please empty your brain below
Barnet appears twice in your list at 5 boroughs and 3 boroughs. Enfield should replace Barnet in touching 3 boroughs.

dg writes: Fixed, thanks.

Sara | 09.08.16 - 7:32 a.m. | #

Geograph has a photograph of Lambeth’s boundary with Bromley.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/692098

Sprout Eater | 09.08.16 - 7:38 a.m. | #

Fact of the day! I can rest easy for the remainder of today.

Frank F | 09.08.16 - 7:43 a.m. | #

If you want a place where London boroughs meet, you can't do better than Crystal Palace. Bromley, Croydon, Lambeth and Southwark meeting at once, with Lewisham less than half a mile away...

EonLeader | 09.08.16 - 8:06 a.m. | #

Doesn't the Thames Clippers service http://www.thamesclippers.com/assets/doc/Online_Timetable_August_2016-abf6f8426f.pdf linking London Eye Pier (Lambeth) with Blackfriars Pier (City of London) count?

Stephen | 09.08.16 - 8:27 a.m. | #

Or maybe not, if the link has to be direct and non-stop, so not via Embankment / Westminster), therefore potentially every borough is neighbours with every other borough!, but how about the Waterloo & City Line from Waterloo (Lambeth) direct to Bank (City of London)?

I suspect the terms need to be more closely defined - i.e. the link needs to be within the geographical boundary - does the W&C Line pass under that 100m stretch anyone?

Stephen | 09.08.16 - 8:34 a.m. | #

As you say, there are no direct boats between Blackfriars and the London Eye.

Meanwhile the Waterloo and City line does indeed link Lambeth and the City, but passes under Southwark along the way, close to Blackfriars Bridge.

It does all come down to definitions.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 09.08.16 - 8:39 a.m. | #

I have been on a direct boat from Blackfriars to the Eye, on a special service during a Tube strike. Dpes that count?

I did wonder about the Garden Bridge, but its north bank footing would* be in Westminster

(* Note "would", not "will"!)

And yes, I did guess Wandsworth!

| 09.08.16 - 9:12 a.m. | #

I did the "Where Four London Boroughs Meet" (and almost a fifth) at Crystal Palace on video, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARFFspiwLXs

Geofftech | 09.08.16 - 9:54 a.m. | #

I can only count 5 on the fat pink one bottom right where it says 6?

dg writes: See Geoff's video...

Antipodean | 09.08.16 - 10:02 a.m. | #

Two posts this week where the magic number is seven. Is there a hidden theme? Or am I reading too much into dg's postings! I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

ap | 09.08.16 - 11:30 a.m. | #

@Antipodean: it is hard to tell from the map, given the scale and the thickness of the lines, but as I understand it, Lambeth touches Bromley, and that shared boundary separates Southwark from Croydon.

Triple points must be very common, but are there any points where four or five boroughs meet? Or is this near-miss the best it gets?

Andrew | 09.08.16 - 11:45 a.m. | #

@Antipodean

"I can only count 5 on the fat pink one "
Contrary to the appearance of the map, Bromley (the fat pink bottom one) has a very short boundary with Lambeth (the long skinny pink one) whilst Croydon (the boot shaped one) and Southwark (the skinny orange one) do not meet. Were it otherwise, Southwark and Croydon would have one more neighbour each, and Bromley and Lambeth one fewer.

timbo | 09.08.16 - 11:50 a.m. | #

Here's a map clarifying the Lambeth/Croydon/Bromley/Southwark relationship: http://imgur.com/IR4HnfG

Adrian | Homepage | 09.08.16 - 12:08 p.m. | #

Used to live just the other side of the library in the photo. Quite an achievement for the morning commute to the tube at Kilburn Park station (down the road behind the photographer) meaning I had stepped into, or out of, three different boroughs!

Jon B | 09.08.16 - 12:29 p.m. | #

timbo: which is also spelled out in Geofftec's video, as DG indicated. But I (and perhaps others) much prefer to read things at my own pace, rather than have them explained to me by a reporter in a video, even such an entertaining and death-defying one as we have here.

Malcolm | 09.08.16 - 1:15 p.m. | #

Topological note to self: Readers are more interested in nodes than arcs or regions.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 09.08.16 - 1:26 p.m. | #

Greetings from frontierland! I sit within ¼ mile of the Brent/Barnet/Harrow point at [Google Streetview] (now sadly without either the Post Office or bank shown in 2008.
There's a point where 4 postcodes meet a mile away (NW9/HA3/HA7/HA8)

Helen D Vecht | 09.08.16 - 1:36 p.m. | #

The City of London isn't a borough, is it?

dg writes: Technically no, but this blog always pretends it is, for reasons of simplicity and under-pedantry.

Madison | 09.08.16 - 2:08 p.m. | #

I'm interested in arcs and regions DG ... if you want to get into the middle of things maybe you should attempt to define the geographical central point in each borough (or is the centre still a node?)

Caz | 09.08.16 - 2:32 p.m. | #

Thank you, Andrew and Timbo. I get it now. The video was also entertaining, but a bit confusing if you think of Bromley as 'the fat pink one' and have no ideas who its neighbours are. I looked at the map and all the pink bits and had memories of those geopolitical school maps where the British Empire was coloured pink.

Antipodean | 09.08.16 - 3:04 p.m. | #

... and thanks to Adrain for the other map too.

Arcs, nodes and regions - don't know the difference. I only understand kittens.

Antipodean | 09.08.16 - 3:09 p.m. | #

As far as I am aware, the closest we get in the UK to four local authorities meeting at a point is the meeting point of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland, but it is a little difficult to stand on it as it is at the point where the A1 Stamford bypass crosses a side channel of the River Welland running alongside the railway to Melton Mowbray, so you will either get run over by a lorry (on the bridge), get wet (under the bridge), or hit by a train (on the way to the site). [Google Streetview]

@Antipodean "if you think of Bromley .........and had memories of those geopolitical school maps where the British Empire was coloured pink".

There are probably people in Bromley who think we should still have an Empire. After all, they have never really accepted that they are no longer in Kent, despite that change having taken place even longer ago. But it's a little cruel to talk about fat pink bottoms!

timbo | 09.08.16 - 4:40 p.m. | #

For those interested in borders and boundaries, I can heartily recommend looking at a proper (non-Google) map.

For example... http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=533764&Y=170787&A=Y&Z=110

diamond geezer | Homepage | 09.08.16 - 5:23 p.m. | #

It's immensely reassuring that you work out all this stuff, so that nobody else has to.....

Autolycus | Homepage | 09.08.16 - 7:05 p.m. | #

Possibly useful, but then when I'd got to the bottom of your article, I forgot what they were.

SJM | 09.08.16 - 9:25 p.m. | #

Graph-theoretical note to DG: the usual way of representing a (geographical) map with coloured regions on it as a (graph-theoretical) graph (deep breath) identifies regions (a.k.a boroughs) with vertices (a.k.a. nodes) and adjacencies with edges (a.k.a. nodes). As in four-colour-theorem discussions.

However, other identification are possible.

Sorry if this comment is not very helpful or entertaining. My inner pedant is showing.

Malcolm | 09.08.16 - 9:40 p.m. | #

And sorry as well that my inner pedant didn't check my comment properly. The last mention of (a.k.a. nodes) should read (a.k.a. arcs). Which error makes my comment even less helpful, if that were possible.

Malcolm | 09.08.16 - 9:44 p.m. | #

Getting more off topic as we get further away from London, but it seems the point Timbo mentions is two county triple-points a few metres apart. However, there was a country quadruple-point until 1931, here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_shire_stone - due to an exclave of Worcestershire around Evenlode. Perhaps a potential destination for a day trip?

If further incentive is required, Chastleton is nearby, and also a train station at Moreton-on-Marsh. And a bit further away the Gloucestershire Warwickshire railway.

Andrew | 10.08.16 - 11:20 a.m. | #

Returning to Crystal Palace, and looking at vintage large scale OS maps on line at the NLS web site, e.g. at http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=19&lat=51.4199&lon=-0.0790&layers=176&b=7 , these show the border of Penge UD (predecessor of LB Bromley) running not down the middle of Crystal Palace Parade, but slightly east of it, to meet up with those of the other authorities (Croydon CB, Lambeth MB and Camberwell MB (now part of Southwark)) in the middle of the road junction (at about TQ 33700 70735) - an actual four authority meeting point (Camberwell having a slice of the eastern half of Crystal Palace Parade at its southern end). But looking at the largest scale on Streetmap, its not clear exactly where the current border is: the OS 1:25000 map does show the border running down the middle of the Parade, i.e. that it has moved - to eliminate the four authority meeting point. But did this happen in 1964 when the modern Boroughs were formed, or subsequently?

Jeremy | 15.08.16 - 3:18 p.m. | #

@ Jeremy: The four authority meeting point at Crystal Palace lasted until the mid-1990s, when various minor boundary changes were made throughout London. See http://bit.ly/2bInW9l for the recommendations made for the Crystal Palace area by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England. Map 5 shows the then existing boundaries as unbroken lines and the changes as dashed lines. The report is dated 1992. I think the changes were implemented in 1995, but I'm not certain about that.

M | 19.08.16 - 9:00 p.m. | #











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