Where Does London End?

Then again, both Iain Sinclair and I would argue that Oxford is part of London...

Years later, when I worked at the building next door to it, I found that geographically it was almost exactly the border of Middlesex and London.

South of the Thames, the psychological border wobbles a lot more. Crystal Palace is London, Camberwell and Catford are London. Dulwich is definitely *NOT* London. Lewisham I'm not sure if it's London or if it's its own place, like Croydon. Streatham feels separated from London by the South Circular and Brixton Hill. Tooting is London, though, because it is on the Tube. (This is not always an indication, though - Hackney is London and it does not have a tube either.)

B-b-but I thought Middlesex didn't technically exist anymore! Am I not right in saying that it was kinda assimilated into London and Hertfordshire about 10 years ago? And then the Middx locals rebelled against the Post Office and Ordnance Survey and doggedly continued to call their homestead Middlesex, even though it's not...or something.

My dad confused me yesterday by querying my work address, in Ealing, saying that it shouldn't have London in it despite its W5 postcode.

So, for me, London = London postcode. London definitely != London phone number, cos that would include all manner of completely notLondon places like Sidcup and Croydon and so forth.

I am interested in the idea of "inner London" and "outer London" because the 6-zone tube always seemed quite wrong to me. Two zone is more like it.

Ealing is SOOOOO not London.

((Cheshunt always felt like greater London, too, even though it was officially outside London - it was only outside the M25 because my dad moved the M25. The locals thought it was definitely *not* London, but my mum insisted it was, and treated it as such. The neighbours still talk about the way she would just chuck all the local kids in the back of her VW van and drive them down to museums))

Enfield is even CALLED End-field because that's where London ends. ;-)

And it's sort of 'inside' on the tube map. Ealing Broadway! C'mon!

I always find that when i tell foreigners, or even people who haven't been to london, that I live in London, they always expect me to live right in the centre of town or very close, in places like pimlico or kensington. they have no idea of the sprawl that is London now.

Dulwich also counts as part of My London 'cos I also lived in East Dulwich for a bit when I worked at KCH, and our Xmas/summer parties were always held at the Griffin Sports Club. So it's all part of my experience of London.

*SOBS*

that's a pity because i was thinking of coming to the gig on saturday but now i find i live too far away... 8)

Muswell Hill does have nice buildings though. I live in a converted Victorian house, I assume in what would have been servants' quarters as we're on the top floor. Must have been a HUGE house.

Wood Green High St doesn't look much different to me to lots of other High St/Rds in London - Kilburn High Rd, Tottenham etc.

(Please come, even though it's a Very Long Way!)

x-post

Wood Green High St doesn't look much different to me to lots of other High St/Rds in London - Kilburn High Rd, Tottenham etc.

Well, see, Tottenham is Not London. Kilburn is a liminal zone, as half of it is on the wrong side of the Edgeware Rd. Wood Green High Street looks like Birmingham or something.

Elsewhere I stick to Zone 2 I guess with a few exceptions for Zone 3. If you are outside Zone 3 you are DEFINITELY not in London.

The epicentre of London is clearly the east, too. Bow, Hackney, Dalston, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green. I might be kind and include Clerkenwell in the east cos it's got Fabric in it.

S1 belongs to Sheffield town centre! why is this?

Southern Boundary - Thornton Heath, where my Auntie Daphne lives.

Western Boundary - er, um, dunno, Heathrow possibly?

Eastern Boundary - probably Walthamstow, with a long thin non-pan-supporting-oh-shit-I've-just-scalded-myslef panhandle out to Ilford.

But of course it is MUCH MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT because there are big areas within this which aren't London, making my London as holey as an Emmental cheese. The South East hardly exists at all, for example. What is this Lewisham of which you speak? Or indeed Deptford?

On the other hand, we took a bus back to Euston station after the busted gig w/kids at Wembley Arena, and looking at the bits inbetween, I had to say it looked crap. But then, does it actually look any different to the parts of london I know reasonably well? The crap you know vs the crap you dont. Answers on a postcard...

Clerkenwell is East because it's EC1. I've lived on both sides of the dividing line, EC1 and WC1 and liked EC better.

Camden is SOOOO London. It's as London as Soho or Shoreditch. Just a different kind of London.

x-x-x-post.

I'm not sure about Hampstead, though. Swiss Cottage is definitely London because I've lived there. Camden is London, as is Highgate. But there is a hole around the top end of Hampstead Heath which is not really London. Probably because there are bits you can stand and not see any buildings at all. Hampstead Village is London, much though they'd like it not to be.

As you depart it from the South (e.g. on the London-Brighton train), London for me demonstrably ends at Norbury.

As you come in from the West (on the M40), London for me begins at Hillingdon Station.

Liz's funeral was, incredibly, the first time I had ever come into London from the East.

The idea was that Harvesters can only exist in the suburbs, not in the metropolis.

All of those far west stations (Amersham, Hillingdon) on the Metropolitan line do not count as they are NOT EVEN IN A NUMBERED ZONE AT ALL!!!

I remember that Harvesters thing. I think there's one near Morden Hall. (Which is definitely country, not London) There might be one on the way to Herne Hill, too. Herne Hill is London. Tulse Hill and West Norwood are not. Though it starts being London again at about Gypsy Hill because Crystal Palace is London.

Come, come, Tulse Hill is way more London than Herne Hill. And Crystal Palace is Croydon, and therefore not London in the slightest.

North: The North Circular actually makes a decent divide - from Hendon to Finchley, letting in Wood Green and Lower Edmonton (though it feels a bit harsh to not include Southgate, but then you have to include Barnet which as any fewl know is full of bumpkins brandishing pitchforks and tending their herds of apes - it's a toughie).

NorthEast: Walthamstow, easy.

East: East Ham. I don't think of Barking as London - it sounds like a county innit.

SouthEast: Hither Green - Thamesmead

South: Croydon feels too much like a big town in it's own right. I'll say Morden and everything parallel.

SouthWest: Wimbledon - Richmond (District Line is LAW)

West: I'd draw the line just before Ealing, so lovely West Acton (I can hear Jel wincing from here).

NorthWest: Nothing NW of Harlesden and North Acton really feels like LONDON as it's just suburban sprawl from thereon.

So I walked north, having little better to do, and crossed the bridge between Colliers Wood and Tooting Broadway tubes. And immediately it felt more like London, so I went to an estate agent and found a flat there instead. Ever since I've thought of myself as living pretty much on the southern boundary of London: London ends at the flower and pet shop where I buy hay.

East I don't know about at all.

West I'm more generous, I know about it from coming down on the Oxford Tube, and so Oxford ends in the limbo of Lewknor Turn and London begins with the Brewmaster pub in Hillingdon. Actually, no - West London has a variable boundary based on how congested Western Avenue is - when the queues start, there starts the city.

North - the exact boundaries I'm unsure of. Wood Green is definitely in London, Southgate probably isn't, Cockfosters = you must be joking.

Lower Edmonton is north of the North Circular. You mean Upper Edmonton (sorry to be pedantic!)

Fine - makes defining it that much easier!

And anyway, that includes tons of suburbs and suburbs are not city by their very definition!

Well in that case, I'll go for Aldgate, Moorgate, Ludgate, Cripplegate, Newgats, Bishopsgate and Aldersgate.

are you confusing Watford with The Watford Gap here?

http://www.cbrd.co.uk/roadsfaq/#4412

that's completely fair!!!

(Though granted, in the Roman period and even early middle ages that actually included some green fields, as well! Hoist on your own petard!)

Well yeah if everyone starts thinking The Point in milton keynes is london that is pretty fucking weird!

If my memory serves me correctly a 15 century/16 century map of London(I'm sure there is a link to it somewhere on the web)showed fields and manor houses north of Tottenham Court Road. Ands wasn't The Rookery area around St Giles High Street built around fields and manor houses and that would have been around the 16th Century.

Anyway, it's an interesting point, Kate. As someone who loves London and considers themselves a Londoner (born in Bromley, so debatable), real London starts in:

South East: Around Lewisham/Hither Green (It's where the greenery and suburbs give way to a more dense urban sprawl and Victorian terraces)

South West: Crystal Palace but NOT Croydon (I know CP is actually supposed to be part of Croydon, but there is a totally different feel)

West: Difficult - Hammersmith is, Ealing isn't (I love parts of what is defined as West London, but Ealing and Chiswick, for example, don't feel part of the city)

East: This one stretches for miles. Ilford, Romford and Stratford maybe suburbs but they feel like London to me.

North: Sorry, but Tottenham muist be in London in my world. (Come on you Spurs!) but I will allow Highbury not to be in London or anywhere else for that matter.

I always felt like a Londoner even if most people would say I wasn't. We had a London phone number which proved it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/primrosehill/london.jpg

and you've changed the shape of english!!

which bit of that M25 did he move right?

LEAVE ME ALONE, I'M A MATHS PERSON NOT A WORDS PERSON!!!!

There was a thread about this already somewhere... cannot remember where.

the only south of the river bits that count is the southbank bit between waterloo and london bridge (see the northern line on that map)

My London is boundless - everytime I go to a new place on what's thought to be the periphery, it expands. In this way it is like my internal list of fish that I will eat. True Zone 7 is "seafood".

Everywhere else, I dunno, I guess it is London but not my London.

(I'm not including their central London north of the river stations, which they had quite a lot of - both Victorias, Charing Cross, Blackfriars, Holborn Viaduct, Cannon St and Bank)

therefore in the west southall is DEFINITELY london but acton ugh ugh industrial wasteland made entirely from adverts and ealing ick posh people living in dolls' houses and rubbish shops is not london. kensington & chelsea i kind of love to hate, so i'll grudgingly allow them in, also i feel that the people who live there would hate to think of themselves living in the same london as i'm talking about, so i'll drag them in against their will. also they got good museums and parks. kilburn is london, thought this might have only changed since luminaire opened and my friends started moving there. fulham and chiswick can fuck right off, though i might allow wandsworth in if i'm in a good mood.

in the south, streatham is london because i definitely work in london and it's 15 minutes to kate's house. dulwich is at different coordinates in time as well as space to the rest of london the entire rest of the planet, therefore null and void. tooting is london, wimbledon is absolutely not. putney is not london, putney is just the inside of a rich lady's handbag. collier's wood? you must be joking. i haven't actually been to crystal palace yet, so decision pending. and morden = mordor.

in the east (top bit) it ends where hackney ends, with an invisible lion running down to mile end. stratford is unutterably horrid and therefore not london. in the east (bottom bit) greenwich joins up with camberwell in london. i stayed with a friend in lewisham once before i moved here under the mistaken impression that it was in london, when we got there i realised i had been gravely deceived.

in the north, hampstead is london but only as far as the spaniard's, anything north of that is for people who want to say they live in london without living in london. i went to golder's green last weekend and it didn't even smell like london. highgate and har/rringe/ay are london, and so is vartry road in stamford hill but anything north of there is a desert. i shouldn't need to mention that camden is in london, but there seems to be some dissent so i will mention that camden is in london. i think for a while i thought camden was london, and it's true that the tentacles of the qsbc have an inordinately long reach. walthamstow looked nice when we were coming back from oslo and h&l's house is there so walthamstow gets special dispensation and is in london.

Emsk I buy hay for my two pet rabbits to eat and sleep on!

WTF???? There's an invisible lion running around east London????

I grew up Zone 2/3 borders and as a child believed that that was the suburbs; actual London, the city, was what was inside Zone 1 and nothing else. Although since I never strayed that far from Kentish/Camden Town my image of London was... the BBC building you see when the C2 rounds into Regent Street, the South Bank, Waterloo, various places with museums in, plus my night-time view of lights, the PO Tower and Canary Wharf and other twinkling things in between. But then there'd be trips into the country and constantly squealing "are we out of London yet?" and London seemed huge, to go on forever, the Hoover Building and Perivale inside its mammoth borders.

Now I am older and wiser I still have no idea where London ends, but I think it's somewhere around zone 4.

Acton is so London.

My personal tipping point when it comes to suburbs is when you find yourself zipping down a dual carriageway at 40mph, with row upon row of inter-war semi-d houses either side; it's Cricklewood, Neasden, Acton, Eltham, Falconwood, Bexley, Roehampton, Richmond... Suddenly you're somewhere where the buses thin out and there aren't traffic lights every 200 feet. Perhaps that's NotLondon.

Like Ambrose, I can't really square the idea of the suburbs being 'not part of London' because there are so many of them and they take up so much of the city. I've been thinking about this thread a lot in the last couple of days and the biggest split on the thread appears to be between those who grew up in London and those who didn't.

Non native Londoners = London is a place you move to, there are different preconcieved ideas about what it is, should be, should feel like, where it starts and whatnot. The idea of London being A City in the conventional sense when really it isn't, its a loose conurbation of villages that have grown together over time, each with a completely different look and feel to it.

Those of us what grew up here = Our experience of London is so different. When you're a kid, you never go to Proper Central London unless its with your parents or a school trip. You certainly never go to Bow or Brixton or Highgate or wherever unless you actually live there. (Except I think I went to the toy museum in Bethnal Green once). Your experience of London is grounded in the suburbs, the semi-detached houses and local schools and the couple of high streets and shopping centres*. The boring bits, in other words. So maybe we don't think of London in the same place and are more likely to give a pass to weird Outer London bits like Croydon and Orpington and Ealing and so forth. Sidcup to me, totally feels like London, hellish as it is.

So to me, like Mark, London ends when the fields start, when you're on the road out of the city and there's suddenly no more houses. The only place where this might fall apart is where East London becomes Essex. But then again, bits of Essex are overspill for working class East Londoners who've come into money, so maybe it counts after all. Part of the relentless expansive march of the city, eating all in its path.

*Another thing I've noticed over the past few years is it's the native Londoners (myself, Mark C, Jel and the Pinefox immediately spring to mind) who are the most parochial, and we've all stayed pretty close to the area we grew up. The Blackheath-Greenwich corridor I've lived for the last few years is basically my childhood playground, and I'm still finding out new things about it. Like the bottomless pond and the HARE AND BILLET GHOST, but that's for another thread.

(it wasn't my idea)

(xpost - oh well, at least they had an excuse)

There have been some very interesting answers on this thread - and it is strange the way that native Londoners have such different preconceptions to the imports.

HOWEVER

"its a loose conurbation of villages that have grown together over time, each with a completely different look and feel to it" doesn't ring true for me. the differences are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, and the 'villages' line is odd: practically, most of the suburbs grew up over the last 120 years in a more-or-less-planned fashion.

my own london is teh tiny. the only bit of west london i've been to in a whole year is the cine lumiere in south ken.

Growing up there, i'd always say i was going 'up' London. i lived 3 mins walk from Ruislip Gardens tube, where the Central Line is elevated at several parts. Maybe this is subconsciously where the 'up' came from. But considering I was north west of London it is odd how we'd say 'uptown' and not 'downtown'. I suppose taller buildings might also have something to do with it.

Conclusion - Stow on the Wold is greater London.

xp -- i lived in cambridge, which is north of london, so obv we'd go 'down' to london. now i go 'up' to cambridge.

*Obviously on a working weekday the increase in passengers would be more gradual, about the same number would get on at each stop between W. Ruislip and NHG.

have you read alice in wonderland?

pah, london is based on lord of the rings as any fule kno.

I see it every day on the bus, and I wonder about it. Damn, maybe I should have put it on the "Every Day Bus Ride Mysteries" thread instead.

(Cue Kate trying to explain Neverwhere to Ron, and why he would have loads and loads of strange mythical creatures and invisitble lions turn up if they had their next record release party on the HMS Belfast.)

(I'm glad I'm not the only one who spent ages trying to decipher the quasi-French of the train bridge only to realise it was B OUR GUEST. Who is Bour Guest? Is he Bill Stickers' lawyer perhaps?)