Clapham
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Clapham is an area of South London, England, in the London Borough of Lambeth.
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[edit] History
Clapham dates back to Anglo-Saxon times: the name is thought to derive from the Old English clopp(a) + hām or hamm, meaning Homestead/enclosure near a hill.
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' 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. Its domesday assets were 3 hides; 6 ploughs, 5 acres of meadow. It rendered £7 10s 0d, and was located in Brixton hundred.[1]
In the late seventeenth century large country houses began to be built there, and throughout the eighteenth 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 there in 1703.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Clapham Sect were a group of upper class (mostly evangelical Anglican) social reformers 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, M.P., the dissenter and Unitarian. They were very prominent in campaigns for the abolition of slavery and child labour, and for prison reform. They also promoted missionary activities in Britain's colonies.
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. Most of their grand houses had been demolished by the middle of the twentieth century, though a few remain around the Common and in the Old Town, as do a substantial number of fine late eighteenth and early nineteenth century houses. In the twentieth century, Clapham was seen as an unremarkable suburb, often cited as representing the ordinary people: hence the so-called "man on the Clapham omnibus".
However, in recent years it has undergone considerable regeneration, and is now regarded as a fashionable place to live for the middle classes, 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 was located in the county of Surrey until the creation of the County of London in 1889. It became part of the new Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth in 1900. In 1965, Clapham was transferred to the London Borough of Lambeth.
[edit] Famous former and current residents
- John Amaechi
- Kingsley Amis
- Natasha Bedingfield
- John Francis Bentley
- Sarah Ferguson, HRH Duchess of York
- Graham Greene
- Ainsley Harriott
- Gerry Healy
- Lena Headey[dubious ]
- Damon Hill
- Paul Kaye
- Doon Mackichan
- Alfred Marshall
- Piers Morgan
- John O'Farrell
- Neil Pearson
- Samuel Pepys
- Corin Redgrave
- Vanessa Redgrave
- Kelly Reilly
- JK Rowling
- Natsume Soseki
- Henry Thornton
- John Thornton
- Polly Toynbee
- Dennis Waterman
- Vivienne Westwood
- Jacquetta Wheeler
- William Wilberforce[2]
[edit] Transport
- Clapham High Street (renamed from "Clapham" in the 1980s[citation needed] because passengers sometimes confused it with Clapham Junction, causing them to board the wrong train)
- Wandsworth Road
Clapham has three tube stations, all on the Northern Line:
- Clapham North (boundary with Stockwell)
- Clapham Common
- Clapham South (boundary with Balham)
It should be noted that the important station called Clapham Junction is not located in Clapham but is in fact in Battersea. The station was opened in 1863 and it was decided at the time to name it after the nearby district of Clapham, which was felt to be a better association than with the then somewhat downmarket, impoverished district of Battersea.
[edit] Nearest places
[edit] Sport
Association football (soccer) club Clapham Rovers F.C., winners of the FA Cup in 1880, were based in Clapham.
[edit] References and Notes
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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