Royal Free Hospital
The Royal Free Hospital is a major teaching hospital in Hampstead, London. The hospital is part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, which runs services at Barnet Hospital, Chase Farm Hospital and a number of other sites; the trust is a founder member of the UCL Partners academic health science centre. The Royal Free Hospital was founded in 1828 by the surgeon William Marsden to provide, as its name indicates, free care to those of little means, it is said that one evening, Marsden found a young girl lying on the steps of St. Andrew Church, dying from disease and hunger and sought help for her from one of the nearby hospitals. However, none would take the girl in and she died two days later. After this experience Marsden set up a small dispensary at 16 Greville Street, called the London General Institution for the Gratuitous Care of Malignant Diseases. A royal charter was granted by Queen Victoria in 1837 after a cholera epidemic in which the hospital had extended care to many victims, following which it became the Royal Free Hospital.
As demand for in-patient facilities increased, it was constituted as the Royal Free Hospital, moved to the former barracks of the Light Horse Volunteers in Gray's Inn Road in August 1842. The north wing of the former barracks, rebuilt and renamed the Sussex Wing after Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, a benefactor of the hospital, re-opened in 1856 and the south wing, rebuilt and renamed the Victoria Wing after Queen Victoria, re-opened in 1879. Meanwhile the western elevation on Gray’s Inn Road, rebuilt and renamed the Alexandra Building after the Princess of Wales, was re-opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales in July 1895; some additional land was purchased and used to develop the Helena Building, named after Princess Helena: the building was completed in 1915 and served as the Royal Free Military Hospital for officers during the latter stages of the First World War before become the maternity wing after the war. The Eastman Dental Clinic opened in a building adjacent to the main hospital in 1929.
The Victoria Wing was badly damaged by a V-1 flying bomb in July 1944 during the Second World War. In 1955 an apparent outbreak of an infectious illness categorised with a fever and subsequent persisting fatigue affected 292 members of staff and forced the hospital's closure between 25 July and 5 October. There was subsequently some debate as to whether the episode was of an infectious cause, or just an example of mass hysteria; the outbreak turned out to be a notable case in the UK of myalgic encephalomyelitis and resulted in the coining of that disease name. By the late 1960s the site on Gray’s Inn Road had become too cramped, a modern 12-storey cruciform tower block was built on the site of the former Hampstead Fever Hospital in Pond Street in Hampstead in the mid-1970s. Meanwhile the Eastman Dental Hospital took over the whole of the Gray’s Inn Road site; the Royal Free was the first hospital in the UK to appoint a consultant in HIV medicine, in 1989. Professor Margaret Johnson, a specialist in thoracic medicine, built the Royal Free Centre for HIV Medicine, at the forefront of treatment of HIV-AIDS.
The out-patients' centre was opened in 1992 by the actor Sir Ian McKellen and is named after the actor Ian Charleson. In February 1998, the Royal Free held a press conference to coincide with the publication in The Lancet of a paper by Andrew Wakefield who claimed to have found a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism; this started a controversy which led to a crisis in public confidence over MMR and a fall in uptake of the vaccine. Wakefield left the medical school in October 2001 and was struck off the UK medical register by the General Medical Council following an investigation by The Sunday Times newspaper into the MMR issue. For a long time, the Royal Free was the only London hospital allowing women to study medicine, forming an association with the London School of Medicine for Women, under which women from the school completed their clinical studies at the hospital, from 1877. Under the Deanship of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, one of the schools founders, it became part of the University of London and in 1896 became known as the London Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women.
In 1998, it merged with the University College Hospital's medical school to form the UCL Medical School and the Royal Free and University College Medical School. The Royal Free Hospital has a high-level isolation unit equipped to treat infectious diseases such as Ebola virus disease. In 2014, the British nurse William Pooley was treated for Ebola virus disease at the unit. In December 2014, Pauline Cafferkey, a British health worker diagnosed with Ebola in Glasgow was transferred to the unit for treatment; the unit has previously been used to treat a patient with Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever. Significant advances in the fields of liver medicine and transplantation; the department of liver medicine is recognised as one of the leading research units of its type in the world: it was founded by Professor Dame Sheila Sherlock. The hospital was rated'good' by the Care Quality Commission in September 2017; the nearest London Underground station is Belsize Park, the hospital is situated near Hampstead Heath station on the London Overground.
Healthcare in London List of hospitals in England Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust Royal Free Specials Pharmaceutical UCL Medical School Archives of the Royal Free Hospital held at the Royal Free Archive Centre Royal Free Priva
East Finchley
East Finchley is an area in north London, in the London Borough of Barnet, situated 5.4 miles northwest of Charing Cross. Formally a town in Middlesex until 1965, geographically it is somewhat separate from the rest of Finchley, with North Finchley and West Finchley to the north, Finchley Central to the west; the land on which most of East Finchley now stands was once part of the Bishop of London's hunting ground, named Finchley Common, first recorded around 1400. The Bishop of London built a road through his land which weaved through what is now Market Place, The Walks, King Street and Oak Lane up to the north; as a result, pubs such as The White Lion, The Bald Faced Stag and The Five Bells, all of which survive today, sprang up to provide rest for the people using the road. The area of "East Finchley Village" around Church Lane was west of the common and Bulls Lane dates back to at least the 17th century. With the coming of the Great Northern Railway in 1868 the area began to emerge, property was built between the 1870s and the 1930s.
However, it was not until 1914 that a more recognisable East Finchley High Road and surrounding area was visible. East Finchley Underground station is marked by a well-known statue of an archer by Eric Aumonier in the Art Deco style; the archer is pointing his arrow towards the entrance to the tunnel which starts south of the station and runs for 17.3 miles to the end of the Northern line at Morden. For many years this was the longest tunnel in the world. There was an arrow at Morden Station to match the archer at East Finchley, but this was stolen a few months after the station was opened; the station is on the High Barnet branch of the Northern line which serves the city and the west end with trains every 2–3 minutes. Buses serve the high street with the 263 route going from Barnet Hospital to Highbury Barn. Housing in East Finchley is diverse in its nature, encompassing many housing styles, from 19th-century terraced housing, large 30s houses, multimillion-pound mansions on The Bishop's Avenue.
The three eleven-storey tower blocks of Prospect Ring & Norfolk Close, near to the centre of East Finchley, are visible for miles around. East Finchley has several state primary schools, including Our Lady of Lourdes RC primary school, Martin Primary School, Holy Trinity Primary School. There are two secondary schools in East Finchley itself—Bishop Douglass RC High School and Christ's College; the Archer Academy, a new non-denominational, non-selective community secondary school opened in East Finchley in September 2013 and is oversubscribed. Many local children attend schools elsewhere in the London Borough of Barnet. For those living in the direction of Muswell Hill to the east of the High Road, Fortismere School is an option and many East Finchleans fall into the catchment area for Brookland Junior School, which neighbours Christ's College; the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute's new facilities are on the High Road. 52 % of the ward's population is 16 % is Other White, according to the 2011 census.
The independent Phoenix Cinema is located on the High Road, shows films with more individual appeal than is the case with the cinema chains. It is the oldest purpose-built cinema in the UK. Time Out, the arts magazine, describes the Phoenix as the best single-screen cinema in London. Film critic Mark Kermode has written that the Phoenix Cinema "remains the single most significant cinema in my development as a bona fide cinema obsessive."There is a listed Neo-Georgian public library located on the High Road opposite Leslie Road. Behind the library are some award-winning allotments, owned by Barnet Council. Adjacent to these are the Fuelland allotments; the massive St. Pancras and Islington Cemetery is located on the High Road. Established in 1854, it is the oldest municipal cemetery in the largest; the Victorian painter Ford Madox Brown is buried there. Opposite the tube station is approx. 4.5 ha in size, contains both woodland and grassland. Nearby parks include Coldfall Wood to the north, Highgate Wood, Queens Wood, Hampstead Heath to the south.
Opposite the tube station is the head office to McDonald's UK, this is seen by the flags and logos on the building. The Archer, founded in 1993, is East Finchley's free monthly community newspaper, run by volunteers, it takes its name from the eponymous statue at East Finchley tube station. In Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel Scoop, Lord Copper, owner of the newspaper Daily Beast, lived in East Finchley. "That evening, Mr Salter, foreign editor of The Beast, was summoned to dinner at his chief's country seat at East Finchley." Peter Sellers lived with his mother at 211b High Road, in his Goon Show persona as Bluebottle was referred to as an East Finchley boy scout. Singer George Michael was born in Church Lane. Sir Ronald Fisher was born in East Finchley. Gracie Fields lived in The Bishop's Avenue. Thomas Pierrepoint, the official British hangman in the early 1900s, lived in Huntingdon Road, by chance not far where the 18th-century gibbet had stood in Lincoln Road; the poet and educator Clive Sansom was born in East Finchley in 1910.
Jerry Springer grew up in East Finchley before moving to the United S
London
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans; the City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of the London Assembly. London is considered to be one of the world's most important global cities and has been termed the world's most powerful, most desirable, most influential, most visited, most expensive, sustainable, most investment friendly, most popular for work, the most vegetarian friendly city in the world. London exerts a considerable impact upon the arts, education, fashion, healthcare, professional services and development, tourism and transportation.
London ranks 26 out of 300 major cities for economic performance. It is one of the largest financial centres and has either the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area GDP, it is the most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the busiest city airport system as measured by passenger traffic. It is the leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. London's universities form the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted three modern Summer Olympic Games. London has a diverse range of people and cultures, more than 300 languages are spoken in the region, its estimated mid-2016 municipal population was 8,787,892, the most populous of any city in the European Union and accounting for 13.4% of the UK population. London's urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census.
The population within the London commuter belt is the most populous in the EU with 14,040,163 inhabitants in 2016. London was the world's most populous city from c. 1831 to 1925. London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and The Shard. London has numerous museums, galleries and sporting events; these include the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library and West End theatres. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world. "London" is an ancient name, attested in the first century AD in the Latinised form Londinium. Over the years, the name has attracted many mythicising explanations; the earliest attested appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written around 1136. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.
Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources Latin, Old English, Welsh, with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed; this was adapted into Latin as Londinium and borrowed into Old English, the ancestor-language of English. The toponymy of the Common Brythonic form is much debated. A prominent explanation was Richard Coates's 1998 argument that the name derived from pre-Celtic Old European *lowonida, meaning "river too wide to ford". Coates suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London. However, most work has accepted a Celtic origin for the name, recent studies have favoured an explanation along the lines of a Celtic derivative of a proto-Indo-European root *lendh-, combined with the Celtic suffix *-injo- or *-onjo-. Peter Schrijver has suggested, on these grounds, that the name meant'place that floods'; until 1889, the name "London" applied to the City of London, but since it has referred to the County of London and Greater London.
"London" is sometimes written informally as "LDN". In 1993, the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south foreshore, upstream of Vauxhall Bridge; this bridge either reached a now lost island in it. Two of those timbers were radiocarbon dated to between 1750 BC and 1285 BC. In 2010 the foundations of a large timber structure, dated to between 4800 BC and 4500 BC, were found on the Thames's south foreshore, downstream of Vauxhall Bridge; the function of the mesolithic structure is not known. Both structures are on the south bank. Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans about four years after the invasion
Muswell Hill railway station
Muswell Hill railway station was in Muswell Hill in North London, just north of the junction of Muswell Hill and Muswell Hill Place. Nothing remains of the station. In the 1930s plans were made to electrify the line and transfer the mainline service to London Underground's Northern line, but these were abandoned after the Second World War; the station closed in 1954. The Muswell Hill Railway opened the station on 24 May 1873 as Alexandra Park, it was the intermediate station on the MHR's branch line from the Great Northern Railway's station at Highgate to Alexandra Palace. The line was constructed to bring passengers to Alexandra Palace and the branch line opened at the same time as the Palace. Following a fire at the Palace, the line was closed from 1 August 1873 to 1 May 1875 with the station being given its final name when reopened; the other intermediate station on the line, Cranley Gardens, did not open until 1902. In 1911 the line was taken over by the GNR. After the 1921 Railways Act created the Big Four railway companies, the line was, from 1923, part of the London & North Eastern Railway.
In 1935 London Transport planned, as part of its "Northern Heights plan", to take over the line from LNER together with the LNER's routes from Finsbury Park to Edgware and High Barnet. The line was to be amalgamated with the Northern line. At Finsbury Park the line was to be connected to the Northern line's Northern City branch so that services from Muswell Hill would have continued to Moorgate. Advanced works modernising the track began in the late 1930s being interrupted by the Second World War. Works were completed from Highgate to High Barnet and Mill Hill East with that section incorporated into the Northern line. Works on the tracks between Finsbury Park and Alexandra Palace were halted with the LNER continuing to operate the line. In 1942, LNER, were reduced to rush hour only operations because of wartime economies. After the war, no work was undertaken as maintenance works and reconstruction of war damage on the existing network had the greatest call on LPTB funds. Funds for new works were limited with priority given to the completion of the western and eastern extensions of the Central line to West Ruislip and Hainault.
Despite being shown as under construction on underground maps as late as 1950, work never restarted on the unimplemented parts of the Northern Heights plan. British Railways closed the line temporarily from 29 October 1951 until 7 January 1952, before ending passenger services between Finsbury Park and Alexandra Palace permanently on 3 July 1954; the line continued to be used for goods services until 18 May 1957. The track was removed with platforms and station buildings demolished; the trackbed between Muswell Hill and Finsbury Park is now the Parkland Walk. Edgware and London Railway London's Transport Photographic Archive Muswell Hill station in 1935. Muswell Hill station on Subterranea Britannica
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Ray Davies
Sir Raymond Douglas Davies, is an English singer and musician. He is the lead singer, rhythm guitarist and main songwriter for the Kinks, which he leads with his younger brother, Dave, he has acted and produced shows for theatre and television. He is referred to as "the godfather of Britpop". After the dissolution of the Kinks in 1996, Davies embarked on a solo career. Davies was born at Fortis Green, north London, England, he is the seventh of eight children born to working-class parents, including six older sisters and younger brother Dave Davies. Ray's father, Frederick Davies was a slaughterhouse worker of Welsh descent, he was considered a ladies' man. His own father, was a slaughterman, in the Rhondda Valley, Wales. Ray's mother is of Irish descent. Fred moved to London as a young man, where he took up his father's occupation and married a Londoner, Anne Willmore. Anne came from a "sprawling family", she in turn gave birth to one, she could be crude and forceful. When Ray was still a small child, one of his older sisters became a star of the dance halls, soon had a child out of wedlock by an African man - an illegal immigrant who subsequently disappeared from her life.
The child, a daughter, was raised by Ray's mother. Ray attended William Grimshaw Secondary Modern School. Davies was an art student at Hornsey College of Art in London in 1962–63. In late 1962 he became interested in music. Gomelsky arranged for Davies to play at his Piccadilly Club with the Dave Hunt Rhythm & Blues Band, on New Year's Eve the Ray Davies Quartet opened for Cyril Stapleton at the Lyceum Ballroom. A few days he became the permanent guitarist for the Dave Hunt Band, an engagement that would only last about six weeks; the band were the house band at Gomelsky's new venture, the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond-upon-Thames. Davies joined the Hamilton King Band until June 1963. After the Kinks obtained a recording contract in early 1964, Davies emerged as the chief songwriter and de facto leader of the band after the band's breakthrough success with his early composition "You Really Got Me", released as the band's third single in August of that year. Davies led the Kinks through a period of musical experimentation between 1966 and 1975, with notable artistic achievements and commercial success.
The Kinks' early recordings of 1964 ranged from covers of R&B standards like "Long Tall Sally" and "Got Love If You Want It" to the chiming, melodic beat music of Ray Davies' earliest original compositions for the band, "You Still Want Me" and "Something Better Beginning", to the more influential proto-metal, power chord-based hard rock of the band's first two hit singles, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night". However, by 1965, this raucous, hard-driving early style had given way to the softer and more introspective sound of "Tired of Waiting for You", "Nothin' in the World Can Stop Me Worryin"Bout That Girl", "Set Me Free", "I Go to Sleep" and "Ring the Bells". With the eerie, droning "See My Friends"—inspired by the untimely death of the Davies brothers' older sister Rene in June 1957—the band began to show signs of expanding their musical palette further. A rare foray into early psychedelic rock, "See My Friends" is credited by Jonathan Bellman as the first Western pop song to integrate Indian raga sounds—released six months before the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood".
Beginning with "A Well Respected Man" and "Where Have All the Good Times Gone", Davies' lyrics assumed a new sociological character. He began to explore the aspirations and frustrations of common working-class people, with particular emphasis on the psychological effects of the British class system. Face to Face, the first Kinks album composed of original material, was a creative breakthrough; as the band began to experiment with theatrical sound effects and baroque musical arrangements, Davies' songwriting acquired its distinctive elements of narrative and wry social commentary. His topical songs took aim at the complacency and indolence of wealthy playboys and the upper class, the heedless ostentation of a self-indulgent spendthrift nouveau riche, the mercenary nature of the music business itself. By late 1966, Davies was addressing the bleakness of life at the lower end of the social spectrum: released together as the complementary A-B sides of a single, "Dead End Street" and "Big Black Smoke" were powerful neo-Dickensian sketches of urban poverty.
Other songs like "Situation Vacant" and "Shangri-La" hinted at the helpless sense of insecurity and emptiness underlying the materialistic values adopted by the English working class. In a similar vein, "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" wittily satirized the consumerism and celebrity worship of Carnaby Street and'Swinging London', while "David Watts" humorously expressed the wounded fee
London postal district
The London postal district is the area in England of 241 square miles to which mail addressed to the LONDON post town is delivered. The General Post Office at the control of the Postmaster General directed Sir Rowland Hill to devise the area in 1856 and throughout its history has been subject to gradual periodic reorganisation and division into smaller postal units, with the early loss of two compass points and a minor retraction in 1866, it was integrated by the Post Office into the national postcode system of the United Kingdom during the early 1970s and corresponds to the N, NW, SW, SE, W, WC, E and EC postcode areas. The postal district has been known as the London postal area; the County of London was much smaller at 117 square miles, but Greater London is much larger at 607 square miles. By the 1850s, the rapid growth of the metropolitan area meant it became too large to operate efficiently as a single post town. A Post Office inquiry into the problem had been set up in 1837 and a House of Commons committee was initiated in 1843.
In 1854 Charles Canning, the Postmaster General, set up a committee at the Post Office in St. Martin's Le Grand to investigate how London could best be divided for the purposes of directing mail. In 1856, of the 470 million items of mail sent in the United Kingdom during the year one fifth were for delivery in London and half of these originated there; the General Post Office thus at the control of the Postmaster General devised the area in 1856 project-managed by Sir Rowland Hill. Hill produced an perfectly circular area of 12 miles radius from the central post office at St. Martin's Le Grand, near St Paul's Cathedral in central London; as devised, it extended from Waltham Cross in the north to Carshalton in the south and from Romford in the east to Sunbury in the west — six counties at the time if including the City of London. Within the district it was divided into two central areas and eight compass points which operated much like separate post towns; each was constituted "London" with a suffix indicating the area.
The system was introduced during 1857 and completed on 1 January 1858. The NE and S divisions were abolished following a report by Anthony Trollope: in 1866 NE was merged into the E district, the large districts transferred included Walthamstow and Leytonstone; the remaining eight letter prefixes have not changed. At the same time, the London postal district boundary was retracted in the east, removing places such as Ilford for good. In 1868 the S district was split between SE and SW; the NE and S codes have been re-used in the national postcode system and now refer to the NE postcode area around Newcastle upon Tyne and the S postcode area around Sheffield. In 1917, as a wartime measure to improve efficiency, the districts were further subdivided with a number applied to each sub-district; this was achieved by designating a sub-area served most conveniently by the head office in each district "1" and allocating the rest alphabetically by the name of the location of each delivery office. Exceptionally and esoterically, W2 and SW11 are also'head districts'.
The boundaries of each sub-district correspond to any units of civil administration: the parishes and hamlets/chapelries with chapels that traditionally define settlement names everywhere in England and Wales or the larger boroughs. The numbered sub-districts became the "outward code" of the postcode system as expanded into longer codes during the 1970s. Ad hoc changes have taken place to the organisation of the districts, such as the creation of SE28 from existing districts because of the construction of the high-density Thamesmead development. Subdivisions of postcode sub-districtsOwing to heavier demand, seven high-density postcode districts in central London have been subdivided to create new, smaller postcode districts; this is achieved by adding a letter after the original postcode district, for example W1P. Where such sub-districts are used elsewhere such as on street signs and maps, the original unsuffixed catch-all versions remain in use instead; the districts subdivided are E1, N1, EC SW1, W1, WC1 and WC2.
There are non-geographic suffixed sub-districts for PO boxes in NW1 and SE1. The London postal district has never been aligned with the London boundary; when the initial system was designed, the London boundary was restricted to the square mile of the small, ancient City of London. The wider metropolitan postal area covered parts of Middlesex, Kent and Hertfordshire. In 1889 a County of London, smaller than the postal district, was created from parts of Middlesex and Kent; the bulk of 40 fringe sub-districts lay outside its boundary including, for example: Leyton, Ealing and Wimbledon In 1965 the creation of Greater London boundary went beyond these postal districts except for part of the parish of Waltham Holy Cross. The General Post Office was unwilling to follow this change and expand the postal district to match because of the cost. Places in London's outer boroughs such as Harrow, Wembley, Ilford, Bexleyheath, Hounslow, Croydon, Sutton and Uxbridge are therefore covered by parts of twelve adjoining postcode areas from postal districts of 5 different counties including Middlesex, abolished upon the creation of Gr
