Events from the year 1857 in the United Kingdom.

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Whig)

• 7 January – London General Omnibus Company begins operating.^[1]
• 19 February – Lundhill Colliery explosion at Wombwell in the South Yorkshire Coalfield kills 189 miners.^[2]
• 3 March – France and the United Kingdom formally declare war on China in the Second Opium War.
• 5 March – in London, barrister James Townsend Saward receives a sentence of penal transportation for forgery of cheques.
• 27 March–24 April – a general election secures Palmerston's Whigs a clear majority.^[3]
• 4 April – end of the Anglo-Persian War.
• 5 May–17 October – the Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition is held in Manchester, one of the largest such displays of all time.^[4]
• 10 May – Indian Rebellion: The XI Native Cavalry of the Bengal Army in Meerut, India, mutiny against the British East India Company.^[1]
• 11 May – Indian combatants capture Delhi from the East India Company.
• 18 May – British Museum Reading Room opens.^[3]
• 22 June – the South Kensington Museum, predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is opened by Queen Victoria in London;^[5] it is the world’s first museum to incorporate a refreshment room.^[6]
• 25 June – Queen Victoria formally grants her husband Albert the title Prince Consort.^[7]
• 26 June – at a ceremony in Hyde Park, London, Queen Victoria awards the first sixty-six Victoria Crosses,^[1] for actions during the Crimean War. Commander Henry James Raby, RN, is the first to receive the medal from her hands.
• 12 July – in Belfast, confrontations between crowds of Catholics and Protestants turn into 10 days of rioting, exacerbated by the open-air preaching of Evangelical Presbyterian minister "Roaring" Hugh Hanna,^[8] with many of the police force joining the Protestant side. There are also riots in Derry, Portadown and Lurgan.^[9]
• 18 July – prison hulk HMS Defence catches fire at her moorings off Woolwich, bringing an end to the use of hulks in home waters.^[10]
• 28 August – Matrimonial Causes Act removes divorce from ecclesiastical jurisdiction and makes it possible by order of a new civil Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, removing the necessity of parliamentary approval.^[3]
• September – Obscene Publications Act makes the sale of obscene material a statutory offence.^[11]
• 20 September – British forces recapture Delhi,^[3] compelling the surrender of Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor.
• 24 October – Sheffield F.C., the world's first football team, is founded in Sheffield.^[1]
• November – Kilburn White Horse cut in North Yorkshire.
• 29 November – Orsini affair: Piedmontese revolutionary Felice Orsini leaves exile in London to make an assassination attempt on Emperor Napoleon III of France in Paris.
• 31 December – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa as the capital of Canada.

• R. M. Ballantyne's novel The Coral Island.
• George Borrow's novel The Romany Rye.
• Charlotte Brontë's novel The Professor (posthumously, as by 'Currer Bell').
• Charles Dickens's novel Little Dorrit (complete in book form).
• Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë.
• P. H. Gosse's creationist text Omphalos.
• Thomas Hughes' novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.^[3]
• George A. Lawrence's novel Guy Livingstone, or Thorough (anonymously).^[13]
• John Ruskin's introductory text The Elements of Drawing.
• William Makepeace Thackeray's historical novel The Virginians (begins serialisation).
• Anthony Trollope's novel Barchester Towers.^[14]

• 18 January – William Lethaby, Arts and Crafts architect and designer (died 1931)
• 25 January – Hugh Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale, sportsman (died 1944)
• 31 January – George Jackson Churchward, chief mechanical engineer of the Great Western Railway (died 1933)
• 2 February – Sir James Cory, 1st Baronet, politician and ship-owner (died 1933)
• 22 February – Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement (died 1941)
• 13 March – Herbert Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer, general (died 1932)
• 14 March – Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, patron and promoter of women's interests (died 1939)^[15]
• 27 March – Karl Pearson, statistician (died 1936)
• 8 April – Lucy, Lady Houston, born Fanny Lucy Radmall, political activist, suffragette, philanthropist and promoter of aviation (died 1936)
• 11 April – John Davidson, Scottish-born poet and playwright (suicide 1909)
• 14 April
  • Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, member of the royal family (died 1944)
  • Victor Horsley, physician, surgeon (died 1916)
• 13 May – Ronald Ross, physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (died 1932)
• 15 May – Williamina Fleming, astronomer (died 1911)^[16]
• 28 May – Charles Voysey, Arts and Crafts designer and domestic architect (died 1941)
• 2 June – Edward Elgar, composer (died 1934)
• 12 June – Kate Lester, stage and silent screen actress (died 1924)
• 15 June – William Fife, Scottish yacht designer (died 1944)
• 28 June – Robert Jones, Welsh orthopaedic surgeon (died 1933)
• 19 September – James Bridie, rugby union international (died 1893)
• 28 September – Lewis Bayly, admiral (died 1938)
• 2 October
  • John Macintyre Scottish laryngologist and pioneer radiographer (died 1928)
  • A. E. Waite, occultist (died 1942)
• 4 October – Will Thorne, trade unionist (died 1946)
• 5 November – Joseph Tabrar, songwriter (died 1931)
• 17 November – George Marchant, inventor, manufacturer and philanthropist (died 1941)
• 22 November – George Gissing, novelist (died 1903)
• 27 November – Charles Scott Sherrington, physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1952)
• 30 November – Bobby Abel, cricketer (died 1936)
• 2 December – Robert Armstrong-Jones, physician and psychiatrist (died 1943)

• 1 January – John Britton, antiquary and topographer (born 1771)
• 2 January – Andrew Ure, doctor and writer (born 1778)
• 20 January – John Manners, 5th Duke of Rutland (born 1778)
• 10 February – David Thompson, explorer (born 1770)
• 18 February – Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere, politician (born 1800)
• 22 February – Henry Lascelles, 3rd Earl of Harewood, peer and Member of Parliament (born 1797)
• 13 March – William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst, diplomat and peer (born 1773)
• 11 May – Granville Waldegrave, 2nd Baron Radstock, naval officer (born 1786)
• 16 May – Sir William Lloyd, soldier and mountaineer (born 1782)
• 27 May – George Anson, army officer and Whig politician (born 1797)
• 12 August – William Conybeare, dean of Llandaff (born 1787)
• 16 August – John Jones, Talysarn, leading non-conformist minister (born 1796)
• 24 November – Sir Henry Havelock, general (born 1795)
• 30 November – Mary Buckland, palaeontologist and marine biologist (born 1797)
• 15 December – Sir George Cayley, aviation pioneer (born 1773)
• 17 December – Sir Francis Beaufort, naval officer and hydrographer (born 1774)