To be annoyed at people who live in a London Borough but insist they don't (i.e Im in Surrey, Kent etc)

[Rosehip10]

As in people in places such as Richmond, Kingston (insisting they live in Surrey) or places such as Bromley (insisting they are in Kent).

These places may used to have in a different county but have been part of greater London and a London Borough since 1965.

Is is snobbery? They usually drone only about postal towns which also no longer exist.

Lived in SW London from 1980 to 2015. Kingston was my go to shopping centre. One of my dc was born in Kingston. I get it's part of Greater London and on Oyster but it just isn't London.

Surrey County Council is currently based in Kingston. It was actually founded in Newington which is definitely in London.

If you live in any of the London Boroughs you are entitled to say London. (Many of these are also part of another county so both descriptions are technically correct). And, in my opinion, when abroad you can widen out the description of a London to encompass anywhere within the M25 (even if you are not on a tube line and cannot vote in the mayoral elections)



I see Kingston as being on the edge of Greater London/Surrey whereas for me Richmond is definitely London.
However I used to live several stops along on from it on the District Line when I lived in London so that might've skewed my perception.

From the Wikipedia definition of "Home Counties. "The term is sometimes understood to mean those counties which, on their borders closest to London, have been partly subsumed into London."

So I believe people living in Richmond or Bromley can say what they like. London or Surrey / Kent. It doesn't really matter.

Jocasta, yes think it's the tube line that makes Richmond seem more like London than Kingston does to me. Even if both are served by London buses.

Oh my god yes! It’s like people are incapable of using a map. I live in a London Borough but my address still uses the postcode from before it was in London (over 50 years ago!!) It drives me mad when friends in the same area claim we don’t live in London. Yes we bloody well do!! Our local government is London. Our border is within London. An old-school postcode is just an interesting quirk.

Ask an older generation Londoner if where you live is actually London, they’ll soon put you in your place. Because they were born prior to the boundary change - doesn’t make them right! And it’s not all older people, my parents are perfectly capable of using a map.

I used to live in SW16 which is a london postcode so I would happily day I was from London and back it up with the address. I then moved a few streets away and my new postcode was CR7 - technically Surrey but in the same London Borough and I have been told off for saying its London. There's no winning really.

I definitely don't think it's snobbery, just habit. If you've grown up with it being called Surrey, you tend to still think of it that way. But I think there's more snobbery about people who live more centrally in London considering Kingston/Richmond etc as being suburbs rather than properly London.

The other day I was signing up for something online and they wouldn't accept my address until I put in Surrey, so 🤷🏽‍♀️.

I used to live in Bromley - has a Kent postcode, went to school in Kent catchment school and my address was Bromley, Kent BR2 .... NOT SE2 ...

Bromley is Kent

AIBU to wonder why I got involved in a discussion on whether people with a TW9 postcode live in Surrey, London or just Richmond Upon Thames. All those answers are factually correct.

Thank you insomnia!

The Oval Cricket Ground - the home of Surrey County Cricket - is in London. So people saying Kingston, Richmond, Bromley, Sutton etc aren't in London are correct if they are talking about sports but then need to include all the 32 London boroughs as not being London.

School catchments in London and the surrounds are bollox as there is an agreement between the boroughs and adjoining home counties that secondary school placements depend on distance from school not the actual borough you live.

Anyway ignoring historic counties now mainly used for sport, people writing addresses incorrectly, transport, historic postal towns, etc if you can vote for the Mayor of London and the London Assembly you live in London.

So to determine if someone lives in London just ask them if they can vote for the London Mayor.

YBU. Surely living in London is more prestigious than living in Surrey or Essex. I don’t really think what you describe is something people do.

Middlesex might not technically exist but it boasts countless sports teams and leagues and even its own university 🤷‍♀️

I think troilusworks has it with London suburbs. When a I moved to Putney from West Ken in 1981, it was regarded as a London suburb. Tube zoning ended that for zone 2 I think. London has expanded and the burbs have been pushed out further.

I think you need to be annoyed about something else. HTH

I used to live in london,
when i moved out i would meet people who said they lived in london, turns out it wasnt what i would call london, although the op would, ie, Croydon or Bromley. I thought they were wrong to call it london

Like a PP, I grew up in Wimbledon. I had three tube stops covering two lines within a 10 minute walk from my house (one was 5 minutes). I went to high school in the centre of Wimbledon. Lots of my friends lived in Mitcham, which is Surrey and has a CR postcode. Both Wimbledon SW19 and Mitcham CR4 come under the London Borough of Merton.
I used to go shopping in Croydon/Sutton/Kingston, all of which are Surrey.
I never felt like I was leaving London when I went to any of them. Those parts of Surrey just always felt like an extension of London and the name was irrelevant.
That said, I went to college in Carshalton, which is near Sutton, and that feels like Surrey Surrey. I live in Wiltshire now and it's got the same sort of feel as my market town. Lots of suburbia and fields surrounding it.
@MsLumley, I wonder if we went to the same school.

I think it's very old fashioned and apologist. If its a london borough, its london. Its a known fact that london is no longer the square mile 🙄 it hasnt been so in ages. Move on with the times already!
I find it annoying.

Reigate Grammar is independent and fee paying, as are Kingston Grammar School (KGS) and the Royal Grammar School in Guildford (RGS). Tiffin and Sutton are both regular grammar schools, just to confuse things but there aren’t many.

I think the fact that you see this as being such a big deal means that you obviously don’t know either London or the towns on the outskirts of it very well otherwise you’d know that people from both areas are in complete agreement that they are different to London, which pretty much refers to anything with a London postcode.

I grew up in West London, went to school in Hammersmith. Kingston, Bromely and Honslow weren't proper London (and aren't to me). Being able to catch a bus into town might be a differential for me

Disclaimer: I don’t live in one of them!

And I don’t think anyone would have any issues saying “it’s in Greater London” if someone asked where it was.

Dredging up a distant memory. In about 1980 Ken Livingston radically reduced tube fares. He then, I think, raised rates in the London Boroughs. Didn't the people of Brimley challenge it and possibly win because they had no tube and poor London Transport?

I know someone who lives in the borough of Hillingdon. They are on the edge of Greater London and fields are beyond the next row of houses. They, and everyone else there, use Middlesex as their county for their address even though it technically no longer exists.

It is the fault of the postal service and of government for being high handed and telling people they have changed boundaries when people never asked for it to happen. Keeping your traditional county is a version of the public voting for ‘Boaty MacBoatface’, it is a nose thumbing at arrogant, overweening authority. It also indicates a knowledge of and respect for tradition and history as well as a certain understandable snobbery if the name used is classier than the technically correct one.