North London v South London - The debate
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By Time Out editors. Illustration Ed Marshall
Posted: Fri May 1 2009
North London sucks | South London sucks
'South London sucks,' argues Alan Rutter…
There are many things to admire about the region south of the River Thames. I have visited and enjoyed it. But I considered these trips an out-of-town holiday, a journey to somewhere that is, fundamentally, not London. South ‘London’ is a place that’s not too London – a waiting room for people who aren’t quite ready for the real thing yet. London lite, if you will.
They say it’s greener down there, and ‘nicer’. It has expansive parks – epitomised by the deer-infested Richmond – and this is a reason to move there. Immigants from elsewhere in the UK frequently do move there, enticed in like a lost country mouse in a Disney cartoon with the promise of a bucolic paradise. London isn’t the countryside – that’s the point. It’s a hectic, heaving mass of people from all corners of the globe bashing against each other like energised atoms to create constant, noisy cultural explosions. If you want greenery and deer, you’re in the wrong place. Feature continuesAdvertisementLet’s start at the edge. The South Bank is a lie. It promises so much for south London – a glittering vista of cultural endeavour, architectural imagination and bustling sociability. But step beyond it and the reality is very different – the South Bank is like a Hollywood set facade, behind which you’ll find a soulless, empty back-lot. Incidentally, if you must admire the South Bank, the best place to see it properly is, unsurprisingly, from the other side of the river – so we win that one as well.
To get our first clue that south London may not live up to the promise of the South Bank, let’s pause briefly to admire the MI6 building. A minor point, but if you’re serious about being a world-respected spy network, don’t build your spectacularly ugly headquarters out of Lego. MI5 were sensible enough to hide among the anonymous architecture of Millbank.Now, if you want to see the real south London, you try to go there. And you really have to try. Yes, you can get to just the other side of the river quite easily, but anything beyond that can be a mission of ‘Bravo Two Zero’ proportions. South Londoners will gleefully quote just how few minutes it takes them to get into town from where they live. Weirdly, this is never the experience when you go to visit them. Or, indeed, if you try to do anything more complicated than go to a single mainline destination. Note to Transport for London: 55 minutes with three changes isn’t a journey time – it’s an itinerary.
South London has all of the city’s trams. The tram was invented at the start of the nineteenth century – well done, you. In fact, the transport inequality between north and south is a simple expression of supply and demand – if enough people wanted to go to West Norwood, it would be on the tube. The fact is, most people don’t – or if they do, they’re sufficiently unenthusiastic about the journey to make it at a pace not endured by north Londoners since the industrial revolution.
And I’m not at this point going to attack the south for being grubby and unpolished. The unpretentiously scruffy areas are the most endearing. I like Elephant and Castle: there’s a ruddy great pink elephant and they’ve built a maze in the middle of the roundabout for people to play in (it’s much more fiendishly designed than the one at Hampton Court). No, the really grating aspect of the south is its pretension.
Take Clapham. You can take shots at Primrose Hill all you like – us north Londoners use it as a kind of picturesque holding pen for celebrities so they can’t bother the rest of us (it’s no coincidence that it’s next to the zoo). But there really is no excuse for Clapham – an amorphous cloud of Chloes and Nathans that is to cities what a Foxtons Smart car is to automobiles. Whatever south London can claim in terms of genuine pubs with beer gardens (and it can, although again, so can the countryside) is negated in its entirety by the faceless gastropub-lounge-bars that Clapham and environs have in such abundance.There’s nothing generally wrong with south Londoners – they’re merely geographically misguided. But, along with smug Claphamites, there are specific groups that stand out as dislikeable. The sporting venues for instance – Stamford Bridge, Twickenham – do seem to attract a particularly virulent strain of fuckwit. This is epitomised by Henman Hill – that patch of grass outside the All England Lawn Tennis Club where every year during Wimbledon fortnight, crowds created what it might have looked like had Leni Riefenstahl directed a ‘Carry On’ film. If the vacuous delusion of south London at its worst can be summed up in a single phrase it’s ‘Come on, Tim!’ desperately screamed at an oversized, outdoor telly on a damp Wednesday in SW19.
If you can force yourself through the strawberry-and-cream-toting hordes to travel further into south London – immune system battling against the strange environment – you’ll encounter another bewildering fact: it just sort of tails off. North London is packed in right up to the borders, like any great world city should be – pushing up against the M25 are proper places like Cockfosters, Edgware and Barnet. By contrast, south London merely rambles on in a vague and pointless way before tailing off into deserted reservoirs, silent golf courses and a smattering of places with names that should be jokes: Hextable, Pratt’s Bottom, Titsey. There isn’t a tube station in Titsey. In fact, I reckon they still point at aeroplanes in Titsey.
So there you have it. Emptiness, soullessness and pretention – not real London. If you want to live in the countryside, move there. If you want to fix south London, there’s still time. If you can replace the trams, attract a better class of sporting spectator, eliminate Clapham, stop pretending it’s the countryside, get some definite borders and fill in the vacant gaps that betray its nature as a non-city, we’ll reconsider the region’s inclusion as a proper part of the capital. I’m sure it’ll be lovely when it’s finished.
Agree? Disagree? Tell us below.
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73 comments
Haha sounds like the writers jelouse of South, he's pissed cos North London in reality is the souless, boring, non interesting part of London. South has diversity, in culture & in the fact the areas have their own 'feel' to them, South has character, North is just...North, its all the same, name a part of North that stands out above the rest of north? I was in North London the other day and it just all looks the same, depressing, boring, and echoed. Also, please dont count central, West, North West, & East as part of 'North' simply because its north of the river, as that is just stupid, lol. Out of all of London, I personally find North the most unappealing, and the people, the most stuck up, posh, & fake of all Londoners. They just wish they could boast the character and endearment of true Londoners, the ones from SOUTH!...haha.
Thanks Josh for telling it like it is. As an Eastender I am fed up of being roped in with North London just because East London is above the river. The East End unlike North London is cutting edge like you said and interesting. I would not move anywhere to a postcode beginning with N, simply because it really is dull.
As a South Londoner, I have to say this was a very well-written, funny and perceptive article! I especially agree about how North London is compact and densely populated right up to the edge of the city (although there are exceptions, like Totteridge, which actually feels like a bit of Bromley that somehow got dislocated).
But South London's appeal comes from the fact that it is more like separate towns rather than a continous sprawl. A trip from Wimbledon to Bexley feels like a cross-country adventure, and that's the appeal.
I think the main difference is that North London is en route to the rest of the country, whereas South London is merely en route to Brighton and the English Channel. You really notice it on a trip back to London from the North. It takes you almost as long to navigate a few miles across the river as it does to zoom down the M1 from Birmingham into Hendon.
Why is it when ever this debate comes up, people always seem to neglect places like Blackheath and Greenwich? We are certainly South London, and most probably even more distanced from the likes of Richmond and Wimbledon than most "north" Londoners. Both by public, and private transport
south london is full of posh twats. merton, wandsworth, fulham, merton and westminster. north london is real london. hackney, harringey, islington and camden.
another southern snob
hampstead is north west you idiot. north london is islington, harringey and enfield .
North Londoners shouldn't really appropriate central london. it's not north london. Furthermore to talk of north London is a bit of a misnomer. West Londoners and east Londoners, probably the more interesting areas north of the river, wouldn't consider themselves north londoners. North London is that dull place north of central London and squeezed between the rich west and the cutting edge east.
Carlos please do not be tired of life!
We begin as London began - with the Thames, on the Thames. Silvery lifeline, main highway, chief processional route, the Thames is, quite simply, London's Grand Canal. Tower Bridge, where we embark, and Westminster Bridge, where we go ashore, bracket London and to take ship on this stretch of water is to glissade down the centuries. Here kings and queens were borne in painted and gilt state barges; on the one shore, Wren's St.Paul's Cathedral engraved the sublime against the London sky; on the other, Shakespeare wrought his magic, "not of an age, but for all time!" The Thames knew great men and women in death, too: these waters bore Elizabeth I's funeral and Nelson's and Churchill's. And hand in glove with the history...the most famous of all London views, as throat-catching today as it was to Wordsworth 200 years ago: Earth has not anything to show more fair. Ashore, we take in the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St. James's Park, Whitehall, Buckingham and St. James's Palaces, the Mall and Trafalgar Square. As ever, the sights behind the sights is our watchword. In short, this is the walk that most memorably captures London's inimitable mixture of idiosyncratic detail and grand, powerful statement.
O.Wilde
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Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth, like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Wordsworth
I'm surprised the writer (celebrities aside) was positive about Lemonia. We went there once and will never go back - awful! Holy Bush in hampstead is a must.
Emptiness, soullessness, and pretention - real London!
I just want to clear up a big misconception regarding South London and the tube. Certain areas of London do not have a tube line not because nobody wants to go there, but rather nobody wants to go to these areas because there isn’t a tube. The cart is being put firmly before the horse. South London is built on softer, more waterlogged land than the north and when the bulk of the underground train system was being constructed it was deemed simply too difficult and costly to try and tunnel through many of these areas. This together with the fact that historically places like Peckham (believe it or not) where actually very affluent, and the local snobs campaigned against the intrusion of any public transport into their posh little enclave. Peckham for instance was one of the only places in London to be spared from having its iron railings melted down to produces arms during the first world war. So there.
Last time l woke up and smelt the coffee, Stamford Bridge was in fact NORTH of the river? I am a converted south Londoner, just by the simple fact that people smile and talk to each other in south london. North London is plainly fairly dull
I agree with both...it is a question of what u can afford - as usual...but if u have to pick a side - at least improve it...
Is Cockfosters not a "name that should be a joke"???
I actually remember it appearing in a Two Ronnies sketch.
For QOTL I suggest he takes Omega 3 fish oil to calm down at first. His anger may hurt him. Then following:
1) Put your preconceptions aside.
2) Put your own perspective aside.
3) Don't respond as if the perceived criticism or accusations are diected at you..
4) Try always to remain neutral.
5) Avoid the urge to step in and "correct" the other person's views.
Remember, every person views things in his or her own unique way. Their perspective may be different from yours.
Treat the other person as a teacher. He or she is teaching you about his or her feelings and perceptions. Through such sharing of feelings and inner thoughts, people deepen their level of intimacy and trust in one another.
6) Ask questions until you are sure the other person has said everything there is to be said about the conflict, from his or her point of view. When the other person seems to have had his or her say, ask: "Is there any thing more you want to add?"