New Kent Road
New Kent Road is a 1 kilometre road in the London Borough of Southwark. The road was created in 1751 when the Turnpike Trust upgraded a local footpath, the road forms part of the London Inner Ring Road and as such forms part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone. New Kent Road is designated the A201 which, to the north-west past the Elephant and Castle, just a few older houses still remain, mostly on the south side. The southern side of New Kent Road starts at the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, built in the 1960s, stalls of the Elephant Market are grouped around the ground floor entrance. Just inside the entrance of the shopping centre there is a small grocery kiosk run by. On Saturdays and Sundays it becomes an informal lunch restaurant and social centre, the 1955 Survey of London reports that 16–18 New Kent Road, part of the current site of the Shopping Centre, was the auction yard for horses and vehicles known as the London Repository. At 26 New Kent Road, the pub attached to the Shopping Centre is named after a famous local ex-resident Charlie Chaplin and it is said that Chaplin had a martini at the pub during a visit to the area in the 1950s.
The Coronet at 28 New Kent Road is a club and live music venue, the site was first occupied by the Theatre Royal, built in 1872 and destroyed by fire only six years later. Rebuilt as the Elephant and Castle Theatre in 1879, Charlie Chaplin performed there and it was converted to an ABC cinema in 1928. After several more changes, it became the Coronet Cinema in 1981. The Coronet Cinema closed down in 1999, leaving the Elephant and Castle area with no cinemas, Elephant Road is a short road that connects New Kent Road with the Walworth Road. The railway arches on the west side house businesses including a shop, Corsica Studios art space. At the Walworth Road end is The Artworks, which houses restaurants bars, retail units and it includes the temporary site of the Newington Library. East of the bridge is the site of a future complex of businesses and residential units at the corner of New Kent Road. It is being developed by Oakmayne Properties who built the nearby South Central East residential building on Walworth Road, the site of Oakmayne Plaza was formerly occupied by UKs largest used Volvo showroom and the Elephant Road Industrial Estate.
In the summer of 2008, a 35 feet high sculpture of a stag by Ben Long was erected on the Oakmayne Plaza site and it was constructed from scaffolding materials, and after a few months was dismantled and reformed into a new structure on a new site. From Elephant Road to Rodney Place, this side of the New Kent Road is dominated by the site of the demolished Heygate Estate, multi-coloured spherical lights in the trees were installed in 2005 by the Elephant Impacts project. Proposed feature lighting at Metro Central Heights was abandoned when residents feared it would cause light pollution, crossway United Reformed Church is the only part of the Heygate Estate that is still standing
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century. In its purest form, it is a style derived from the architecture of classical antiquity, the Vitruvian principles. In form, Neoclassical architecture emphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro, Neoclassical architecture is still designed today, but may be labelled New Classical Architecture for contemporary buildings. In Central and Eastern Europe, the style is referred to as Classicism. Many early 19th-century neoclassical architects were influenced by the drawings and projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée, the many graphite drawings of Boullée and his students depict spare geometrical architecture that emulates the eternality of the universe. There are links between Boullées ideas and Edmund Burkes conception of the sublime, the baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell, the book contained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio.
At first the book featured the work of Inigo Jones. Palladian architecture became well established in 18th-century Britain, at the forefront of the new school of design was the aristocratic architect earl, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, in 1729, he and William Kent, designed Chiswick House. This House was a reinterpretation of Palladios Villa Capra, but purified of 16th century elements and this severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of the Palladianism. In 1734 William Kent and Lord Burlington designed one of Englands finest examples of Palladian architecture with Holkham Hall in Norfolk, the main block of this house followed Palladios dictates quite closely, but Palladios low, often detached, wings of farm buildings were elevated in significance. This classicising vein was detectable, to a degree, in the Late Baroque architecture in Paris. This shift was even visible in Rome at the redesigned façade for S, by the mid 18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of Classical influences, including those from Ancient Greece.
The shift to neoclassical architecture is conventionally dated to the 1750s, in France, the movement was propelled by a generation of French art students trained in Rome, and was influenced by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The style was adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden. A second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire, in France, the first phase of neoclassicism was expressed in the Louis XVI style, and the second in the styles called Directoire or Empire. The Scottish architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St. Petersburg, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late 1740s, but only achieved an audience in the 1760s
Domesday Book
Domesday Book is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states, Then, at the midwinter, was the king in Glocester with his council. After this had the king a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about this land, how it was occupied and it was written in Medieval Latin, was highly abbreviated, and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The assessors reckoning of a mans holdings and their values, as recorded in Domesday Book, was dispositive, the name Domesday Book came into use in the 12th century. As Richard FitzNeal wrote in the Dialogus de Scaccario, for as the sentence of that strict and terrible last account cannot be evaded by any skilful subterfuge and its sentence cannot be quashed or set aside with impunity. That is why we have called the book the Book of Judgement, because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgement, are unalterable.
The manuscript is held at The National Archives at Kew, London, in 2011, the Open Domesday site made the manuscript available online. The book is a primary source for modern historians and historical economists. Domesday Book encompasses two independent works, Little Domesday and Great Domesday, no surveys were made of the City of London, Winchester, or some other towns, probably due to their tax-exempt status. Most of Cumberland and Westmorland are missing, the omission of the other counties and towns is not fully explained, although in particular Cumberland and Westmorland had yet to be fully conquered. Little Domesday – so named because its format is smaller than its companions – is the more detailed survey. It may have represented the first attempt, resulting in a decision to avoid such level of detail in Great Domesday, some of the largest such magnates held several hundred fees, in a few cases in more than one county. For example, the chapter of the Domesday Book Devonshire section concerning Baldwin the Sheriff lists 176 holdings held in-chief by him, as a review of taxes owed, it was highly unpopular.
Each countys list opened with the demesne lands. It should be borne in mind that under the system the king was the only true owner of land in England. He was thus the ultimate overlord and even the greatest magnate could do no more than hold land from him as a tenant under one of the contracts of feudal land tenure. In some counties, one or more principal towns formed the subject of a separate section and this principle applies more specially to the larger volume, in the smaller one, the system is more confused, the execution less perfect. Domesday names a total of 13,418 places and these include fragments of custumals, records of the military service due, of markets, and so forth
A215 road
The A215 is an A road in South London, starting at Elephant and Castle and finishing around Shirley. It runs through the London Boroughs of Lambeth and Croydon, beginning as Walworth Road, the A215 becomes Camberwell Road—much of which is a conservation area—after entering the former Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell. Crossing the A202, the A215 becomes Denmark Hill, originally known as Dulwich Hill, after passing Herne Hill railway station the road becomes Norwood Road, Knights Hill, and Beulah Hill at its crossroads with the A214. Beulah Hill was the site of Britains first independent television transmitter, descending towards South Norwood the A215 becomes South Norwood Hill and Portland Road, just after crossing the A213. A short section starting at the junction with Woodside Green is known as Spring Lane, leading to Shirley Road, the A215 was Britains most crash-prone A-road between 1999-2010, having had 2,836 crashes over its 10 mile length. At its northernmost point at Elephant & Castle in Newington, the A215 begins as Walworth Road and it runs through Walworth and is the major shopping street of the area.
East Street Market is especially busy on Fridays and Sundays, other attractions include the Cuming Museum, Newington Reference Library and John Smith House, a former Labour Party headquarters which is now used by the local education authority. Charles Babbage, the Victorian mathematician and computer pioneer, was born at 44 Crosby Row, now Larcom Street. A commemorative blue plaque is displayed on the Sexual Health Clinic at the junction of Larcom Street, just off the Walworth Road was Walworth Road railway station on the London and Dover Railway that was opened in 1863 and shut in 1916 due to wartime constraints. Walworth Road transitions into Camberwell Road where the A215 enters the former Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell, the road runs adjacent to the railway between Elephant & Castle tube station and Loughborough Junction railway station. Much of Camberwell Road is an area, due to its well preserved large houses from the early 19th century. By the time of the Domesday Book, Camberwell was already a significant settlement, the town remained a popular resort for Londoners due to its believed medicinal wells.
In 1685, John Evelyns Diary mentions a Roman urn filled with bones which was uncovered intact during repairs to the road, Camberwell Green, at the junction of Camberwell Road and Camberwell Church Street, was the traditional site of Camberwell Fair, an annual fair held every August. Following complaints about the noise and high crime levels generated by the fair, in Victorian times Camberwell Road was a focal point of South Londons Music hall scene, with a number of music halls opening from the 1850s onwards. Following the advent of the cinema and of television, the halls fell into decline. Nearby Orpheus Street marks the site of the Metropole Music Hall, since the New Works Programme of the 1930s, London Transport and its successors have planned to extend the Bakerloo line south to a station on Camberwell Road. The original plans were abandoned due to the war before much construction had been completed, construction again began in the 1950s and 1970s, but was abandoned each time. Transport for London still intend to build this extension but no date has been set for this, after the A215 crosses the A202 it becomes Denmark Hill
John Smith House (Southwark)
John Smith House is the former Labour Party headquarters at 144-152 Walworth Road in south London. The party first occupied the building in 1980, vacating its headquarters at Transport House. It was renamed after John Smith, a leader of the Labour Party who died in office in 1994. Between 1995 and 1997 the Labour Party moved most of its functions from John Smith House to Millbank Tower, in 1990 The Labour Party Archive and Library moved from Walworth Road to join the Peoples History Museum. John Smith House was formerly used by Southwark Local Education Authority, in October 2010, planning permission was granted to turn into a Safestay budget hotel. The hotel opened in July 2012, next door to John Smith House is the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions
Charing Cross
Charing Cross denotes the junction of Strand and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square in central London. It gives its name to several landmarks, including Charing Cross railway station, Charing Cross is named after the Eleanor cross that stood on the site, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. The site of the cross has been occupied since 1675 by a statue of King Charles I. A loose Victorian replica of the cross, the Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross, was erected a short distance to the east outside the railway station. Until 1931, Charing Cross referred to the part of Whitehall between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square, at least one property retains a Charing Cross postal address, Drummonds Bank, on the corner of Whitehall and The Mall, which is designated 49 Charing Cross. Since the early 19th century, Charing Cross has often been regarded as the centre of London. Erect a rich and stately carved cross, Whereon her statue shall with glory shine, George Peele The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First The name of the area, Charing, is derived from the Old English word cierring, referring to a bend in the River Thames.
Folk etymology suggests the name derives from chère reine — dear queen in French — and this wooden sculpted cross was the work of the medieval sculptor, Alexander of Abingdon. It was destroyed in 1647 on the orders of Parliament during the Civil War, a 70 ft -high stone sculpture in front of Charing Cross railway station is a copy of the original cross. Erected in 1865, it is situated a few hundred yards to the east of the original cross and it was designed by the architect E. M. Barry and carved by Thomas Earp of Lambeth out of Portland stone, Mansfield stone and Aberdeen granite. It is not a replica, being more ornate than the original. A variation on the name appears to be Charygcrouche, near St Martin in the Fields, since 1675 the site of the cross has been occupied by a statue of King Charles I mounted on a horse. The site is recognised by convention as the centre of London for the purpose of indicating distances by road in favour of other measurement points. Charing Cross is marked on maps as a road junction.
Since 1 January 1931 this section of road has been designated part of the Whitehall thoroughfare, the cross has given its name to a railway station, a tube station, police station, hospital, a hotel, a theatre, and a music hall. Charing Cross Road the main route from the north was named after the railway station, at some time between 1232 and 1236, the Chapel and Hospital of St Mary Rounceval was founded at Charing. It occupied land at the corner of the modern Whitehall and into the centre of Northumberland Avenue and it was an Augustinian house, tied to a mother house at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees. The house and lands were seized for the king in 1379, protracted legal action returned some rights to the prior, but in 1414, Henry V suppressed the alien houses
London Ambulance Service
It is one of the busiest ambulance services in the world, and the busiest in the United Kingdom, providing care to more than 8.6 million people, who live and work in London. The service is currently under the leadership of chief executive Dr Fionna Moore MBE, the service employ around 4,500 staff. In exceptional cases, or where the service deems in necessary, specialist teams can be deployed from within the service, such as the Hazardous Area Response Team and these teams are specially trained and equipped to deal with incidents such as working at height or in confined spaces. It is one of 10 ambulance trusts in England providing emergency medical services, there is no charge to patients for use of the service, as every person in England has the right to the attendance of an ambulance in an emergency. The LAS responded to over 1.8 million calls for assistance, incidents rose by 20,000 in 2015/16, putting more pressure on the service. All 999 calls from the public are answered at the Emergency Operations Centre in Waterloo, to assist, the services command and control system is linked electronically with the equivalent system for Londons Metropolitan Police.
This means that police updates regarding specific jobs will be updated directly on the computer-aided dispatch log, to be viewed by the EOC, the first became operational at The South Eastern Fever Hospital, Deptford, in October 1883. In all, six hospitals operated horse-drawn land ambulances, putting almost the whole of London within three miles of one of them, each ambulance station included accommodation for a married superintendent and around 20 drivers, horse keepers and attendants, laundry staff and domestic cleaners. At Deptford, in order to transfer patients between the hospitals at Joyce Green and Long Reach near Gravesend, a horse-drawn ambulance tramway was constructed in 1897, in 1902, the MAB introduced a steam driven ambulance and in 1904, their first motor ambulance. The last horse-drawn ambulances were used on 14 September 1912, although the MAB was legally supposed to be transporting only infectious patients, it increasingly carried accident victims and emergency medical cases.
Also in 1915, the MAB Ambulance Section were the first public body to women drivers. By July 1916 the London County Council Ambulance Corps was staffed entirely by women, the LCC took control of the River Ambulance Service, but it was disbanded in 1932. During World War II, the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service was operated by over 10,000 auxiliaries, mainly women and they ran services from 139 Auxiliary Stations across London. A plaque at one of the last to close, Station 39 in Weymouth Mews, near Portland Place, in 1948 the National Health Service Act made it a requirement for ambulances to be available for anyone who needed them. On 1 April 1996, the LAS left the control of the South West Thames Regional Health Authority, as an NHS Trust, the LAS has a Trust Board consisting of 12 members. The board includes, a chairman, five of the Service’s executive directors. Special events in London are co-ordinated from the Services event control room, located in east London, during mass casualty incidents, the command structure works on three levels, gold and bronze.
Silver control, tactical command, from a point in the vicinity of the incident, Bronze control
Meadow
A meadow is a field habitat vegetated by grass and other non-woody plants. Meadows are of importance because they are open, sunny areas that attract and support flora. Meadows may be naturally occurring or artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland and they often host a multitude of wildlife, providing areas for courtship displays, food gathering and sometimes sheltering if the vegetation is high enough. Many meadows support an array of wildflowers, which makes them of utmost importance to insects like bees and other pollinating insects. In agriculture, a meadow is grassland which is not regularly grazed by domestic livestock, especially in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the term meadow is commonly used in its original sense to mean a hay meadow, signifying grassland mown annually in the summer for making hay. Agricultural meadows are typically lowland or upland fields upon which hay or pasture grasses grow from self-sown or hand-sown seed, traditional hay meadows were once common in rural Britain, but are now in decline.
Ecologist Professor John Rodwell states that over the past century, fewer than 15.000 hectares of lowland meadows remain in the UK and most sites are relatively small and fragmented. 25% of the UKs meadows are found in Worcestershire, with Fosters Green Meadow managed by the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust being a major site. A similar concept to the hay meadow is the pasture, which differs from the meadow in that it is grazed through the summer, rather than being allowed to grow out, the term, grassland, is used to describe both hay meadows and grass pastures. The specific agricultural practices in relation to the meadow can take on various expressions, as mentioned, this could be hay production or providing food for grazing cattle and livestock but to give room for orchards or honey production. A transitional state can be artificially-maintained through a system, in which cultivated soil. For example, some of todays meadows originated thousands of years ago, types of perpetual meadows may include, Alpine meadows occur at high elevations above the tree line and maintained by harsh climatic conditions.
Coastal meadows maintained by salt sprays, desert meadows restricted by low precipitation or lack of nutrients and humus. Prairies maintained by periods of drought or subject to wildfires. Wet meadows saturated with water much of the year. Apart from the meadows, meadows are often conceived of as artificial or cultural habitats, since they have emerged from and continually require human intervention to persist. It can be argued however, that meadows are really semi-cultural habitats, the reason is, that in many places the natural, pristine populations of free roaming large grazers are either extinct or very limited due to human activities. This reduces or removes their natural influence on the surrounding ecology, mankind has influenced the ecology and the landscape for millennia in many parts of the world, so it can sometimes be difficult to discern what is natural and what is cultural
Old Kent Road
Old Kent Road is a major thoroughfare in South East London, passing through the London Borough of Southwark. It was originally part of an ancient trackway that was paved by the Romans and it is now part of the A2, a major road from London to Dover. The road was important in Roman times linking London to the coast at Richborough and it was a route for pilgrims in the Middle Ages as portrayed in Chaucers Canterbury Tales, when Old Kent Road was known as Kent Street. The route was used by returning from the Battle of Agincourt. In the 16th century, St Thomas-a-Watering on Old Kent Road was a place where religious dissenters, the road was rural in nature and several coaching inns were built alongside it. In the 19th century it acquired the name Old Kent Road and several industrial premises were set up to close to the Surrey Canal and a major business, in the 20th century, older property was demolished for redevelopment and Burgess Park was created. The Old Kent Road Baths opened around 1905 had Turkish and Russian bath facilities, in the 21st century, several retail parks and premises typical of out-of-town development have been built beside it while public houses have been redeveloped for other purposes.
The road is celebrated in the music hall song Knocked em in the Old Kent Road and it is the first property, and one of the two cheapest, on the London Monopoly board and the only one in South London. The road begins at the Bricklayers Arms roundabout, where it meets the New Kent Road, Tower Bridge Road and it runs southeast past Burgess Park, Christ Church and the railway line from Peckham Rye to South Bermondsey. Just east of the bridge, the road crosses the boundary between the London boroughs of Southwark and Lewisham, where the road ahead becomes New Cross Road. The road appears on a map to form a boundary between Walworth, and Peckham to the south and Bermondsey to the north although the Bermondsey boundary runs along Rolls Road. Old Kent Road, one of the oldest roads in England, was part of a Celtic ancient trackway that was paved by the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons named it Wæcelinga Stræt. It joined Stane Street another ancient and Roman road at Southwark before crossing the Thames at London Bridge, the Inter III was one of the most important Roman roads in Britain, linking London with Canterbury and the Channel ports at Richborough and Lympne.
Pilgrims, as documented in Chaucers Canterbury Tales, travelled along the road from London, in 1415, the road was a scene of celebrations for soldiers returning from the Battle of Agincourt heading towards London. The Kentish Drovers public house opened in 1840 and was so named because the road was a thoroughfare for market traffic, the road was mainly rural in nature, surrounded by fields and windmills and the occasional tavern until the 19th century. John Rocques Map of London, published in 1746, shows hedgerows along its course, the nearby public house, the Thomas a Becket, at the corner of Albany Road is named after this. Henry V met soldiers returning from Agincourt at this location in 1415, St Thomas-a-Watering became a place of execution for criminals whose bodies were left hanging from the gibbets on the principal route from the southeast to London. On 8 July 1539, Griffith Clerke, Vicar of Wandsworth was hanged and quartered here along with his chaplain, the Welsh Protestant martyr John Penry was executed here on 6 April 1593, a small side street nearby is named after him
Camberwell
Until 1889 it was part of the County of Surrey. In 1900 the original became the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell. Then in 1965 most of the Borough of Camberwell was merged into the London Borough of Southwark, to the west part of both West Dulwich and Herne Hill come under the London Borough of Lambeth. Camberwell appears in the Domesday Book as Cambrewelle, the name may derive from the Old English Cumberwell or Comberwell, meaning Well of the Britons, referring to remaining Celtic inhabitants of an area dominated by Anglo-Saxons. Springs and wells are known to have existed on the slope of Denmark Hill. It was already a settlement with a church when mentioned in the Domesday Book. It was held by Haimo the Sheriff and its domesday assets were,6 hides and 1 virgate,1 church,8 ploughs,63 acres of meadow, woodland worth 60 hogs. Up to the century, Camberwell was visited by Londoners for its rural tranquillity. Like much of inner South London, Camberwell was transformed by the arrival of the railways in the 1860s, Camberwell St Giles formed an ancient, and civil, parish in the Brixton hundred of Surrey.
The parish covered 4,570 acres in 1831 and was divided into the liberty of Peckham to the east, the width of the parish tapered in the south to form a point at what is now known as the Crystal Palace area. In 1801 the population was 7,059 and by 1851 this had risen to 54,667, in 1889 the board was replaced by the London County Council and Camberwell was removed from Surrey, to form part of the County of London. In 1900 the area of the Camberwell parish became the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell, in 1965 the metropolitan borough was abolished and its former area became the southern part of the London Borough of Southwark in Greater London. The western part of the area is situated in the adjacent London Borough of Lambeth, Camberwell today is a mixture of relatively well preserved Georgian and 20th-century housing, including a number of tower blocks. Camberwell Grove, Grove Lane and Addington Square have some of Londons most elegant, the Salvation Armys William Booth Memorial Training College, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, was completed in 1932, it towers over South London from Denmark Hill.
Camberwell is home to one of Londons largest teaching hospitals, Kings College Hospital with associated medical school the Guy’s King’s, the Maudsley Hospital, an internationally significant psychiatric hospital, is located in Camberwell along with the Institute of Psychiatry. Early music halls in Camberwell were in the hall of public houses. One, the Father Redcap still stands by Camberwell Green, but internally, in 1896, the Dan Leno company opened the Oriental Palace of Varieties, on Denmark Hill. This successful venture was replaced with a new theatre, designed by Ernest A. E
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. It was integrated by the Post Office into the national system of the United Kingdom during the early 1970s and corresponds to the N, NW, SW, SE, W, WC, E. The postal district has known as the London postal area. The County of London was much smaller at 117 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, in 1854 Charles Canning, the Postmaster General, set up a committee at the Post Office in St. Martins 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, approximately one fifth were for delivery in London, 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 almost perfectly circular area of 12 miles radius from the central post office at St. Martins Le Grand, 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 it covered, the system was introduced during 1857 and completed on 1 January 1858. 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 measure to improve efficiency, the districts were further subdivided with a number applied to each sub-district. Exceptionally and esoterically, W2 and SW11 are head districts, 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, subdivisions of postcode sub-districts Owing 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 postcode district. Where such sub-districts are used such as on street signs and maps. The districts subdivided are E1, N1, EC SW1, W1, WC1, there are solely 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 area covered parts of Middlesex, Kent, Essex
London Borough of Southwark
The London Borough of Southwark /ˈsʌðərk/ in south London, England forms part of Inner London and is connected by bridges across the River Thames to the City of London. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council areas amalgamated under the London Government Act 1963, all districts of the area are within the London postal district. It is governed by Southwark London Borough Council, Dulwich is home to the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Imperial War Museum is in Elephant and Castle. The area was first settled in the Roman period but the name Southwark dates from the 9th century, the London Borough of Southwark was formed in 1965 from the former area of the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark, the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell, and the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey. The borough borders the City of London and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to the north, the London Borough of Lambeth to the west, to the south are the London Borough of Bromley and the London Borough of Croydon.
At the 2001 census Southwark had a population of 244,866, Southwark is ethnically 63% white, 16% black African and 8% black Caribbean. The area is the home of many Nigerian, South African, Tower Bridge, the Millennium Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, Southwark Bridge and London Bridge all connect the City of London to the borough. The skyscraper Shard London Bridge is currently the tallest building in the EU, the Tate Modern art gallery, Shakespeares Globe Theatre, the Imperial War Museum and Borough Market are within the borough. At one mile wide, Burgess Park is Southwarks largest green space, Southwark has many notable places of Christian worship, Roman Catholic and independent non-conformist. These include Charles Spurgeons Metropolitan Tabernacle, Southwark Cathedral, St Georges Cathedral, Londons Norwegian Church and Finnish Church and the Swedish Seamens Church are all in Rotherhithe. St George the Martyr is the oldest church in Greater London dedicated to Englands Patron Saint, the other redundant church is Francis Bedfords in Trinity Church Square, now a recording studio, Henry Wood Hall.
Whilst Christianity is the dominant religion of the borough, several religious minorities are active, according to the 2001 Census, approximately 28% of Southwark identified as non-religious, or chose not to state their faith. Charles Dickens set several of his novels in the old borough where he lived as a young man, the site of The Tabard inn, the White Hart inn and the George Inn which survives. The rebuilt Globe Theatre and its exhibition on the Bankside remind us of the areas being the birthplace of classical theatre, there is the remains of the Rose Theatre. In 2007 the Unicorn Theatre for Children was opened on Tooley Street with both the Southwark Playhouse and the Union Theatre having premises in Bermondsey Street, the Menier Chocolate Factory combines a theatre and exhibition space. The Bankside Gallery is the headquarters of the Royal Watercolour Society, the Golden Hinde replica is at St Mary Overie Dock and nearby are the remains of the medieval Winchester Palace which is a scheduled ancient monument.
Peckham Library, designed by Will Alsop won the Stirling Prize for modern architecture, the museum was closed by Southwark council in 2008. MOCA, London, as curated by the artist Michael Petry, is a museum located in Peckham Rye dedicated to exposing and showcasing new cutting-edge artists
