Clapham
| Clapham | |
| Surrey | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ2966375422 |
| Location: | 51°27’48"N, 0°8’2"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | London |
| Postcode: | SW4, SW12, SW9, |
| Dialling code: | 020 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Lambeth |
Clapham is a town in Surrey within the metropolitan conurbation. It is largely contiguous with its neighbouring towns. Clapham is best known for its vast green space, Clapham Common, its vibrant high street and the village-like atmosphere of its historic Old Town.
Holy Trinity Clapham, the Georgian Church on Clapham Common, was the church from which from the "Clapham Sect" led by William Wilberforce and a group of wealthy evangelical Christians campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade in the 19th century.
Clapham is in the Brixton hundred.
The name "Clapham" is thought to derive from the Old English words cloppa ham (or hamm), meaning homestead or meadow enclosure near a hill.
History
According to the history of the Clapham family maintained by the College of Heralds, in 965 AD King Edgar of England gave a grant of land at Clapham to Jonas, son of the Duke of Lorraine, and Jonas was thenceforth known as Jonas "de [of] Clapham". The family remained in possession of the land until Jonas's great-great grandson Arthur sided against William the Conqueror during the Norman invasion of 1066 and, losing the land, fled to the north (where the Clapham family remained thereafter, primarily in Yorkshire).
Clapham appears in Domesday Book as Clopeham. It was held by Goisfrid (Geoffrey) de Mandeville and its assets were 3 hides; 6 ploughs, 5 acres of meadow. It rendered £7 10s 0d.[1]
In the late seventeenth century large country houses began to be built there, and throughout the 18th and early nineteenth century it was favoured by the wealthier merchant classes of the City of London, who built many large and gracious houses and villas around Clapham Common and in the Old Town. Samuel Pepys spent the last two years of his life in Clapham, living with his friend, protégé at the Admiralty and former servant William Hewer, until his death in 1703.[2]
Clapham Common was also home to Elizabeth Cook, the widow of Captain James Cook the explorer. She lived in a house on the common for many years following the death of her husband.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Clapham Sect were a group of wealthy evangelical social reformers within the Church of England who lived around the Common. They included William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton and Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian Thomas Macaulay, as well as William Smith, a Member of Parliament and Unitarian dissenter. They were very prominent in campaigns for the abolition of slavery and child labour, and for prison reform. They also promoted missionary activities in the British Empire and founded the Bible Society to translate the Bible into all the languages of the world.
After the coming of the railways, Clapham developed as a suburb for commuters into central London, and by 1900 it had fallen from favour with the upper classes. Many of their grand houses had been demolished by the middle of the twentieth century, though a number remain around the Common and in the Old Town, as do a substantial number of fine late eighteenth and early nineteenth century houses.
20th and 21st centuries
In the early twentieth century, Clapham was seen as an ordinary commuter suburb, often cited as representing ordinary people: hence the so-called "man on the Clapham omnibus" as a picture of an ordinary man.
By the 1980s Clapham had undergone considerable transformation becoming the centre for the gentrification of most of the surrounding area. Clapham's proximity to the traditionally upper-class areas of Sloane Square and Belgravia, which became increasingly unaffordable to all but the very wealthy in the boom years of the 1980s and 1990s, led to a colonisation of the area by the middle classes, but in recent years the demography has widened considerably. Many young university graduates choose to live in the Clapham area, a tradition carried over from the days when some University of London halls of residence were there.
Clapham is home to a large number of restaurants, bars, cafés and leisure facilities. As a result, it is now regarded as a fashionable and desirable place to live for the British middle classes and is within easy commuting distance of the city centre and the main railway termini for transport to airports at Heathrow and Gatwick and the south of England.
Clapham Junction is home to a number of chain stores, whilst Brixton and the famous Brixton Market house a range of ethnic-based shops and European delicatessens.
Transport
The railway stations in the area are:
- Clapham High Street
- Wandsworth Road
- Clapham Junction, actually in neighbouring Battersea
Clapham Junction is a major rail junction and station with 17 platforms.
London Underground's Northern Line has three stations here too:
- Clapham North (opened as Clapham Road in 1900, changed to its current name in 1926).
- Clapham Common
- Clapham South
Shopping
There are a number of shopping areas in and around Clapham, including:
- Clapham High Street
- Clapham Old Town, home to the 30 year old North Street Potters, The Sun, a welcoming Free House and Trinity, a critically acclaimed restaurant
- Abbeville Road (and Clapham South)
- Queenstown Road/Lavender Hill (On the Battersea/Clapham Border)
- Clapham Junction (Battersea)
- Northcote Road (Between Clapham and Wandsworth Commons)
- Balham High Street (near Clapham South)
- Nightingale Lane (near Clapham South)
- Acre Lane (on the Brixton/Clapham Border)
- Brixton Market/Brixton High Road (Brixton)
- Kings Road/Sloane Street(Chelsea)
References and notes
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Clapham) |