Clapham

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Template:Otherplaces Template:Infobox London place Clapham is a neighbourhood primarily in the London Borough of Lambeth, South London.

Clapham dates back to Anglo-Saxon times; the name is said to derive from the Anglo-Saxon word for "Clappa's farm". In the late seventeenth century, large country houses began to be built here, and through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was favoured by the upper classes, with many large and gracious houses and villas built around Clapham Common and in the Old Town. Samuel Pepys spent the last two years of his life in Clapham living with his friend and former servant William Hewer and he died there in 1703. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Clapham Sect were a group of upper class evangelic Anglicans who lived around the Common. They included William Wilberforce, who founded Holy Trinity Church, which is in the middle of the common, Henry Thornton and Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian Thomas Macaulay. They were very prominent in campaigns for the abolition of slavery, against child labour and for prison reform. They also promoted missionary activity in Britain's colonies.

After the coming of the railways, Clapham developed as a suburb for daily 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: the so-called "man on the Clapham omnibus".

Today Clapham covers a largish area surrounding Clapham Common. The Old Town and High Street to the east of the Common have a lively set of restaurants and shops. At the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first, local property prices rose steeply, and Clapham is now home to a rather homogeneous grouping of affluent young white collar workers in their twenties and thirties; the "man on the Clapham omnibus" is nowadays more likely to be a trainee accountant, lawyer or investment banker. Most of the High Street's bars and restaurants cater for them and are packed to the rafters at weekends. However to some degree the area retains a vestige of its formerly mixed character, with different social and ethnic groups living alongside each other.

Image:Natsume Soseki house Clapham.jpg The other side of the Common, encompassing Battersea Rise, Northcote Road and the area known as "Between the Commons", is popular with young middle-class professional families: (Although this area is often referred to as Clapham, it is in SW11 area and is, in fact, in Battersea.)

The main railway station