London (England)

C

The West End

To the west and north of Trafalgar Square is the West End, which is usually regarded as the center of town because it is London’s shopping and entertainment hub. The busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, where such large department stores as Selfridges, John Lewis, and Marks and Spencer are located. Other well-known shopping areas include Knightsbridge, the location of Harrods department store; and Piccadilly, where Fortnum and Mason specializes in fine food. The main entertainment attractions are scattered throughout the Soho and Covent Garden sections, northeast of Piccadilly. Soho and Covent Garden were created as residential areas in the 17th century, but now are home to shops, theaters, and street entertainers. The Royal Opera House and most of London’s major theaters are here, as are movie houses, and hundreds of restaurants, cafés, and bars.

Located just west of Soho and Covent Garden in the West End is a more residential area. Much of the urban design here is based on the residential square, an imitation of European precedents, with uniform houses built around an open space. The houses on these squares were often built for the aristocracy and the upper middle class. The relatively dense development of this area is broken up by a series of Royal Parks, areas once owned by the Crown, including Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, and Regent’s Park.

In the northern part of the West End is Bloomsbury, the city’s traditional intellectual center, with its concentration of bookshops and homes of writers and academics. In the early 20th century a number of famous writers, critics, and artists who lived here became known as the Bloomsbury Group. Here, too, is the British Museum, one of London’s chief tourist attractions. Nearby is the giant complex of the University of London, whose various colleges and departments have taken over much of Bloomsbury.

D

The East End and Docklands

The East End, beyond the City of London and the Tower, has long been the home of London’s docks and immigrants. It has frequently been characterized by slums, poverty, and crime. This is the area where the notorious criminal Jack the Ripper prowled. Some portions, such as Bethnal Green, were slums during the Victorian period. Many poorer immigrants and working-class Londoners still reside in the East End, but its weekend street markets are very popular, especially Petticoat Lane, which runs along the length of Middlesex Street. Although Middlesex Street is no longer the center of the clothing trade, its merchandise is still geared toward apparel. Much of the old dockyard area has been abandoned and redeveloped as the Docklands, an ambitious project designed to lure London’s financial activities away from the congested City. The heart of the Docklands is the Isle of Dogs, a peninsula where the Royal Kennels were once situated.

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E

North London

North London was made up of satellite villages until the 19th century when the underground railroad (known locally as the Tube) opened this area up to development. Camden Town, on Regent’s Canal, has a popular weekend market that sells inexpensive clothing and jewelry. Farther north are elegant 18th-century villages, such as Hampstead, a center for writers; and Highgate, renowned for London’s best-known cemetery, which includes the grave and a large bust of Karl Marx. A central fixture of north London is the 324-hectare (800-acre) Hampstead Heath, a large public park.

F

South London

The area south of the Thames has long been regarded with disdain by the rest of the city. For centuries Southwark, originally the area around the southern end of London Bridge, was the disreputable entertainment center of London, with brothels, bars, and theaters outside of the City’s jurisdiction. The sacred and the profane lived in close proximity here. Not far from the infamous Bankside, where brutal sports like cockfighting and bearbaiting took place, was the beautiful Southwark Cathedral, which dates from the 13th century. Bankside was also the location of Elizabethan theaters, which were restricted in the City because they were considered places of vice. One of these, the Globe Theatre, where William Shakespeare put on his greatest plays, was reconstructed in the late 20th century.

Farther along the river to the west is the South Bank Centre cultural complex, begun as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951. The Festival of Britain was a vehicle for lifting the spirits of Londoners after the trials of World War II. The most important building in the center is the Royal Festival Hall, a concert hall that was built for the festival. The Royal National Theatre and the National Film Theatre are also part of the South Bank Centre.

III

Population of London

The population of metropolitan London in the 2000s was about 7.5 million. The population has declined since 1951, when more than 8 million people lived in London. But it began to grow again in the mid-1980s. London’s population is densely concentrated by British and North American standards.

London has always attracted immigrants from Britain’s towns and villages. In the mid-19th century, half of the people of London had been born outside the city. During the Irish Famine of the 1840s, there was an influx of people from Ireland. At the turn of the century, Eastern European Jews settled in the East End. Chinese immigrants settled near the docks in the East End during the late 19th century, creating a Chinatown at Limehouse. More recently, Chinese immigrants, mostly from Hong Kong, have formed the highly visible Chinatown in the Soho area of the West End.

Since World War II, two groups of immigrants have transformed London into one of the most multiethnic capitals in Europe. One of these groups is usually referred to simply as “Asian,” and refers to those who originally came from the Indian subcontinent. The people in this diverse group speak many languages—Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu—and belong to several religions, such as Hinduism, Islam, or Sikhism. Some of these subgroups became associated with particular districts or professions. Southall, near Heathrow Airport, is primarily Punjabi, with Sikhs forming the largest religious group. The Bangladeshis have congregated in Spitalfields in the East End where they began to specialize in the garment industry and the catering trades. Many Asians have started their own businesses, purchased and renovated older terrace housing (row houses), and entered professions in law, medicine, and finance.

A second influential group is the black population, which has arrived from the Caribbean and from African countries. During the late 1940s Jamaicans were the first and largest group to emigrate from the Caribbean. They tended to settle in south London, notably in Brixton, which still has a large black community. Immigrants from Trinidad, Dominica, and Saint Lucia reside in Notting Hill, now a trendy, multicultural neighborhood in London’s West End. Other areas with significant black populations are Hackney and Harringay in northeast London.

IV

Education and Culture in London

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