Now at the first glance at the map London does give an impression of ex-centricity, of lying upon one side: and that towards the east and the south.
But when we begin to consider certain qualifying conditions, we shall find that London is fairly central, even geometrically, to the area in question, and that, when we are considering the economic “weight” of the various parts of this area, London may by a metaphor be said to be near the “centre of gravity” of such an area.
Cut off, in the first place, the Dumnonian Peninsula—that is, Devon and Cornwall,—the Welsh Highlands, and the Pennines. Consider (that is) South England, East Anglia, and the Midlands. You have an area roughly square, and about two hundred miles every way.
In drawing such a square, take for your extreme points Chester on the north-west, a point midway between Portland and Exmouth on the south-west; upon the north-east a point a little north of Cromer, and upon the south-east a point in the Straits of Dover, a trifle west of the line between Dungeness and Boulogne. Such a square includes a good deal that is outside our area, much of the estuary of the Severn, a strip of the Channel, a wedge of the North Sea and of the Wash, and a wedge of Pennine land to the north; but it also excludes a certain amount properly within our area as some of the richest parts of Kent and of Norfolk and Suffolk. We may therefore take this square for a fair average, and we shall see that even upon the test of distance London is not so ex-centric as might be imagined. Draw the two diagonals of this square, and you will find that London lies upon one of them at a distance of less than forty miles from the centre.
KINGSTON BRIDGE
When we consider something more than distance and think of London as the “centre of gravity” of the Midlands, the east and the south, we find it still more central for the centuries immediately preceding our own. Their staple export was wool. The pasturage of the chalk ranges runs right round London in the Chilterns and their extension into East Anglia, in the north and south Downs and the Uplands of Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorset. London is the obvious centre of all that triangle of chalk. It is again nearly equi-distant from the principal markets of Norfolk, of the Upper Trent valley, of Dorset, and of the Cotswolds. If we treat as exceptions the Lancashire and Yorkshire Plains (each with their local ports), the Vale Royal and the Lower Severn (each with its local port at Chester and at Bristol), London is very near the commercial centre of gravity of what remains. We must not forget that the Marlborough Downs and Salisbury Plain are but a few miles more distant from London Bridge than is the extremity of Kent. From the town of Pewsey to London Bridge as the crow flies is almost exactly eighty-eight miles. From the South Foreland the distance is not ten miles less. It needs but a slightly longer radius to include all the Warwickshire Midlands and very nearly all the county of Norfolk: all, of course, of Suffolk, of Essex, of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire.
London is geographically and commercially central at any rate to the older England—which was all that was needed for its establishment.