What do you think of as “London”?

[CruCru]

On another thread I got into a discussion on which places are London and which are actually somewhere else. I think that only places with a London postcode are in London, otherwise they are in the Home Counties. However, quite a few people disagreed with me as they said that they lived in an outer London borough. I didn’t want to derail that thread (which was about something else) so thought I’d start my own.

To my way of thinking, if I sent a letter addressed to someone at 123 Their Street, London, Their postcode, it would only be sensible to do so if they actually live in London. If I did that for someone who lives in Harrow, Croydon or Kingston, doing so would cause confusion (but it might still arrive if the postcode was correct).

What do you think?

Alternatively are your local buses red? If yes, then London

This is the best definition I have read on this whole thread.

@IamSallyBowles ok, yes your theory doesn't work.

Yes it had far more kudos when you lived in zone 4 but still had an 01 dialling code 🤣

I grew up in Zone 5 and always had an N or NW postcode. It's hilly so there are great views of central London and the tube links are great so I spent most of my social and working life travelling inwards. I've always been quite certain that I grew up in London!

Ooo it’s tricky. I live in an outer borough. In zone 4. It’s a 10 min bus journey to the end of the end of the closest tube line.

I tend to say Greater London. My mum is a real country person from a village and when she comes to visit she calls friends and says “I can’t talk right now I’m in London!! But we are not central London so it does make me laugh. We have a Home Counties postcode and not far from M25.

also she says she can’t drive around us as it’s in London! Again we are not in Trafalgar Square haha

If it is south of Birmingham, and not Cornwall, Devon or Wales, it's "London" 😁

If you can vote for the Mayor of London you live in London.

Mitcham has a CR postcode and technically a Surrey address. It's zone 3 and at the north end a 10 min walk from Tooting Broadway though.
It wouldn't cross my mind that I don't (in Mitcham) live in London. I vote for the mayor, pay my council tax to a London borough, live in zone 3, commute on the tube...
The only difference the postcode makes it that it made my flat about £10k cheaper, between postcode snobbery and not being in Wandsworth with its dreamy council tax rates!

Technical answer: Metropolitan services assist you (police, nhs etc), vote for London mayor, in one of the 32 boroughs. But anyone who has been to Sutton or Romford knows it isn’t really London 🤣

Real London is a postcode that begins: N, S, E, and W.

Not places like: Romford, Richmond, Kingston, Bexley, Erith, Bromley, Croydon, Sutton… All the newer bits that are now Greater London boroughs but absolutely don’t feel like London at all. They don’t have a London ethos and are right wing/lacking diversity.

2 insane instances when this was an issue:

A client wanted some stuff sent to their home address. Staff sent to the address provided. Item returned by Royal Mail due to incorrect address. Address provided: “Uxbridge Road, London, WD3”. WD3 is Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. There is an Uxbridge Road in London postcode W3. Royal Mail had crossed out the “D” and tried to deliver it in Acton (W3), London. Ultimately returned.

Customer furious. Kept on insisting she lived in London because Rickmansworth was on the Metropolitan line 😆

My grandmother had a dementia test. One of the questions she got “wrong” was the doctor asking what part of London she lived in and her insisting she lived in Surrey - she lived in Kew. Post address: Kew, Richmond, Surrey. TW postcode. But the doctor refused to accept her answer and was incredibly condescending about it until I intervened.

Everything inside the M25, definitely. But I subscribe to Luton and south, Reading and east. It’s a long way to London from here!

Where?
Putney is a bit suburban Wandsworth, it even is considered a different zone by Wandsworth council. Lambeth?
I still think 1-3 is london. Rest are hanging on.
I love I live in london and don't like or believe in the expansion

Yes, I know. However it is for the people who actually live there to make that call.

She was born before 1960. I don’t think she ever paid council tax while living in Harrow (she now lives in Buckinghamshire).

@Iloveyoubut but I can travel to central london in 30 minutes from Leighton Buzzard - does that count?!

I think 1-3 is London, zones 4-6 London 'burbs, beyond there is outskirts.

Yeah, Luton definitely isn’t London. Neither is Gatwick.

Actually the only airport in London is London City.

If it's in the old LCC area it's London.

As a result, Croydon is in Surrey and Bromley is in Kent.

My DF was born in 1924 in Bromley over a shop 10 yards inside the borough boundary. Till the day he died, he was Kentish man and no way was he a Londoner.

I’m wrong, there’s also the London Heliport in Battersea (SW11). I don’t think many ordinary people use it though.

My grandmother had a dementia test. One of the questions she got “wrong” was the doctor asking what part of London she lived in and her insisting she lived in Surrey - she lived in Kew. Post address: Kew, Richmond, Surrey. TW postcode. But the doctor refused to accept her answer and was incredibly condescending about it until I intervened.

There is definitely an age/generational element to this. My grandparents lived in Ilford, which was unequivocally in Essex until the boundaries changed in the 1960s. When they lived there it could easily be seen as a separate town nearby or possibly on the outskirts of London. But London sprawl, and the changing demographics of the area, mean it’s now much more London-y than it was.

So while older generations may still think of Ilford as being in Essex, I think for anyone under 50 or so it’s most definitely part of London.

It absolutely blows my mind that unknowing people fly into Gatwick airport thinking it's anywhere near London.

I feel a bit sheepish saying London as I can walk over the boundary to Kent. It feels more suburban where we are. Having said that, we have a London postcode and live in a London borough, and it was a London phone number when we had a land line years ago.

I think of anywhere inside the North/South circular as London personally. We do (just) fall outside of that though!

If you have a London phone number, it's London.

I'd narrow that at the top. Barnet isn't London.

I grew up in SW1 and SW11.

To me, London is the "compass direction" postcodes, SW4, N5, SE22 etc, but not the postcodes that are the abbreviations of the outer towns, like the CR Croydon postcode.

Yes, it was a quick draw with a finger on my phone, I’d also cut more of the south out. I think East Finchley can be classed as London though and think that’s in Barnet?