British Cities

[gurnemanz]

Thanks to Lat for detailed response. We moved from Old Coulsdon to Coulsdon in 1960. Three letters saved in the address and nearer to the station for trains to Clapham Junction to attend school. Amazingly I got a season ticket paid for by the Council which I also used on Saturdays to go Selhurst Park. Talking of which, the old original Kent/Surrey border must have been very close to where the ground now stands. I don't think there was confusion with Charlton.

As for poor old Croydon, in many ways the quintessence of suburban mediocrity, but I could also mention The Fairfield Hall, an open air swimming pool, Kennards department store and a good boys' school where I actually taught for couple of years. .....Sorry about more Sarf London chat which is probably of only limited interest.

[french frank]

Well they did ground borrow for a while!

Prize for the least comprehensible standalone comment?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Prize for the least comprehensible standalone comment?

A soccerific reference, methunk.

[Lat-Literal]

Thanks to Lat for detailed response. We moved from Old Coulsdon to Coulsdon in 1960. Three letters saved in the address and nearer to the station for trains to Clapham Junction to attend school. Amazingly I got a season ticket paid for by the Council which I also used on Saturdays to go Selhurst Park. Talking of which, the old original Kent/Surrey border must have been very close to where the ground now stands. I don't think there was confusion with Charlton.

As for poor old Croydon, in many ways the quintessence of suburban mediocrity, but I could also mention The Fairfield Hall, an open air swimming pool, Kennards department store and a good boys' school where I actually taught for couple of years. .....Sorry about more Sarf London chat which is probably of only limited interest.

Thank you for your interesting post.

The Fairfield is closed for renovation/replacement and the work is predictably behind schedule. I can recall going to the Purley Way open air swimming pool although my state junior school unusually had its own pool. Personally, I prefer being in or beside the sea. Kennards went as did the one beginning with G - the name escapes me for a moment - and ultimately Allders which had the biggest floor space of all the stores outside Central London. In fact, only two stores in Central London had floor space that was bigger. I suppose Croydon could potentially become a city. It might have even applied in the past. Many years ago, it appeared to be the place in Britain with the 16th biggest population. These things are measured in odd ways and much has changed. It could be higher in the list now. I saw Charlton Athletic playing "at home" at the Crystal Palace ground in the late 1980s when they couldn't use their home ground of "The Valley". Charlton could be described as Kent. West Wickham and other "Londonish" Kent places aren't terribly far from Selhurst Park. Nearer here, Oxted is in Surrey but Hurst Green next to it is in Kent. Certainly we have more in common with London and Kent than with, say, Camberley or Guildford for being closer. I'd say that this matters most in terms of weather - ours is similar to West Kent - and any days out which while they can extend to Leith Hill are most likely to be east-ish. Sussex is also nearer to Coulsdon. Incidentally, Old Coulsdon is the second highest place in Greater London and its southernmost settlement. I still know people who were here in the 1930s when it had very few roads.

[Serial_Apologist]

Prize for the least comprehensible standalone comment?

Grounds for further investigation!

[Serial_Apologist]

Thank you for your interesting post.

The Fairfield is closed for renovation/replacement and the work is predictably behind schedule. I can recall going to the Purley Way open air swimming pool although my state junior school unusually had its own pool.

From early childhood my Mum and I would take the Green Line from Victoria coach station to Upper Warlingham, where a nearest cousin lived. In the early 1960s he and I attended ballroom dance classes at the large dance hall in Purley that was reputed to be the largest of its kind in the world, that being Purley's claim to fame for me. By that time the Lambeth Walk was no more than an old music hall song for old codgers in pubs on Saturday nights, and no one taught us the Purley Way.

Personally, I prefer being in or beside the sea. Kennards went as did the one beginning with G - the name escapes me for a moment - and ultimately Allders which had the biggest floor space of all the stores outside Central London. In fact, only two stores in Central London had floor space that was bigger. I suppose Croydon could potentially become a city. It might have even applied in the past. Many years ago, it appeared to be the place in Britain with the 16th biggest population. These things are measured in odd ways and much has changed. It might be higher in the list now. I saw Charlton Athletic playing "at home" at the Crystal Palace ground in the late 1980s when they couldn't use their home ground of "The Valley". Charlton could be described as Kent. West Wickham and other "Londonish" Kent places aren't terribly far from that part of the borough. Nearer here, Oxted is in Surrey but Hurst Green next to it is in Kent. Certainly we have more in common with London and Kent than with, say, Camberley or Guildford for being closer. I'd say that this matters most in terms of weather - ours is similar to West Kent - and any days out which while they can extend to Leith Hill are most likely to be east-ish. Sussex is equally near.

There's a remarkable conjuction of metropolitan and old county boundaries within shouting distance of where I live - within a few hundred metres the county boundaries of Kent, Surrey and the London County Council met, as indicated on an OS map of 1963 in my possession; further along the Crystal Palace Parade, Southwark, Croydon, Lambeth and Bromley meet - Lewisham not being far to the north. When I gashed my shin one year ago on a deep pothole on C Palace Parade the chappie who drove up from Southwark wasn't sure which side of the boundary said pothole was with Lambeth; subsequently he said having contacted his Lambeth equivalent, he wasn't sure either precisely where the boundary went; fortunately it was repaired the next day. My 65-year old computer whizz proudly announces Penge as being his birthplace, but when I informed him that this made him a man of Kent, not Surrey, as he had claimed, he didn't seem particularly perturbed one way or the other. Here I am halfway between Trafalgar Square - long considered the geographical centre point of London, though some now designate that as being Waterloo Station - and the countryside of Kent and Surrey, which starts just south of West Wickham. That's one of the things I love about living right here - half an hour to the heart of the metropolis, half an hour to the rural North Downs, by bicycle. South London grew more slowly than north of the river, in part owing to the late addition of bridges across the Thames, in part aristocratic land tenure, in part its chaotic networks of communication, and this means that in between the comparatively small plots of land developed at different stages, compared to in N London, one can find many relics of the old countryside - field boundaries marked by trees and hedgerows older than the surrounding built up districts, stream tributaries that appear and then disappear into culverts, rear walls of subsequently altered terraces built of knapped flintstones, parks, allotments, woods, stately houses and even village greens, countryside relics probably less altered than vast tracts of considered rural landscapes changed by agricultural practices, some essence of whose atmospheres have somehow withstood massive change surrounded by the urban hullabaloo.

[cloughie]

Prize for the least comprehensible standalone comment?

It's good to give them occasionally instead of getting them - and at least I didn't use initials, Lat's post explains it very well!

[Lat-Literal]

From early childhood my Mum and I would take the Green Line from Victoria coach station to Upper Warlingham, where a nearest cousin lived. In the early 1960s he and I attended ballroom dance classes at the large dance hall in Purley that was reputed to be the largest of its kind in the world, that being Purley's claim to fame for me. By that time the Lambeth Walk was no more than an old music hall song for old codgers in pubs on Saturday nights, and no one taught us the Purley Way.

There's a remarkable conjuction of metropolitan and old county boundaries within shouting distance of where I live - within a few hundred metres the county boundaries of Kent, Surrey and the London County Council met, as indicated on an OS map of 1963 in my possession; further along the Crystal Palace Parade, Southwark, Croydon, Lambeth and Bromley meet - Lewisham not being far to the north. When I gashed my shin one year ago on a deep pothole on C Palace Parade the chappie who drove up from Southwark wasn't sure which side of the boundary said pothole was with Lambeth; subsequently he said having contacted his Lambeth equivalent, he wasn't sure either precisely where the boundary went; fortunately it was repaired the next day. My 65-year old computer whizz proudly announces Penge as being his birthplace, but when I informed him that this made him a man of Kent, not Surrey, as he had claimed, he didn't seem particularly perturbed one way or the other. Here I am halfway between Trafalgar Square - long considered the geographical centre point of London, though some now designate that as being Waterloo Station - and the countryside of Kent and Surrey, which starts just south of West Wickham. That's one of the things I love about living right here - half an hour to the heart of the metropolis, half an hour to the rural North Downs, by bicycle. South London grew more slowly than north of the river, in part owing to the late addition of bridges across the Thames, in part aristocratic land tenure, in part its chaotic networks of communication, and this means that in between the comparatively small plots of land developed at different stages, compared to in N London, one can find many relics of the old countryside - field boundaries marked by trees and hedgerows older than the surrounding built up districts, stream tributaries that appear and then disappear into culverts, rear walls of subsequently altered terraces built of knapped flintstones, parks, allotments, woods, stately houses and even village greens, countryside relics probably less altered than vast tracts of considered rural landscapes changed by agricultural practices, some essence of whose atmospheres have somehow withstood massive change surrounded by the urban hullabaloo.

Yes - your post is interesting and atmospheric and I think it pinpoints much of what is often not appreciated. In many ways, I would see Croydon as the environmental exception. Its modern buildings from the 1960s onwards introduced a dimension that was at odds with much of what you describe. In principle, it was exciting and originally I wasn't totally opposed to it but the thinking was arguably very muddled, hence it has increasingly been governed by the trite. I think many of the fake distinctions between north and south which tend to amount to "you are all well off nimbys down there" emanate from its failure to build on the earlier sense of adventure by turning it into city status. However, being just, what, nine miles from Central London, the location was probably always wrong for it. Surely the closest to an equivalent in the north is Watford. Not having witnessed such extensive change, that still has comparisons with other towns in its area and as a consequence knows its own place in the broader scheme. I too knew the green line. We would travel on it "up" to Brixton. It meant not having to change onto the 68 bus. To think of a green bus there now seems bizarre but also it's somehow right. There is a red night bus that officially comes not to Coulsdon but Old Coulsdon although drivers do their best to skip it so it works in the opposite direction too. A reminder of the connection with Central London and in each case Croydon itself is irrelevant.

The character of the sweep from you to me and also to the north of you is very distinct from the estuarial feelings in and around North Kent actual and from the Surrey of Reigate and Dorking. It is also distinct from the suburban north. There is no hint here of a gateway to the rest of the country, nor of a British version of an Americana where the coast feels miles away. We are more a gateway to the continent of Europe or, if not, the sea. But you don't mention the sea because you are slightly further away from it. You will feel the London dimension more with all of its village history. If in terms of population, Croydon is now as Brixton was in the 1970s, the bigger points are that Streatham was once more like Purley and farmers walked their animals to market along the Old Kent Road. As for the suburbia of South London, it isn't that of Betjeman. Geology is the main reason because it made the building of an extensive underground network impossible. There are pluses and minuses. There is more character here but we are especially blighted by the car. Purley Way is a prime example - the sort of road Will Self would be walking along at 10pm in one of his grimmer broadcasts. I won't go there but if I had to I would have to be reminding myself that not so far away is what remains of the River Wandle. I'd question just one thing in your post. My understanding was that Charing Cross was regarded as the centre of Central London but I could be wrong.

(Have just remembered the name of that other department store of the past - it was Grants)

[french frank]

It's good to give them occasionally instead of getting them - and at least I didn't use initials, Lat's post explains it very well!

Well, I understood what was meant in context. I meant stripped of the foregoing disquisition

[subcontrabass]

My 65-year old computer whizz proudly announces Penge as being his birthplace, but when I informed him that this made him a man of Kent, .

In pedant mode, being born in Penge makes him a Kentish Man, not a Man of Kent.

[cloughie]

Well, I understood what was meant in context. I meant stripped of the foregoing disquisition

Nice to get a prize!

[Serial_Apologist]

In pedant mode, being born in Penge makes him a Kentish Man, not a Man of Kent.

He does rather look like they screwed his head on backwards, when they made him!

[Alain Maréchal]

My understanding was that Charing Cross was regarded as the centre of Central London but I could be wrong.

I'm not certain if it was thought to be the centre, but distances were measured from Charing Cross, i.e. the Eleanor Cross destroyed in the Commonwealth, on the site of which now stands the equestrian statue of Charles, King and Martyr (looking towards the site of his execution). Which makes Trafalgar Square a reasonable modern approximation. The village of Charing, and the Royal Mews which it contained, were cleared to make way for the square.

So fare thee well old Charing Cross
fare thee well old stump
Thou wert a thing put up by a King
and so torn down by the Rump

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm not certain if it was thought to be the centre, but distances were measured from Charing Cross, i.e. the Eleanor Cross destroyed in the Commonwealth, on the site of which now stands the equestrian statue of Charles, King and Martyr (looking towards the site of his execution). Which makes Trafalgar Square a reasonable modern approximation. The village of Charing, and the Royal Mews which it contained, were cleared to make way for the square.

So fare thee well old Charing Cross
fare thee well old stump
Thou wert a thing put up by a King
and so torn down by the Rump

Yes it's extraordinary to think that what is now Trafalgar Square was still countryside 400 years ago! When I was small - early 1950s - we had a piano tuner, by then in his nineties, who could remember Earl's Court as a village!

[vinteuil]

Yes it's extraordinary to think that what is now Trafalgar Square was still countryside 400 years ago! When I was small - early 1950s - we had a piano tuner, by then in his nineties, who could remember Earl's Court as a village!

... immediately prior to the Great War there were still cows and milkmaids at Spring Gardens, the little street off Trafalgar Square just north of Admiralty Arch.

.