1.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
2.
London County Council
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It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council. The LCC was the largest, most significant and most ambitious English municipal authority of its day, by the 19th century the City of London Corporation covered only a small fraction of metropolitan London. From 1855 the Metropolitan Board of Works had certain powers across the metropolis, many powers remained in the hands of traditional bodies such as parishes and the counties of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent. While the Conservative government of the day would have preferred not to create a body covering the whole of London. It was established as a council on 31 January 1889. Shortly after its creation a Royal Commission on the Amalgamation of the City and County of London considered the means for amalgamation with the City of London. The LCC inherited the powers of its predecessor the MBW, but had authority over matters such as education, city planning. It took over the functions of the London School Board in 1903, from 1899 the Council progressively acquired and operated the tramways in the county, which it electrified from 1903. One of the LCCs most important roles during the late 19th and early 20th century, was in the management of the expanding city, in the Victorian era, new housing had been intentionally urban and large-scale tenement buildings dominated. Beginning in the 1930s, the LCC incentivized an increase in suburban housing styles. The LCC set the standard for new construction at 12 houses per acre of land at a time when some London areas had as many as 80 housing units per acre. By 1938,76,877 units of housing had been built under the auspices of the LCC in the city and its periphery, many of these new housing developments were genuinely working-class, though the poorest could rarely afford even subsidized rents. They relied on an expanding London Underground network that ferried workers en masse to places of employment in the city center and these housing developments were broadly successful, and they resisted the slummification that blighted so many Victorian tenement developments. The LCC undertook between 1857 and 1929 to standardize and clarify street names across London, many streets in different areas of the city had similar or identical names, and the rise of the automobile as a primary mode of transportation in the city made these names unworkable. In an extreme case, there were more than 60 streets called Cross Street spread across the city when the LCC began its process of systematic renaming and these were given names from an approved list that was maintained by the LCC, containing only suitably English names. If street names were deemed un-English, they were slated for change, Zulu Crescent in Battersea, for instance. By 1939, the council had the powers and duties. The LCC initially used the Spring Gardens headquarters inherited from the Metropolitan Board of Works, the building had been designed by Frederick Marrable, the MBWs supeintending architect, and dated from 1860
3.
City of London
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The City of London is a city and county within London. It constituted most of London from its settlement by the Romans in the 1st century AD to the Middle Ages, the City is now only a tiny part of the metropolis of London, though it remains a notable part of central London. Administratively, it one of the 33 local authority districts of Greater London, however, the City of London is not a London borough. The City of London is widely referred to simply as the City and is colloquially known as the Square Mile. Both of these terms are often used as metonyms for the United Kingdoms trading and financial services industries. The name London is now used for a far wider area than just the City. London most often denotes the sprawling London metropolis, or the 32 London boroughs and this wider usage of London is documented as far back as 1888, when the County of London was created. The local authority for the City, namely the City of London Corporation, is unique in the UK and has some unusual responsibilities for a local council and it is also unusual in having responsibilities and ownerships beyond its boundaries. The Corporation is headed by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, the current Lord Mayor, as of November 2016, is Andrew Parmley. The City is a business and financial centre. Throughout the 19th century, the City was the primary business centre. London came top in the Worldwide Centres of Commerce Index, published in 2008, the insurance industry is focused around the eastern side of the City, around Lloyds building. A secondary financial district exists outside of the City, at Canary Wharf,2.5 miles to the east, the City has a resident population of about 7,000 but over 300,000 people commute to and work there, mainly in the financial services sector. It used to be held that Londinium was first established by merchants as a trading port on the tidal Thames in around 47 AD. However, this date is only supposition, many historians now believe London was founded some time before the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD. They base this notion on evidence provided by both archaeology and Welsh literary legend, archaeologists have claimed that as much as half of the best British Iron Age art and metalwork discovered in Britain has been found in the London area. One of the most prominent examples is the famously horned Waterloo Helmet dredged from the Thames in the early 1860s and now exhibited at the British Museum. Also, according to an ancient Welsh legend, a king named Lud son of Heli substantially enlarged and improved a pre-existing settlement at London which afterwards came to be renamed after him, the same tradition relates how this Lud son of Heli was later buried at Ludgate
4.
Middlesex
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Middlesex is a historic county in south-east England. It is now entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and its area is now also mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in other neighbouring ceremonial counties. It was established in the Anglo-Saxon system from the territory of the Middle Saxons, the largely low-lying county, dominated by clay in its north and alluvium on gravel in its south, was the second smallest county by area in 1831. The City of London was a county in its own right from the 12th century and was able to exert control over Middlesex. Westminster Abbey dominated most of the financial, judicial and ecclesiastical aspects of the county. As London grew into Middlesex, the Corporation of London resisted attempts to expand the city boundaries into the county, in the 18th and 19th centuries the population density was especially high in the southeast of the county, including the East End and West End of London. From 1855 the southeast was administered, with sections of Kent and Surrey, the City of London, and Middlesex, became separate counties for other purposes and Middlesex regained the right to appoint its own sheriff, lost in 1199. In the interwar years suburban London expanded further, with improvement and expansion of public transport, after the Second World War, the population of the County of London and inner Middlesex was in steady decline, with high population growth continuing in the outer parts. Since 1965 various areas called Middlesex have been used for cricket, Middlesex was the former postal county of 25 post towns. The name means territory of the middle Saxons and refers to the origin of its inhabitants. The word is formed from the Anglo-Saxon, i. e. Old English, middel, in an 8th-century charter the region is recorded as Middleseaxon and in 704 it is recorded as Middleseaxan. The Saxons derived their name from seax, a kind of knife for which they were known, the seax has a lasting symbolic impact in the English counties of Essex and Middlesex, both of which feature three seaxes in their ceremonial emblem. Their names, along with those of Sussex and Wessex, contain a remnant of the word Saxon, there were settlements in the area of Middlesex that can be traced back thousands of years before the creation of a county. Middlesex was formerly part of the Kingdom of Essex It was recorded in the Domesday Book as being divided into the six hundreds of Edmonton, Elthorne, Gore, Hounslow, Ossulstone and Spelthorne. The City of London has been self-governing since the century and became a county in its own right. Middlesex also included Westminster, which also had a degree of autonomy. Of the six hundreds, Ossulstone contained the districts closest to the City of London, during the 17th century it was divided into four divisions, which, along with the Liberty of Westminster, largely took over the administrative functions of the hundred. The divisions were named Finsbury, Holborn, Kensington and Tower, the county had parliamentary representation from the 13th century
5.
River Lea
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It is one of the largest rivers in London and the easternmost major tributary of the Thames. Its valley creates a chain of marshy ground along its lower length, much of which has been used for gravel and mineral extraction, reservoirs. The river has been canalised to provide a route for boats into eastern Hertfordshire. While the lower Lea remains somewhat polluted, its stretch and tributaries. A diversion known as the New River, opened in 1613 and its origins in the Chilterns contribute to the extreme hardness of London tap water. The name of the River Lea was first recorded in the 9th century, spellings from the Anglo-Saxon period include Ligan in 880 and Lygan in 895, and in the early medieval period it is usually Luye or Leye. It seems to be derived from a Celtic root lug-meaning bright or light which is also the derivation of a name for a deity, a simpler derivation may well be the Brythonic word cognate with the modern Welsh Li pronounced Lea which means a flow or a current. The spelling Lea predominates west of Hertford, but both spellings are used from Hertford to the River Thames, the Lee Navigation was established by Acts of Parliament and only that spelling is used in this context. The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority also uses this spelling for leisure facilities, however, the spelling Lea is used for road names, locations and other infrastructure in the capital, such as Leamouth, Lea Bridge, the Lea Valley Walk and the Lea Valley Railway Lines. This spelling is used in geology, archaeology, etc. to refer to the Lea Valley. The divergent spellings of the river are also reflected in the place-names of Luton and Leyton, both mean farmstead on the River Lea. The source is said to be at Well Head inside Wauluds Bank at Leagrave, but there the River Lea is also fed by Houghton Brook. It forms the boundary between the counties of Middlesex and Essex, and was used for part of the Danelaw boundary. It also forms part of the boundary between Essex and Hertfordshire, for much of its distance the river runs within or as a boundary to the Lee Valley Park. Between Tottenham and Hackney the Lea feeds Tottenham Marshes, Walthamstow Marshes, in their early days, Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient played their matches as football amateurs on the Marshes. South of Hackney Wick the rivers course is split, running almost completely in man made channels flowing through an area that was once an industrial zone. Inside Greater London below Enfield Lock the river forms the boundary with the former Royal Small Arms Factory, now known as Enfield Island Village, just downstream the river is joined by the River Lee Flood Relief Channel. At Tottenham Hale there is a set of reservoirs, Lockwood Reservoir, High Maynard Reservoir, Low Maynard Reservoir, Walthamstow Reservoirs, East Warwick Reservoir
6.
Surrey
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Surrey is a county in the south east of England. It shares borders with Kent to the east, East Sussex to the south-east, West Sussex to the south, Hampshire to the west and south-west, Surrey County Council sits extraterritorially at Kingston upon Thames, administered as part of Greater London since 1965. With a resident population of 1.1 million, Surrey is the most densely populated and third most populated county in the South East region, after Kent, the London boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth, and parts of Lewisham and Bromley were in Surrey until 1889. The boroughs of Croydon, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Sutton and Richmond upon Thames south of the River Thames were part of Surrey until 1965, when they too were absorbed into Greater London. In the same year, the county was extended north of the Thames by the addition of Spelthorne, due to this expansion, modern Surrey also borders on the London boroughs of Hounslow and Hillingdon. It has the highest GDP per capita of any English county, Surrey is divided in two by the chalk ridge of the North Downs, running east-west. To the north of the Downs the land is mostly flat, the geology of this area is dominated by London Clay in the east, Bagshot Sands in the west and alluvial deposits along the rivers. Much of Surrey is in the Metropolitan Green Belt and it contains a good deal of mature woodland. Among its many notable beauty spots are Box Hill, Leith Hill, Frensham Ponds, Newlands Corner and Puttenham & Crooksbury Commons. Surrey is the most wooded county in England, with 22. 4% coverage compared to an average of 11. 8%. Box Hill has the oldest untouched area of woodland in the UK. Surrey also contains Englands principal concentration of lowland heath, on soils in the west of the county. Agriculture not being intensive, there are many commons and access lands, together with a network of footpaths and bridleways including the North Downs Way. Accordingly, Surrey provides much in the way of leisure activities. The highest elevation in Surrey is Leith Hill near Dorking and it is either 293,294 or 295 metres above sea level and is the second highest point in southeastern England after Walbury Hill 297 metres in West Berkshire. Surrey has a population of approximately 1.1 million people and its largest town is Guildford, with a population of 66,773, Woking comes a close second with 62,796. They are followed by Ewell with 39,994 people and Camberley with 30,155, towns of between 25,000 and 30,000 inhabitants are Ashford, Epsom, Farnham, Staines and Redhill. Guildford is the county town, although the county administration was moved to Newington in 1791
7.
Kent
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Kent /ˈkɛnt/ is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south west, the county also shares borders with Essex via the Dartford Crossing and the French department of Pas-de-Calais through the Channel Tunnel. France can be clearly in fine weather from Folkestone and the White Cliffs of Dover. Hills in the form of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge span the length of the county, because of its relative abundance of fruit-growing and hop gardens, Kent is known as The Garden of England. The title was defended in 2006 when a survey of counties by the UKTV Style Gardens channel put Kent in fifth place, behind North Yorkshire, Devon. Haulage, logistics, and tourism are industries, major industries in north-west Kent include aggregate building materials, printing. Coal mining has played its part in Kents industrial heritage. Large parts of Kent are within the London commuter belt and its transport connections to the capital. Twenty-eight per cent of the county forms part of two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the North Downs and The High Weald, the area has been occupied since the Palaeolithic era, as attested by finds from the quarries at Swanscombe. The Medway megaliths were built during the Neolithic era, There is a rich sequence of Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman era occupation, as indicated by finds and features such as the Ringlemere gold cup and the Roman villas of the Darent valley. The modern name of Kent is derived from the Brythonic word Cantus meaning rim or border and this describes the eastern part of the current county area as a border land or coastal district. Julius Caesar had described the area as Cantium, or home of the Cantiaci in 51 BC, the extreme west of the modern county was by the time of Roman Britain occupied by Iron Age tribes, known as the Regnenses. East Kent became a kingdom of the Jutes during the 5th century and was known as Cantia from about 730, the early medieval inhabitants of the county were known as the Cantwara, or Kent people. These people regarded the city of Canterbury as their capital, in 597, Pope Gregory I appointed the religious missionary as the first Archbishop of Canterbury. In the previous year, Augustine successfully converted the pagan King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity, the Diocese of Canterbury became Britains first Episcopal See with first cathedral and has since remained Englands centre of Christianity. The second designated English cathedral was in Kent at Rochester Cathedral, in the 11th century, the people of Kent adopted the motto Invicta, meaning undefeated. This naming followed the invasion of Britain by William of Normandy, the Kent peoples continued resistance against the Normans led to Kents designation as a semi-autonomous county palatine in 1067. Under the nominal rule of Williams half-brother Odo of Bayeux, the county was granted powers to those granted in the areas bordering Wales
8.
Westminster
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Westminster is an area of central London within the City of Westminster, part of the West End, on the north bank of the River Thames. Historically the area lay within St Margarets parish, City & Liberty of Westminster and it has been the home of the permanent institutions of Englands government continuously since about 1200 and is now the seat of British government. In a government context, Westminster often refers to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the closest tube stations are Westminster, St Jamess Park on the Jubilee, Circle, and District lines. Within the area is Westminster School, a public school which grew out of the Abbey. Bounding Westminster to the north is Green Park, a Royal Park of London, the area has a substantial resident population, indeed most of its listed buildings are residential. A proportion of residents are people of limited means, living in council, hotels, large Victorian homes and barracks exist nearer to Buckingham Palace. The name describes an area no more than 1 mile from Westminster Abbey, the settlement grew up around the palace and abbey, as a service area for them. The need for a church, St Margarets Westminster for the servants of the palace. It became larger and in the Georgian period became connected through urban development with the City along the Strand. It did not become a local government unit until created as a civil parish. Indeed, the Cathedral and diocesan status of the church lasted only from 1539 to 1556, as such it is first known to have had two Members of Parliament in 1545 as a new Parliamentary Borough, centuries after the City of London and Southwark were enfranchised. The historic core of Westminster is the former Thorney Island on which Westminster Abbey was built, the abbey became the traditional venue of the coronation of the kings and queens of England from that of Harold Godwinson onwards. From about 1200, near the abbey, the Palace of Westminster became the royal residence, marked by the transfer of royal treasury. Later the palace housed the developing Parliament and Englands law courts, thus London developed two focal points, the City of London and Westminster. The monarchs later moved to St James Palace and the Palace of Whitehall a little towards the north-east, the main law courts have since moved to the Royal Courts of Justice. The Westminster area formed part of the City and Liberty of Westminster in Middlesex, the ancient parish was St Margaret, after 1727 this became the civil parish of St Margaret and St John, the latter a new church required for the increasing population. The area around Westminster Abbey formed the extra-parochial Close of the Collegiate Church of St Peter surrounded by —, until 1900 the local authority was the combined vestry of St Margaret and St John, which was based at Westminster City Hall in Caxton Street from 1883. The Liberty of Westminster, governed by the Westminster Court of Burgesses, also included St Martin in the Fields, Westminster had its own quarter sessions, but the Middlesex sessions also had jurisdiction
9.
Vestry
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The vestry was a meeting of the parish ratepayers chaired by the incumbent of the parish, originally held in the parish church or its vestry, from which it got its name. The vestry committees were not established by any law, but they evolved independently in each parish according to local needs from their roots in medieval parochial governance, by the late 17th century they had become, along with the county magistrates, the rulers of rural England. The original unit of settlement among the Anglo-Saxons in England was the tun or town, the inhabitants met to carry out this business in the town moot or meeting, at which they appointed the various officials and the common law would be promulgated. Later with the rise of the shire, the township would send its reeve and four best men to represent it in the courts of the hundred and shire. However, this independence of the Saxon system was lost to the township by the introduction of the feudal manorial Court Leet which replaced the town meeting. The division into ancient parishes was linked to the system, with parishes. This new meeting was supervised by the parish priest, probably the best educated of the inhabitants, as the complexity of rural society increased, the vestry meetings pragmatically acquired greater responsibilities, and were given the power to grant or deny payments from parish funds. Although the vestry committees were not established by any law, and had come into being in an unregulated ad-hoc process and this was convenient when they were the obvious body for administering the Edwardian and Elizabethan systems for support of the poor on a parochial basis. This was their first, and for centuries their principal. With this gradual formalisation of civil responsibilities, the ecclesiastical parishes acquired a dual nature, eventually, the vestry assumed a variety of tasks. It became responsible for appointing officials, such as the parish clerk, overseers of the poor, sextons and scavengers, constables. At the high point of their powers, just prior to removal of Poor Law responsibilities in 1834 and this level of activity had resulted in an increasing sophistication of administration. Consequently, in some of these a new body, the vestry, was created. This was a committee of selected parishioners whose members generally had a property qualification. This took responsibility from the community at large and improved efficiency and this committee was also known as the close vestry, whilst the term open vestry was used for the meeting of all ratepayers. The first reading of the bill was made annually, but every year the bill never got any further and this continues to this day as an archaic custom in the Lords to assert the independence from the Crown, even though the select vestries have long been abolished. These new bodies now received the poor law levy and administered the system, and removed a portion of the income of the vestry. These were able to levy their own rate, the church rate ceased to be levied in many parishes and was made voluntary in 1868
10.
Great Stink
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The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, the smell, and peoples fears of its possible effects, prompted action from the local and national administrators who had been considering possible solutions for the problem. Work on high-, mid- and low-level systems for the new Northern and Southern Outfall Sewers started at the beginning of 1859, to aid the drainage, pumping stations were placed to lift the sewage from lower levels into higher pipes. Two of the more stations, Abbey Mills in Stratford. Bazalgettes plan introduced the three embankments to London in which the sewers ran—the Victoria, Chelsea and Albert Embankments and his sewer system operates into the 21st century, servicing a city that has grown to a population of over eight million. The historian Peter Ackroyd argues that Bazalgette should be considered a hero of London, brick sewers had been built in London from the 17th century when sections of the Fleet and Walbrook rivers were covered for that purpose. In the century preceding 1856, over a hundred sewers were constructed in London, some cesspits leaked methane and other gases, which often caught fire and exploded, leading to loss of life, while many of the sewers were in a poor state of repair. During the early 19th century improvements had been undertaken in the supply of water to Londoners, the outfalls from factories, slaughterhouses and other industrial activities put further strain on the already failing system. Much of this outflow either overflowed, or was discharged directly and his conclusion was that Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind. The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water, it was the same as that now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets. The smell from the river was so bad that in 1857 the government poured chalk lime, chloride of lime and this contamination could take the form of the odour of rotting corpses or sewage, but also rotting vegetation, or the exhaled breath of someone already diseased. Miasma was believed by most to be the vector of transmission of cholera, the disease was deeply feared by all, because of the speed with which it could spread, and its high fatality rates. Londons first major cholera epidemic struck in 1831, when the disease claimed 6,536 victims, in 1848–49 there was a second outbreak in which 14,137 London residents died, and this was followed by a further outbreak in 1853–54 in which 10,738 died. During the second outbreak, John Snow, a London-based physician, noticed that the rates of death were higher in those areas supplied by the Lambeth and the Southwark and Vauxhall water companies. Following the third cholera outbreak in 1854, Snow published an update to his treatise, after he focused on the effects in Broad Street, Snow had removed the handle from the local water pump, thus preventing access to the contaminated water, with a resulting fall in deaths. It was later established that the well from which the water was drawn had a sewer running nearby. The civic infrastructure overseeing the management of Londons sewers had gone through changes in the 19th century. In 1848 the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was established at the urging of the social reformer Edwin Chadwick and a Royal Commission
11.
London sewerage system
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The London sewerage system is part of the water infrastructure serving London, England. The modern system was developed during the late 19th century, and it is currently owned and operated by Thames Water and serves almost all of Greater London. During the early 19th century the River Thames was a sewer, with disastrous consequences for public health in London. These were caused by enterotoxin-producing strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, proposals to modernise the sewerage system had been made during 1856, but were neglected due to lack of funds. However, after the Great Stink of 1858, Parliament realised the urgency of the problem, joseph Bazalgette, a civil engineer and Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, was given responsibility for the work. He designed an extensive underground sewerage system that diverted waste to the Thames Estuary, six main interceptor sewers, totalling almost 160 km in length, were constructed, some incorporating stretches of Londons lost rivers. Three of these sewers were north of the river, the southernmost, the Embankment also allowed new roads, new public gardens, and the Circle line of the London Underground. Victoria Embankment was finally opened on 13 July 1870. The intercepting sewers, constructed between 1859 and 1865, were fed by 450 miles of sewers that, in turn. Construction of the system required 318 million bricks,2.7 million cubic metres of excavated earth and 670,000 cubic metres of concrete. The innovative use of Portland cement strengthened the tunnels, which were in good order 150 years later, gravity allows the sewage to flow eastwards, but in places such as Chelsea, Deptford and Abbey Mills, pumping stations were built to raise the water and provide sufficient flow. Sewers north of the Thames feed into the Northern Outfall Sewer, south of the river, the Southern Outfall Sewer extends to a similar facility at Crossness. During the 20th century, major improvements were made to the system and to the sewage treatment provision to substantially reduce pollution of the Thames Estuary. The original system was designed to cope with 6.5 mm per hour of rainfall within the catchment area, Londons growth has put pressure on the capacity of the sewerage system. During storms, for example, high levels of rainfall in a period of time can overwhelm the system. Sewers and treatment works are unable to cope with the volumes of rainwater entering the system. Rainwater mixes with sewage in combined sewers and excess mixed water is discharged into the Thames, if this does not happen quickly enough, localised flooding occurs. Such sanitary sewer overflow can mean streets becoming flooded with a mixture of water and sewage, consulting engineer Sir William Halcrow & Partners designed a system of large diameter tunnels served by new pumping stations
12.
Northumberland Avenue
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Northumberland Avenue is a street in the City of Westminster, Central London, running from Trafalgar Square in the west to the Thames Embankment in the east. The road was built on the site of Northumberland House, the London home of the Percy family, when built, the street was designed for luxury accommodation, including the seven-storey Grand Hotel, the Victoria and the Metropole. The Playhouse Theatre opened in 1882 and become a significant venue in London, the street has been commemorated in the Sherlock Holmes novels including The Hound of the Baskervilles, and is a square on the British Monopoly board. The street is around 0.2 miles long and part of the A400 and it runs from Trafalgar Square eastwards towards the Thames Embankment. At the eastern end are the Whitehall Gardens and the Golden Jubilee Bridges over the River Thames, the nearest bus route is London Bus Route 91 and the nearest tube stations are Charing Cross and Embankment. The area which is now occupied by Northumberland Avenue was originally called Hartshorn Lane and it was formed around 1491 after the Abbott of Westminster granted land to the grocer, Thomas Walker, including an inn known as the Christopher and stables. The land was sold to Humfrey Cooke in 1516, then to John Russell in 1531, in 1546, it was sold back to Henry VIII. The estate became the property of Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland when he married Howards great-great niece, Lady Elizabeth, in 1642, in turn, the street was named Northumberland Street. The house was damaged in the Wilkes election riots of 1768, by the 18th century, Northumberland Street was primarily used as a thoroughfare between markets in the West End of London and the wharfs along the Thames. In 1720, historian John Strype wrote that Northumberland Street was much clogged and pestered with Carts repairing to the Wharfs, in June 1874, the whole of Northumberland House was purchased by the Metropolitan Board of Works and demolished to form Northumberland Avenue, which would accommodate hotels. Contemporary planning permissions forbade hotels to be taller than the width of the road they were on, part of the parallel Northumberland Street was demolished in order to make way for the avenues eastern end. The street was open by 1876, the hotels were popular for American visitors as they were near to the West End, government buildings on Whitehall and all the mainline stations. By the 1930s, accommodation on Park Lane and Piccadilly was more popular, the seven floor Grand Hotel at No.8 became a retail headquarters. It is now a venue for corporations including Marks & Spencer. The venue is the first in Europe to install amBX lighting, other buildings include the Nigerian High Commission at No.9 and a London School of Economics halls of residence. The Playhouse Theatre on Northumberland Avenue was built by Sefton Parry, george Alexander produced his first play here. In 1905, the theatre was destroyed after part of Charing Cross Station fell on it, alec Guinness first performed on stage at the theatre. It was used for BBC broadcasts from 1951 to 1975, broadcasting radio comedies such as The Goon Show, the Grand Hotel was built between 1882 and 1887
