Is one really better than the other? And why do we care so much?
‘Fuck North London (seriously, what is it with North Londoners?)’ proclaims this post on Instagram that stopped us mid-scroll – with over 450 comments at the time of writing, it seemingly caught a lot of other people’s attention too. It’s promoting an event hosted by writer, founder and cultural leader Phin Harper, where speakers will argue the case for both sides of the river being the best, and it got us thinking, why do people get so het up about the North vs South London debate?
London is a tribal city. Where you’re from or where you live is one of the key markers of your Londoner identity. Though well-connected, London is a big old place and the time it can take to traverse it means that people tend to cluster around the neighbourhoods they live in. Who among us has not sacked off plans after opening Citymapper to check the route?
A 2019 YouGov poll found that people living in South London are twice as likely to cross the river regularly than North Londoners are to head south. Commuting does have a big impact on these results as office neighbourhoods tend to be clustered around Central London – but maybe this explains the accusatory nature of that IG post? After all the caption does say, “While southern Londoners obligingly drag themselves North at the behest of friends in Clapton or Chalk Farm without complaint, persuading a Northerner to cross the river in the other direction is like drawing blood from a stone.”
When it comes to transport, North London does have South beat, and comfortably so. Less than 9% of the city’s 272 Tube stations are south of the river and the long-awaited Bakerloo Line extension has still yet to materialise, though the DLR line into Thamesmead has been approved. Of course you can cross the river in a myriad of other ways, including by foot, car, bus, bike, train (South London has a lot of these stations actually), boat and even cable car. Thanks to the invention of ride-hailing services, you rarely hear a cabbie say they don’t go saaarf of the river anymore.
North may be better connected but South arguably has more space and you can get more property for your money there too (the hellscape that is the London property market is a topic for another time). There is a historical reason for this.
Early settlements, like Roman Londinium (now the City of London) and the Anglo-Saxon Lundenwic (now Aldwych) and Westminster, were all congregated north of the river, whereas Southwark was the only main settlement south of the Thames. Outside the control of the City, it became a red-light district and a haven for morally and legally questionable activities.
The actual geography of the two sides of the river has also had a huge part to play in their respective development, and explains the lack of Tube stations in South London. London is built on clay, which is an excellent material for tunnelling. However the depths at which the clay exists on the north and south sides of the Thames differs and at Tube line excavation level, the land is much marshier on the latter.
Ultimately modern London is massively developed on both sides of the river and gentrification is affecting neighbourhoods across the city. So aside from the Tube stations, or lack thereof, are North and South London really so different? Posting in an r/london Reddit thread on this very topic, user echocharlieone dropped this little nugget:
“London north/south encapsulates the narcissicism of small differences.
“the idea that the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to minor differences perceived in each other”
While there are more pronounced differences across neighbourhoods, when divided in two, the halves of the city are actually way more similar. There’s Brick Lane and Rye Lane. Hampstead Heath and Blackheath. The spine outside the osteopath on Old Street and the cat on top of the Catford Centre. There are branches of Morley’s north of the river now too. Football aside (yes, there is one London club that’s better than all the others), North and South really are two sides of the same coin. Just don’t get us started on East vs West…..
