Historical version 9 of London (view current version)
London is the capital city of the United Kingdom. Founded some two thousand years ago by the Romans, and home to tribes for time immemorial before that, its official centre point is the Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross Station, from which all distances in Britain are measured.
There are around 7,000 miles of street in London, and approximately seven million people live in it. (In 1631, the population, according to a census taken, including the wards without the walls and the old borough of Southwark, was only 130,268.)
It is the home to the country's government, in the Houses of Parliament, and the vestiges of royalty, in the [palaces]?. Its numerous locales are home to a bewildering diversity of cultures. Unsurprisingly, its wealth of attractions make it the country's biggest tourist magnet.
Over the years, people have had a lot to say about it.
The definition of the boundary of London is a rather vexing one. There's the old City of London, the Square Mile, which is (as the name suggests) tiny. Although once a residential and business area, very few people are resident in the borough any more.
Moving out slightly, there's a sister city; the [City of Westminster]?, centered around the [Palace of Westminster]? and [Westminster Abbey]? on the banks of the Thames.
Further out, there's possibly the most modern boundary line; the ring of the Congestion Charging zone, following the [Inner Ring Road]?. At a similar distance is the [Zone 1]? boundary, as defined by Transport for London, which can be seen on the Central London Bus Map. Most of London's [tourist attractions]? are within this boundary.
In fact, transport-based definitions of London continue through the various Tube zones, all the way out to zone 6, which we'll get to later, and the two outer ring roads, the pair of the North and [South Circular]? Roads and the M25 London Orbital Motorway.
Somewhere around the distance of the Tube's zone 3, perhaps six miles from Charing Cross, there's a ragged edge where postcodes are no longer one of London's letters (EC and WC for the two cities; E, N, NW, SW and SE), but instead are those of local centres (like Ilford).
Finally, perhaps the most authoratitive boundary for London is that of the GLA, which coincides almost exactly (unsurprisingly, given the GLA's transport remit) with that of the edge of Zone 6, and is close to the [Green Belt]?. People living within this boundary vote for the Mayor, a GLA assembly member, and live in a local authority that's typically a London Borough. Although there are plenty of people who live this far out who wouldn't consider themselves Londoners, and despite the economic influence of the capital throughout the south-east, this remains a sensible cut-off point for the city.
The concept of London came about as part of the Local Government reorganisation of 1888.
Prior to this, administration of London was divided between the City of London and the [City of Westminster]?.Districts outside this area were part of the county of Middlesex. There were boroughs at this time, but they were different in number, name and completely different in boundaries. The area recognised as "Greater London" is made up of all parishes of which any part is within twelve miles of Charing Cross, or of which the whole is within fifteen miles of Charing Cross, covering in total some 700 square miles.
In terms of postal adresses, the former postal county of Middlesex existed until 1996, but instead of encompassing the whole of what we know as London, it was a crescent shaped sliver of land running between [Twickenham]? and [Enfield]?.