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The sheer size of London can be daunting to newcomers. It’s not only vast and labyrinthine, but also chaotic. Central London was originally an assortment of villages and some 250 years ago there were vast spaces between them; today they’ve merged into an almost seamless metropolis. The growth of the surrounding parts of London accelerated in the Victorian period, when the ‘suburbs’ were at least partly planned. Here there’s more open space and the population density is generally below 2,750 people per mi2 (7,000 per km2), compared with up to twice as many in Central London.

Any attempt to divide London into manageable and comprehensible pieces can only be partially successful. The task is complicated by the overlap between the different artificial divisions that have been created over the years – geographical, cultural, historical, administrative and postal. The customary division of the city is marked by the River Thames, which flows from west to east through its centre and divides it into northern and southern ‘halves’. There’s a widespread notion that the areas north of the river are more pleasant than those to the south, just as it’s generally believed that the West End is superior to the East End. However, such generalisations often fail to stand up when you start looking at areas in detail.

The central area and the most important sights, theatres and restaurants are within the Underground’s Circle Line on the north bank of the river. The trendy and tourist-ridden West End lies within the western portion of the loop and includes Soho, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Oxford Street and Regent Street. The East End, so beloved of Ealing comedies, lies east of the Circle Line; it used to be the exclusive preserve of the Cockney but is now a cultural melting pot. There are also interesting inner-city suburbs in North London, including Islington and Camden Town, while South London includes a mess of relatively poor suburbs, such as Brixton, which have vibrant subcultures of their own and are in many ways where the real vitality of London lies.

Although Greater London is now over 40 years old, many people still consider only the central areas to be ‘proper’ London, the outer areas belonging to the surrounding (‘home’) counties. For example, Kingston was originally part of Surrey and Bromley was in Kent, but both towns have since lent their names to a London borough. Created in 1965, the boroughs are the administrative areas of Greater London, which is one of the 45 administrative regions (or counties) of England. There are 32 boroughs plus the City of London, which is effectively a borough but has certain peculiarities such as its own police force. (The so-called City of Westminster, on the other hand, is a borough like any other.) The boroughs vary considerably in size but each has a population of between 150,000 and 350,000, with the exception of the City of London, which has just 7,500 residents.

Unofficially, the boroughs are divided between ‘inner London’ (Camden, City of London, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith & Fulham, Haringey, Islington, Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth) and ‘outer London’ (the remaining 19 boroughs). Inner London boroughs tend to be characterised by a huge gulf between rich and poor, and a wide racial and cultural mix. Outer London boroughs are more suburban, with swathes of green belt (areas in which building is restricted) and a predominantly white (and ‘white-collar’) population.

Central London is a much-used but unofficial and vaguely defined term for the most inner part of London, for which there are many definitions, each with its own notional boundaries. All definitions share the idea that Central London is smaller than, and a subset of, ‘Inner London’. One of the most common (and that used in this book) is that Central London includes the boroughs of Camden, the City of London, Hackney, Islington, Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and the City of Westminster.

Other definitions of London used for particular purposes include the London postal district; the region within the 020 telephone area code; the area accessible by public transport using a Transport for London Travelcard; the area delimited by the M25 orbital motorway; and the London commuter belt.

© Survival Books Limited 2006

“Buying or Renting a Home in London” 1st Edition, David Hampshire and Sue Harris.
Reproduced with the permission of Survival Books Limited.

Further information on this topic can be found in “Buying or Renting a Home in London” 1st edition, by David Hampshire and Sue Harris.

For extensive, annually updated information about buying or renting a property in London, you can purchase this book at www.survivalbooks.net

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