London  Contents

London Parishes & Boroughs

• The City of London: Parishes
• The County of London: Metropolitan Boroughs 1888-1965
• Greater London: London Boroughs 1965 to the present

For further information about the the historical development of the administrative units of London, see Local Government Changes in the United Kingdom.

City of London Parishes

Since each parish within the City of London comprises at most a few streets, the parishes are known primarily by the name of the church, and not by the location. However, many of the dedications occur frequently in the City, in which case the full name of the parish contains some other identifying information, such as street name or location relative to some landmark.

If you are looking for a London parish known primarily by a place name, you can be sure it is not in the City of London, but in some other part of the metropolitan area. If it's north of the Thames, look in Middlesex. If it's south of the river, it is probably in Surrey, or else in Kent.

Details of each church, including location, date of building, and surviving registers, are on Gendocs' website.

A map of location of City of London churches is provided on Steve James' site Steeljam (now only available via the Internet Archive).

* these parishes were partly in Middlesex and partly in London.

The County of London

In 1889, the London County Council was created, consisting of the City of London and 28 Metropolitan Boroughs taking areas from Middlesex, Surrey and Kent.

Greater London

In 1965, the administrative unit of Greater London was created, though the name itself had previously been used in an informal sense. This comprised the old County of London, with the Metropolitan Boroughs merged into a smaller number of Boroughs, the remaining parts of Middlesex, and parts of Essex, Herts, Surrey and Kent. Middlesex ceased to exist as an administrative county, though the name is still used in postal addresses.

The table lists the present-day boroughs of Greater London together with the counties which originally contained their current area, and the Metropolitan Broroughs they replaced. Note that many places in Greater London are still frequently referred to as being in counties, because the counties are still used in postal addresses.

A clickable map of the boroughs is provided by the Corporation of the City of London, and Oultwood Services also have a clickable map and list of London Borough Web sites. National Statistics Geography webpages have a map of London (pdf format).
Our page London Boroughs - Archives and Local Studies Libraries has links to web sites of each London borough, and to their archives or local studies libraries. There are also links to borough web sites on the UK Government's Directgov Local Councils Web site .

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[Created by David Hawgood. Last updated 04 Dec 2011 by Andrew Millard.]

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