London
Capital of England and the United Kingdom, located on the River Thames.
Since 1965 its metropolitan area has been known as Greater London,
consisting of the City of London and 32 boroughs; total area 1,580
sq km/ 610 sq mi; combined population (1995) for 31 boroughs,
excluding the cities of London and Westminster, 7,001,900. The
City of London, known as the `square mileŽ, is the financial and
commercial centre of the UK; area 2.7 sq km/1 sq mi. London is
the only major European capital without a strategic authority
covering the whole area. Popular tourist attractions include the
Tower of London, St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, and Westminster
Abbey. The Millennium Dome at Greenwich is the centrepiece of
Britain's millennium celebrations.
Features
The Tower of London was built by William the Conqueror on a Roman site,
and now houses the crown jewels and the royal armouries. Other
features include the 15th-century Guildhall; the Monument, a column
designed by Christopher Wren, which marks the site in Pudding
Lane where the Fire of London began in 1666; Mansion House, the
residence of the lord mayor; the Barbican arts and conference
centre; the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben; the Old Bailey (Central
Criminal Court); and the Inns of Court. Covent Garden, once a
vegetable market, is now a tourist shopping and entertainment
area.
Architecture
London contains buildings in all styles of English architecture dating
back to the 11th century.
Norman: the White Tower, Tower of London; St Bartholomew's,
Smithfield; the Temple Church. Gothic: Westminster Abbey; Westminster
Hall; Lambeth Palace; Southwark Cathedral. Tudor: St James's Palace;
Staple Inn.
17th century: Banqueting Hall, Whitehall (Inigo Jones); St Paul's;
Kensington Palace; many City churches (Sir Christopher Wren).
18th century: Somerset House (Chambers); St Martin-in-the-Fields;
Buckingham Palace.
19th century: British Museum (Neo- Classical); Houses of Parliament;
Law Courts (Neo-Gothic); Westminster Cathedral (Byzantine style).
20th century: Lloyd's of London.
Commerce and Industry
From Saxon times the Port of London dominated the Thames from Tower
Bridge to Tilbury. Its activity is now centred outside the metropolitan
area, and downstream Tilbury has been extended to cope with container
traffic. The prime economic importance of modern London is as
a financial centre. There are various industries, mainly on the
outskirts. There are also recording, broadcasting, television,
and film studios; publishing companies; and the works and offices
of the national press. Tourism is important.
Some of the docks in the East End of London, once the busiest
in the world, were sold to the Docklands Development Corporation,
which has built offices, houses, factories, and a railway. The
world's largest office development project is at Canary Wharf.
The City Thameslink station, the first mainline railway station
to be built in London for nearly a century, opened in 1991.
Education and Entertainment
London has many museums, including the British Museum, the Victoria
and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Science
Museum. Galleries include the National Gallery, National Portrait
Gallery, Tate Gallery, Hayward Gallery, Wallace Collection, and
Courtauld Institute. The former Bankside power station, opposite
St Paul's Cathedral, is being converted into the Tate Gallery
of Modern Art. London University is the largest in Britain. The
Inns of Court have been the training school for lawyers since
the 13th century. London has been the centre of English drama
since its first theatre was built by James Burbage in 1576. A
re-creation of the Globe Theatre opened in Southwark in 1996.
General
To the west of the City, London's West End contains most of the capital's
hotel, shopping, restaurant, and theatre venues. It is bounded
to the north by Regent's Park, to the west by Hyde Park, and to
the south by St James's Park. The area incorporates Soho and Covent
Garden, notable for their nightlife and restaurants, and Marylebone,
Piccadilly, and Mayfair. Further west, the Royal Borough of Kensington
and Chelsea extends from Notting Hill in the north to the riverfront
of Chelsea. Many of the capital's museums are concentrated in
South Kensington. Northwest of the City, Bloomsbury's cultural
centres include the British Museum and parts of London University.
The East End of London includes the boroughs of Hackney to the
north and Tower Hamlets to the south, including the Docklands
districts of Wapping, Limehouse, and the Isle of Dogs, once the
centre of London's port facilities. The area presents a sharp
contrast between its traditional small business concerns and low-cost
housing, and the multi-million office landscape and exclusive
residential facilities of the redeveloped Docklands region.
At the southern end of London Bridge lies Southwark, the oldest
borough in London apart from the City, and site of the reconstructed
Globe Theatre. Lambeth, to the west, contains the South Bank cultural
complex and Lambeth Palace, chief residence of the archbishop
of Canterbury since 1200.
Medical services, consulting physicians, surgeons, and private
clinics are mainly sited in and around Harley Street in Marylebone.
Transport and Communications
London Transport is a holding corporation with two wholly-owned
subsidiaries, London Underground Ltd (LUL) and Victoria Coach
Station (VCS). It is responsible for an operating area measuring
1,631 sq km/630 sq mi. A third subsidiary, London Buses Ltd (LBL),
effectively ceased to trade in 1994 when ten component companies
were sold to the private sector. However, buses remain firmly
managed and restricted, so the effect of deregulation has not
been as great as in other British cities. Between 1994 and 1997
the number of kilometres travelled by buses rose, but the number
of passengers fell. In Central London 8% of commuters use buses,
compared with 29% using the `tubeŽ. Since 1986 the volume of daily
commuters has declined, but the system is still overcrowded.
The London Underground (or `tubeŽ) was the world's first underground
railway, and is now the world's longest, with 12 lines and over
391 km/243 mi of routes serving the city and its suburbs. Work
on the largest single addition to the underground in 25 years,
the Jubilee Line Extension, began in December 1993. The extension
involves almost ten miles of new line from Green Park to Stratford
and 11 new stations, providing a direct link from the International
Rail Terminal at Waterloo to Docklands and the Millennium Festival
site in Greenwich (see Millennium Dome). The Docklands Light Railway
(DLR) was opened by London Transport in 1987 and transferred to
the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1992.
Transport proposals include an extension of the Docklands Light
Railway south under the Thames to connect with the surface railway
network at Greenwich, and the Croydon Tramlink, a proposed 29
km/18 mi link between East and West Croydon, Wimbledon, Beckenham,
and New Addington.
London is the hub of the UK rail network; seven main lines converge
on the capital, and their principal termini are within easy reach
of any part of the inner London area. The City Thameslink station
(1991) was the first mainline railway station to be built in London
for nearly a century. Eurostar, a high-speed train service through
the Channel Tunnel, has linked London (Waterloo) to Paris and
Brussels since 1994.
River boats travel from Charing Cross, Tower Bridge, and Westminster
to Greenwich. Barges also transport sewage and garbage along the
river. The Millennium Project includes significant investment
in new river boat services to run in the year 2000 (see Millennium
Dome ). The Thames is navigable by small boats to Lechlade, Gloucestershire;
and the Regent and Grand Union canals connect London to the Midlands.
Inland river and canal traffic is now mainly confined to leisure
craft. Road access across the Thames is provided by 21 bridges
and six tunnels in the Greater London area. London is served by
three international airports: Heathrow to the west, Gatwick to
the south, and Stansted to the north. The London City airport,
built on the former Royal Docks and opened late in 1987, has national
and European connections.
Museums and Galleries
London is one of the world's principal cultural centres, and its long-
established collections cover all branches of knowledge and the
arts. The oldest museums are the British Museum (1759), the largest
in the UK; the Natural History Museum (1856); the Science Museum
(1853); the Victoria and Albert Museum (1852), housing one of
the world's largest collections of the decorative arts; and the
waxworks of Madame Tussaud (1802). London's history is celebrated
at the Museum of London (1976), and the development of film at
the Museum of the Moving Image. Military museums include the Imperial
War Museum (1917), for operations from 1914, and the National
Army Museum (1960), covering the period 1485-1914. The Cutty Sark,
a tea clipper launched in 1869, and the World War II battleship
HMS Belfast are moored in the Thames and are open to the public.
The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich incorporates the Old
Royal Observatory, the point from which Greenwich Mean Time was
originally established. The National Gallery (1824) houses pre-20th-
century art and the most comprehensive collection of Italian Gothic
and Renaissance works outside Italy, and the National Portrait
Gallery (1856) is devoted to distinguished British figures. Art
from the 17th century to the modern era is displayed at the Tate
Gallery (1897), while the Courtauld Institute (1931) is notable
for its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections. The
Wallace Collection (1897) contains one of the world's finest displays
of 18th-century French art. Contemporary works are shown by the
Hayward Gallery on the South Bank, and at the annual summer exhibition
of the Royal Academy of Arts. The Millennium Project includes
the provision of funds for a permanent collection of contemporary
art to be displayed at the proposed Tate Gallery of Modern Art
from the turn of the century.
The reference division of the new British Library (1997), St
Pancras, houses 12 million volumes; another department, the National
Sound Archive (1947), is located in South Kensington.
Music and the Performing Arts
London was the UK's foremost musical centre by the early 16th century,
and has been considered a leading international venue since the
18th century. Major foreign composers such as Handel, Bach, and
Haydn lived and worked in the city, and Italian opera found an
enthusiastic audience. Today the city houses the UK's two leading
colleges of music, the Royal College of Music and Royal Academy
of Music. London has five professional symphony orchestras: the
London Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, the
Royal Philharmonic, and the BBC Symphony. London's main opera
and ballet houses are the Coliseum, home of the English National
Opera company, and the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), home
of the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera. Classical and contemporary
dance is performed at Sadler's Wells. London 's numerous concert
halls include the Royal Festival Hall in the South Bank complex;
the Barbican arts centre; the Wigmore Hall recital rooms; and
the Royal Albert Hall, from 1895 home to the Henry Wood promenade
concerts. Open-air concerts take place in the grounds of Kenwood
House and Holland Park.
As a centre of English drama since the 16th century, London
has many theatres, particularly in and around Piccadilly, Shaftesbury
Avenue, and Leicester Square. Historic West End theatres include
the Haymarket (1821), Criterion (1874), Drury Lane (1663), and
Her Majesty's (1897). Others include the Old Vic (1818), in south
London; the Garrick Theatre (1889), in Charing Cross; and the
west London playhouses of the Lyric (1870), in Hammersmith, and
the Royal Court (1898), in Sloane Square. Modern theatres include
the National Theatre (1963) in the South Bank complex, containing
three separate houses, and the Barbican. In -the-round stages
are found at the New Vic and the 17th-century-style Globe Theatre
(1996). London is also the headquarters of the British Film Institute
(BFI), established in 1931, and the National Film Theatre (1951),
centre of London's annual film festival in November.
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