From being a city hemmed within a wall, London expanded in all directions, and thus gradually formed a connection with various clusters of dwellings in the neighbourhood. It has, in fact, absorbed towns and villages to a considerable distance around: the chief of these once detached seats of population being the city of Westminster. By means of bridges, it has also absorbed Southwark and Bermondsey, Lambeth and Vauxhall, on the south side of the Thames, besides many hamlets and villages beyond the river.
By these extensions London proper, by which we mean the City, has gradually assumed, if we may so speak, the conditions of an existence like that of a kernel in a thickly surrounding and ever-growing mass. By the census of 1861, the population of the City was only 112,247; while including that with the entire metropolis, the number was 2,803,034—or twenty-five times as great as the former! It may here be remarked, that the population of the City is becoming smaller every year, on account of the substitution of public buildings, railway stations and viaducts, and large warehouses, in place of ordinary dwelling-houses. Fewer and fewer people live in the City. In 1851, the number was 127,869; it lessened by more than 15,000 between that year and 1861; while the population of the whole metropolis increased by as many as 440,000 in the same space of time.
If we follow the Registrar-General, London, as defined by him, extends north and south between Norwood and Hampstead, and east and west between Hammersmith and Woolwich. Its area is stated as 122 square miles. From the census returns of 1861, we find that its population then was 2,803,921 souls. It was, in 1871, 3,251,804. The real city population was 74,732.
The growth of London to its present enormous size may readily be accounted for, when we reflect that for ages it has been the capital of England, and the seat of her court and legislature; that since the union with Scotland and Ireland, it has become a centre for those two countries; and that, being the resort of the nobility, landed gentry, and other families of opulence, it has drawn a vast increase of population to minister to the tastes and wants of those classes; while its fine natural position, lying as it does on the banks of a great navigable river, some sixty miles from the sea, and its generally salubrious site and soil—the greater part of London is built on gravel, or on a species of clay resting on sand—alike plead in its favour.
At one time London, like ancient Babylon, might fairly have been called a brick-built city. It is so, of course, still, in some sense. But we are greatly improving: within the last few years a large number of stucco-fronted houses, of ornamental character, have been erected; and quite recently, many wholly of stone, apart altogether from the more important public buildings, which of course are of stone. Of distinct houses, there are now the prodigious number of 500,000, having, on an average, about 7.8 dwellers to a house. For our own part we are somewhat sceptical as to this average. But we quote it as given by a professedly good authority.
The Post-Office officials ascertained that there was built in one year alone, as long ago as 1864, no fewer than 9,000 new houses. Though, by comparison with the houses of Edinburgh and some other parts of the kingdom, many of these are small structures, with but two rooms, often communicating, on a floor, a visitor to London will find no difficulty in seeing acres of substantial residences around him as he strolls along through the wide, quiet squares of Bloomsbury, the stuccoed and more aristocratic quarters of Belgravia and South Kensington, or by the old family mansions of the nobility and gentry in, say, Cavendish, Grosvenor, or Portman Squares, and the large and more modern houses of many of our wealthy citizens in Tyburnia and Westburnia, farther westward of the Marble Arch. But of this more anon.
We have often heard foreigners laughingly remark of sundry London houses—apropos of the deep, open, sunk areas, bordered by iron railings, of many of them—that they illustrate, in some sense, our English reserve, and love of carrying out our island proverb—viz., that “every Englishman’s house is his castle,”—in its entirety, by each man barricading himself off from his neighbours advances by a fortified fosse!
Without particular reference to municipal distinctions, London may (to convey a general idea to strangers) be divided into four principal portions—the City, which is the centre of corporate influence, and where the greatest part of the business is conducted; the East End, in which are the docks, and various commercial arrangements for shipping; the West End, in which are the palaces of the Queen and Royal family, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and the residences of most of the nobility and gentry; and the Southwark and Lambeth division, lying on the south side of the Thames, containing many manufacturing establishments, but few public buildings of interest. Besides these, the northern suburbs, which include the once detached villages of Hampstead, Highgate, Stoke Newington, Islington, Kingsland, Hackney, Hornsey, Holloway, &c., and consist chiefly of private dwellings for the mercantile and middle classes, may be considered a peculiar and distinct division. It is, however, nowhere possible to say (except when separated by the river) exactly where any one division begins or ends; throughout the vast compass of the city and suburbs, there is a blending of one division with that contiguous to it. The outskirts, on all sides, comprise long rows or groups of villas, some detached or semi-detached, with small lawns or gardens.
The poet Cowper, in his Task, more than a hundred years ago, appreciatively spoke of
“The villas with which London stands begirt,
Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads.”