requires a counterweight to be applied on the opposite end of this axis.

Figure 1. The principle of the English mounting.