How London Was Created

How has London been defined and formed over time? You may be familiar with the Greater London area now and its boroughs, but how was London shaped and defined before that? We show you!

[TheRyanLamont]

These videos are always so fascinating!

[eIucidate]

I alluded to these counties in the video "Are you in London?", and it's great to see they've made a video about it. I've never actually seen the border of Greater London drawn on the historical counties until now, very interesting.

[tom]

i live in carshalton (sutton), which is only really 10 miles from central london, so i do consider myself a Londoner as it only takes me 20 minutes to get into central London, although the feeling of being a Londoner is not as present as when you are living in a area closer to the central, but hey it still has its benefits (oyster card) !!!

[juliancromwell]

as always, very interesting. thanks for posting.

[Lewis.George]

In my opinion, there's a feeling about living in a London borough. If you go to Bexleyheath and then to Dartford (ie the head town of Dartford borough) everything feels so different, a difference that isn't so present if you went from Bexleyheath to Woolwich or Eltham. The same as if you go from Bromley or Beckenham to Swanley.

[KristerL]

Great video and very interesting! Fascinating stuff.

[SuperValue]

Just did a research on this only a week ago, great video!

[AndrewTGreen]

I love you guys. I'm never going to see London...but you're stuff is cool as hell. Love the History. Please keep it coming.

[joelong]

great video but you didn't mention the fact that London was not originally the main town of London as the original "capital" was Colchester (Brittan's oldest recorded town) However this would not really effect the video and I'm probably just saying this because I live in Colchester. :)

[dfmn]

Exactly the video I've been looking for for years

[torresalex]

Small question: why do you consider it fortunate that London never adopted a grid system? Not that I'm for it, just wondering. Grid systems have some advantages. Thanks!

[shigrape]

Such a great video!! I love you guys, Londonist and especially cutie Geoff ^^ I wish I could visit London and study in there for a while. I will try my best to go to London and see you, Geoff!!

[bolatbek_bibarys]

Thank you ❤ I just found out about London ❤❤

[IamTheWillrus]

Fantastic video, as always! Why is it exactly that London has such winding, narrow streets? My history teacher told me years ago when we were learning about Paris and Berlin, but I forgot almost everything he said after I took my GCSE's

[tvroom]

The apostrophes in the captions top right bothered me greatly:-) Garggghhhh!

[londonundergroundfan]

I want to make two corrections:- The roman settlement is not drawn to scale. It is as big as the City of London today. The roman Wall is the border of the City today.-Because of the wall, the city didn´t grew. As the City grew rich, some king founded a completely new town, called Westminster, to suck power and wealth away from the City. It expanded and soon surrounded the City totally.-(Somebody wrote this already) Southwark was a settlement almost as long as the roman city, but it didn´t count as "Londinium".All information is from a book called "London Through Time" by Richard Platt and the "The (secret) City of London"-videos made by CGP Grey.

[Ynysmydwr]

N.B. "Lundecwic" in the captions at 0' 25" should be Lundenwic.

[stuartfanning]

Not accurate about Middlesex. Greater London did not wholely swallow up Middlesex, as the town of Staines and Sunbury were transferred to Surrey not Greater London.

[juansdf]

I've always wanted to live in London since I first visited in 2009. Now Londonist is making me CRAVE for a home there!

[danidejaneiro]

I wish that was about ten minutes longer.