East Hertfordshire District Council: Fill & Download for Free

You want complete etymologies? Or just how they came by their present names? The boroughs as they are now came into being on 1 April 1965 along with the creation of Greater London from the previous City of London, the London County Council area (made up of Metropolitan Boroughs) and parts of the counties of Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent and Surrey. The county of Middlesex ceased to exist after the reorganisation; of the little that was left over Staines and Sunbury-on-Thames were transferred to Surrey and Potters Bar to Hertfordshire. Some boroughs took the name of one (generally the dominant one) or more of the local authority areas they were formed from. Some went further back in history and chose an old name associated with the area. Some took the name of a local geographic feature.The full list (no, not all from my head, I did the research for you! I may be a social statistics geek but there are limits.):The City and County of the City of London: unchanged. Sui generis and not regarded as a London borough. The de jure capital of the UK and thus vying with Vaduz, Liechtenstein, as the smallest capital city in Europe.Barking and Dagenham: ESSEX: Municipal Borough of Barking, part of Municipal Borough of Dagenham (all but Hog Hill). Called London Borough of Barking until 1980 when the council voted to add Dagenham to the name.Barnet: MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Finchley, Municipal Borough of Hendon, Urban District of Friern Barnet. HERTFORDSHIRE: Urban District of Barnet, Urban District of East Barnet. Named after a town within the area. The largest borough by population.Bexley: KENT: Municipal Borough of Bexley, Municipal Borough of Erith, Urban District of Crayford, part of the Urban District of Chislehurst and Sidcup (the Sidcup part). Named after the borough of Bexley.Brent: MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Wembley, Municipal Borough of Willesden. Named after the River Brent which flows through the borough.Bromley: KENT: Municipal Borough of Beckenham, Municipal Borough of Bromley, Urban District of Orpington, Urban District of Penge, part of the Urban District of Chislehurst and Sidcup (the Chislehurst part). The largest borough by area.Camden: LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Hampstead, Metropolitan Borough of Holborn. Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras. Named after the district of Camden Town within the borough.Croydon: SURREY: County Borough of Croydon, Urban District of Coulsdon and Purley. Named after Croydon, which until 1965 had been the largest town in the south of England after London and the largest in Britain not to have been granted city status. I do know the etymology of this one: it means ‘valley of crows’.Ealing: MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Acton, Municipal Borough of Ealing, Municipal Borough of Southall.Enfield: MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Edmonton, Municipal Borough of Enfield, Municipal Borough of Southgate.Greenwich, Royal Borough of. LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich, part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich (all except the parish of North Woolwich). Named after the town of Greenwich, home of the Royal Observatory and hence of the Greenwich Meridian. Became a Royal Borough in 2012.Hackney. LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington.Hammersmith and Fulham. LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Fulham, Metropolitan Borough of Hammersmith. Called the London Borough of Hammersmith until 1979 when the council voted to incorporate Fulham into the name.Haringey. MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Hornsey, Municipal Borough of Tottenham, Municipal Borough of Wood Green. There is a district called Harringay in the borough (it’s a great place to find Turkish restaurants) but the borough name is not an affected amalgamation of the names Harringay and Hornsey as I assumed for years but an old name for the whole Hornsey/Harringay area.Harrow: MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Harrow. The only borough to remain unchanged after the reorganisation.Havering: ESSEX: Municipal Borough of Romford, Urban District of Hornchurch. The name is taken from the ancient Royal Liberty of Havering-atte-Bower. There is still a village of Havering-atte-Bower right on the rural Essex border of the borough and IMHO has to be one of the most attractive entries to Greater London. (‘Havering’ is also a Scots word for talking nonsense.)Hillingdon. MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Uxbridge, Urban District of Hayes and Harlington, Urban District of Ruislip-Northwood, Urban District of Yiewsley and West Drayton. Was originally to have been Uxbridge but Hillingdon, the name of a centrally-located village, was chosen as a compromise.Hounslow: MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Brentford and Chiswick, Municipal Borough of Feltham, Municipal Borough of Heston and Isleworth. Named after Hounslow Heath and the associated village of Hounslow.Islington: LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury, Metropolitan Borough of Islington.Kensington and Chelsea, Royal Borough of: LONDON: Royal Borough of Kensington, Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea. Inherited the Royal Borough status from Kensington.Kingston upon Thames, Royal Borough of: SURREY: Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, Municipal Borough of Maldon and Coombe, Municipal Borough of Surbiton. Inherited Royal Borough status from Kingston-upon-Thames, the oldest such designation formally from 1927. Kingston remains the extraterritorial administrative centre of Surrey.Lambeth: LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth, part of the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth (Clapham and Streatham).Lewisham: LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Deptford, Metropolitan Borough of Lewisham.Merton: SURREY: Municipal Borough of Mitcham, Municipal Borough of Wimbledon, Urban District of Merton and Morden. Merton was chosen as a compromise after a dispure between Mitcham and Wimbledon,Newham: ESSEX: County Borough of East Ham, County Borough of West Ham. LONDON: part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich (parish of North Woolwich).Redbridge: ESSEX: Municipal Borough of Ilford, Municipal Borough of Wanstead and Woodford, part of Municipal Borough of Dagenham (Hog Hill), part of Urban District of Chigwell (Hainault). The name is a compromise, after a former bridge over the River Roding, demolished in 1921, that gave its name to Redbridge station on the Central Line and the district that grew around it.Richmond upon Thames: MIDDLESEX: Municipal Borough of Twickenham. SURREY: Municipal Borough of Barnes, Municipal Borough of Richmond. “Our lesson is, that there are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and that mine is the Surrey Richmond.”, says Estella in Great Expectations. Richmond was neither the largest (Twickenham) nor the most ancient (it was called Sheen until the 16th century when Henry VII, the former Earl of Richmond (in Yorkshire), had a palace built there) but its royal connections prevailed. The ‘upon Thames’ was added to remove centuries of confusion with the ancient borough of Richmond in Yorkshire, which gave its name to all the other Richmonds in the world including that in Virginia. The only borough with territory on both banks of the Thames.Southwark: LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey, Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell, Metropolitan Borough of Southwark.Sutton: SURREY: Municipal Borough of Beddington and Wallington, Municipal Borough of Sutton and Cheam, Urban District of Carshalton. Was originally supposed to include the Municipal Borough of Epsom and Ewell but that idea was dropped after a protest. Sutton remains the smallest of the outer boroughs.Tower Hamlets: LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green, Metropolitan Borough of Poplar, Metropolitan Borough of Stepney. The old East End, its former boroughs heavily depopulated by wartime bombing and relocation of its traditional Jewish community to the northern suburbs and traditional Cockneys to new towns in Essex and Hertfordshire, now replaced by incomers from Bangladesh and financiers from the City. The name references an ancient medieval Liberty, a series of Thames-side parishes that owed military obligations to the Constable of the Tower of London.Waltham Forest: ESSEX: Metropolitan Borough of Chingford, Metropolitan Borough of Leyton, Metropolitan Borough of Walthamstow. The name refers to an ancient royal hunting forest, of which Epping Forest is a surviving remnant. A|small part of Epping Forest lies in the north and east of the borough.Wandsworth: LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Battersea, part of Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth. A bit of an oddity as the only part of the old Wandsworth is a rump after Clapham and Streatham had gone to Lambeth. Battersea had been part of the ancient borough of Wandsworth though, so the name was carried forward. Although Clapham was ceded from the old Wandsworth, Clapham Common was in Battersea and so remains in Wandsworth.Westminster, City of: LONDON: Metropolitan Borough of Paddington, Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone, Metropolitan Borough of Westminster. Inherited city status from the old borough of Westminster and that is now incorporated into the official name of the current borough. The former borough did not do this; the short-lived diocese of Westminster lasted only from its inception in 1541 until its suppression in 1550 along with city status which was not officially reinstated until 1900. The de facto administrative capital of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.There. More than you bargained for, yes? Take time to digest!

Is the area of City of London an actual city within London?As an historical geographer, this question is one that goes to the heart of a long-standing concern I have for the way that language evolves and actually obfuscates history.There is no question that in the modern world we have London which is regarded as a city with an elected Mayor. The confusion then exists about the identity of the City of London and how the surrounding boroughs fit in.To paraphrase the songwriter Ralph McTell, “Let me take you by the hands and lead you through the streets of London…”The name London is the most modern version of the one given to the inland port of Londinium which was founded by the Romans in the earliest phase of the Claudian invasion of Britain which began in 43 CE. This was in modern terms a small compact settlement positioned by the first possible fording point on this tidal river (remember there were no hard engineering ramparts artificially constraining the river then, which was wide spread, shallower, slower flowing and characterised by many small islands which could be crossed by foot).The settlement was almost destroyed in the middle of the first century CE by the Boudiccan rebellion, but otherwise it remained unscathed throughout the Romano-British period and was one of the Roman towns to remain properly urban during the English settlement. By now its name had changed to Lundenwic, but its footprint was the old walled Roman settlement plus some outlying sprawl. Essentially, this was what was to become the ‘Square Mile’ as The City of London, the historic financial centre, is colloquially known.During the later Anglo-Saxon period, especially during the reign of Edward the Confessor, the island in the Thames known as Thorney Island was chosen as the site for a new religious house sponsored by that king. Until that time, the king’s main residence had been in the area of the City of London. As the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, as Westminster Abbey was first called, was being constructed, Edward chose also to move his residence from London to this new site. Thus came, for the first time, the separation of the commercial activity of London from the seat of government.It is important to understand something else about the governance of England at this time. The English settlement had made concrete the establishment of what we now regard as the traditional shires or counties of England. Both London and this new settlement, which was to become Westminster (after the Minster Church to the west of London), these two places were both within the shire of Middlesex. Now, it is also important to understand that London was already considerably larger than any other town in the kingdom, and its internal governance was already taking a different direction to other towns and was to become a shire or county in its own right, therefore outside of the jurisdiction of the shire reeve (sheriff) of Middlesex. For that reason, as the new Royal vill took on greater importance in the governance of the realm, it did so too in the local governance of the county of Middlesex.In geographical terms, these two places were close to each other, and were both on the north bank of the Thames, but they were clearly and definitely separated by open countryside. London and Westminster were separate entities.Bit by bit over the years the areas around both places saw the expansion of both residential and commercial activity. Places like the Strand, a well known thoroughfare (in the red group on the Monopoly board), became sought-after places for development. The Strand was, as the name suggests, on the banks of the tidal river and also on the important western route out from London, which went by way of Westminster. It was here, for example, that some land which had been owned, in the feudal manner, by the king had been granted to various people including the uncle of the wife of Henry III. This Peter, Count of Savoy bequeathed it to a Savoyard monastery. Eleanor of Castile, the Spanish born wife of Edward I, bought the estate for her son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. He was granted licence to crenellate his house (make it into a castle) known as the Savoye. The Royal Earldom of Lancaster was raised to a Dukedom, and the Savoy passed through the holders of that title thenceforth.Thus the two separate settlements gradually merged with the lands between infilling. That is not the real problem though, with the issues behind this question.We can now identify that London was and remains a City in the form of the City and County of the City of London under the governance of the Lord Mayor of London and the Common Council and Corporation of the City of London - none of which has ever been under the jurisdiction of any other corporate body with the title London.Throughout England, the names of counties have very often been based on their most dominant settlement, thus the County of York, the County of Durham, the County of Bedford, Lincoln, Gloucester etc. There are, of course exceptions to this, but it holds as a general rule of thumb. As the Anglo-Saxon word for what we now call counties was Scir (pronounced shire), the English form was usually the city/town name with the suffix shire, hence Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire etc. Both forms are correct.London and Westminster were together the most important settlements in the country and they attracted people. Lawyers, politicians and courtiers of all descriptions drifted towards them. The commercial activities which were from the outset international, attracted those who wished to trade, be apprenticed or to invest. Any settlement that attracts people for these kinds of social or economic activities will attract even greater numbers of those whose purpose is to provide the goods and services that these others will need.Markets developed, shops were opened, manufacturies and all manner of premises for the provision of foodstuffs all required people, raw materials and the means of transporting them. This combined conurbation was inevitably the most populous in the land. The boundaries between them had become blurred in the landscape, and almost irrelevant to all except those whose purpose was government or law. If you lived in York or in Bristol, if you spoke about London, you may have been referring to either London or Westminster.One of the counties of England whose name celebrated a people rather than a place was Middlesex, the district of the Middle Saxons, distinguishing from the East Saxons in Essex, the West Saxons in Wessex (which covered a number of shires!) and the South Saxons in Sussex. Westminster was a fundamental part of Middlesex, even if London was not.The governance of much of the county of Middlesex followed the pattern of most shires throughout history, in that the Hundreds, Manors and Parishes were the most important units for administration, along with some combinations of these such as Honours, or places of special ecclesiastical administration such as Peculiars. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution during the latter part of the eighteenth century, the impact on rural employment set in train a population movement the likes of which had never really been sen before in England, and the combined area of London and Westminster, and the south-bank settlement of the three manors that made up Southwark, became magnets for those seeking work.The pressures of a rapidly expanding population naturally led to increased house-building, and all the necessary implications of providing for the sustenance of this massively increasing population. Roads needed to be built, more waste was created, clean water supplies and eventually sewerage all had to be contemplated. These were all new pressures that simply swamped the old processes of governance. These were being felt also outside of the London area, but were magnified in the expanding urban scene. Whereas in Hertfordshire the new turnpike trusts were enough to ameliorate the biggest issues confronting the parish vestries whose legal responsibility it was to mend and upkeep the main highways, the problems in the urban sprawl were exacerbated.The exacerbation was caused not merely by the sheer scale of population, but also because the physical limitations, the boundaries, of the responsible vestries made the problems insoluble. A few thousand new houses, over-filled with many families in each covering several parishes meant that any one was unable to fund or to find the resources to manage with any real effectiveness. One parish not following the lead of its neighbour would likely undermine that neighbours efforts and investment.The Corporation of the City of London had purposely extended its activities to support the areas immediately surrounding it, including most of Southwark, the expanding east end around the docks and northwards. However, these works were a continual drain and eventually something would need to give. In the City and Liberty of Westminster there were two parish vestries which combined to provide a single local government unit, they had jointly formed the Westminster District Board of Works.The Government therefore began to consider a new term, the Metropolis, a name for the urban sprawl that was so far from anything previously experienced, not just in England or even the UK. It referred to the urban sprawl as a whole rather than to any historic administrative unit.The first use of the word Metropolitan for a regional wide service was that of Sir Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police force (now Service). The Metropolitan Police District (somewhat smaller in 1829 than it is today) created the idea of a Metropolitan area. Note, the force was not called the London Police force, because at that point London was just the square mile, and the force has never had jurisdiction in the City of London. The City of London Police is a separate and independent force, and the head of the MPS still holds the title of ‘Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and Receiver’, a jot or a tittle about London in the title!In December 1855, the Metropolitan Board of Works was created. It was an official body to which the board members were appointed rather than directly elected. These appointments were made by the City of London Corporation, and the various Parish Vestries and any other administrative unit responsible for maintaining the physical structures such as roads, sewers, water supply etc.Note, that this body was not named the London Board of Works, because for the contemporary people it covered areas that were simply not in London, even those where the City of London corporation had been actively supporting improvements.There were other Metropolitan boards set up for various purposes, and these bodies were successful in the eyes of those who held the purse-strings and wanted reforms to the haphazard manner in which the urban area was physically managed.In 1832, as a result of the Great reforms of Parliament, seven new parliamentary boroughs were established in the area of the Metropolis, these included (alphabetically) Finsbury, Greenwich, Lambeth, Marylebone, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster. The idea being that a members of parliament were either returned for a county or for a borough. These parliamentary boroughs were densely populated and had previously not had the representation that was equitable in a democracy. The Royal Commission on the City of London failed to recommend the changes that had been anticipated, and the City of London Corporation reinforced its ancient and considerable rights to self-governance.In 1889 there was another sea change in the administration in England and Wales. The Local Government Act of 1888 created two new administrative bodies; the county council and the county borough. In the area of the metropolis, a new body was established, the London County Council. For the first time in the nearly two thousand year history of the settlement of London, the name was now formally applied to a much wider area. Lessons from the Boards of Works etc. had been learned and were now to be developed into far-reaching new directly elected administrations.The City of London remained outside of the jurisdiction of the new London County Council (LCC) because it was already a county in its own right. The LCC was the top tier authority but the Vestries still remained in place for a whole raft of local administrative purposes, which were poorly managed, under-funded and generally not fit for purpose. Within a decade a new second tier authority was created for the whole of the County of London area. These were the Metropolitan Boroughs and were to cause the Vestries to be stripped of the majority of their authority and responsibilities (although not all of them, especially not those that they exercised under the Poor Laws!).The City of London was not a part of the County of London, but it did participate in joint activities where it was sensible so to do. For example where roads, sewers or water mains were installed or maintained. The 28 new Metropolitan boroughs included Battersea, Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Camberwell, Chelsea, Deptford, Finsbury, Fulham, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith, Hampstead, Holborn, Islington, Kensington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Paddington, Poplar, Shoreditch, Southwark, St. Marylebone, St. Pancras, Stepney, Stoke Newington, Wandsworth, City of Westminster, and Woolwich. These boroughs were formed in 1900 and continued until both they and the LCC were abolished in April 1965.During the period 1889 and 1965, the LCC had taken on more and more responsibilities. It was by the time of its abolition, responsible for roads, housing, civil defence, education, water and sewage controls, fire brigade, ambulances and strategic planning.In 1944, when the post-war plans started to be made for rebuilding a shattered county of London, yet another term was coined - ‘Greater London’. It’s scope was to extend into the neighbouring home counties to take into consideration the continuing spread of the contiguous urban sprawl, and to embrace rural areas on which new estates might be built to house those bombed out during the war years and those still living in squalid old housing.The 1889 County had absorbed territory from the old county of Middlesex and also from Kent and Surrey. Adjoining this area were three newly created County Boroughs, whose status meant they had all the powers and authority of a county and the representation and scale of a borough. These were East and West Ham in the east and Croydon in the south.A Royal Commission in 1957 reviewed the effectiveness of the LCC and the existing local governance system in the Greater London area as defined in 1944. This gave rise to the work at parliamentary level that would result in the Greater London Act, 1963.The 1963 Act caused the abolition of the LCC and of the metropolitan Boroughs. It also abolished the County Boroughs mentioned above and a large number of surrounding Rural and Urban Districts. The resulting new county of Greater London, with the Greater London Council, came into being in April 1965, as did the new London Boroughs. These were described as Inner London and Outer London Boroughs. The differences were not great, except that those within the Inner London zone (co-terminus with the old County of London) were not responsible for education, here there was also a new Inner London Education Authority (ILEA).The Inner London Boroughs were made up of the merging of two of the Metropolitan Boroughs, whereas, excepting in the case of East and West Ham, where the two county boroughs merged as Newham, and Croydon where the old county borough merged with the old Urban District of Coulsdon and Purley to form the London Borough of Croydon, the rest were made up of the mergers of Urban and Rural District Councils. In all, 32 new London Boroughs emerged.The additional territorial gain was at the expense of Essex, Surrey, and Kent, but more especially of Middlesex, which finally disappeared. The rump of the old county in the west was absorbed into the newly reformed county of Surrey, which crept over the Thames for the first time, Surrey County Council however had lost the areas covered by the new London Boroughs of Richmond-upon-Thames, Kingston-upon-Thames, Sutton, and Merton (Croydon was never under the auspices of the Surrey County Council).The GLC was abolished as a county council in 1986. The London Boroughs inherited the majority of their responsibilities and authority as Unitary Authorities. However, there was obviously a strategic vacuum with London Boroughs vying for resources and strategic planning advantage. In 2000 the new Greater London Authority was created along with the confusingly titled post of Mayor of London. This, of course, is not the same as the Lord Mayor of London. The Mayor of London is responsible for the strategic administration of Greater London as a region of England (rather than as a county). There is a 25 member elected Assembly to hold the Mayor to account.The evolution of the area with the name London is the source of many debates, comments and opinions, which is hardly surprising since it is quite confusing. The area now regarded as both a county and a region called Greater London is invariably referred to in the media and in commonplace speech as London. It is also confusingly also frequently referred to as the City, which as we have seen, it is not.The question was “Is the area of City of London an actual city within London?”, the answer, the City of London is within the modern region and ceremonial county of Greater London to which it has lent its own name!

The Heron Tower is at the eastern edge of the financial district, which is called The City (the financial district coincides with the London borough called the City of London). This is about where what I think of as central London begins to transition into East London. The building is right next to Liverpool Street station. (It also has a couple of trendy – if overpriced – restaurants with amazing views, like the Duck and Waffle. For those moments when you've felt your waffles needed a side of duck.)The key question for you to answer is: what kind of lifestyle are you looking for? There are a lot of great London neighbourhoods very close to there – trendy Shoreditch, hipster Islington, down to earth Hackney, gentrifying Wapping, quaint Rotherhithe, yuppy Shad Thames – that you might want to see to check if they suit your family’s style. Given though that they are all within a half hour walk from the City, they are not cheap (except in the run-down grittier pockets). They are also really all about city living: public transit and walking, small shops at the corner store, deliveries, etc. Schools may well vary quite a bit.That said, Liverpool Street is a major transport hub. It is both a Tube station and a mainline station serving the Eastern part of the country: Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Hertfordshire, etc. Other very nearby mainline stations include Moorgate and Fenchurch Street, and Bank is a Tube hub – all are within about six minutes by foot from the Heron Tower. If you are interested in something more like a North American car-based suburban lifestyle, places like Brentwood or Billericay are popular commuter places (about 30-odd minutes by mainline train from Liverpool Street), as are St Albans (from Moorgate). If you are interested in British small village life, there are plenty of beautiful little places with easy connections to those commuter train lines.On the other hand, with Bank and Moorgate so close, it is very easy to live in one of the more semi-urban (ie car-optional) residential bits of London, like Clapham or Balham (popular with young singles and couples), or Muswell Hill (popular with young families). Bank is also very well connected with both London Bridge and Waterloo, which open up the southern suburbs like the rather posh Surbiton or Kingston heading west (easy taxi access from Heathrow) or Bromley, Orpington, and Sevenoaks heading east (easier for Gatwick).So really a lot depends on you and your family’s style, what kind of lifestyle you want to have, and what kind of commute your husband is looking for. Your question implied that you will not be working, but if you are, then obviously that becomes a big factor as well. Generally, you get a lot more for your money the further out of London you go – in Shad Thames near Tower Bridge (about 25 min walk from the Heron Tower) £600k will get you a studio or a small one-bed (though renting is a bit more affordable), while in places like Brentwood that would easily fetch a decent detached house with a nice garden. On the other hand, peak time commuting (on the train) is not that cheap either. (Commuting by car to the Heron Tower is an unworkably bad idea unless your husband is in a role where he gets in early – like before 7am – and has a chauffeur.)I work in the City, and the general pattern is that people live in places like Fulham, Borough, or Clapham when they first start working, move to places like Putney, Muswell Hill, or Wapping when they get married, and then out to Bromley, Brentwood, St Albans, Surbiton, or further along the train routes as they have kids. The inner suburbs like Hackney, Islington, or Romford tend to either have very young people (flat-sharers) or older families that have always been based there, because of the prices. Places like Maida Vale or Shad Thames tend to be popular with ex-pats but are a bit soulless as a result – people use those places to sleep while exploring London, rather than them being places locals hang out.If at all possible, my advice is to come and visit here for a couple of weeks first. Explore these and other neighbourhoods and see which suit your lifestyle best. Talk to your future colleagues and find out where they live. Otherwise, when you move, consider a short-term rental near the City to give you time to get a feel for different areas.Good luck with your move!Edit: have just seen your three bed requirement and monthly budget of £3500. Is that for accommodation only, or everything? From a bit of searching on Rightmove, a three bed flat in a building in Shad Thames would cost between £3000-£3500. On the other hand, a three bed semi-detached house in Billericay would cost about £1500-£2000. Factor in about £500 for a monthly train ticket to Liverpool Street, and you would have about £1500 left for living expenses (utilities, food, clothes, car, entertainment, etc – you also need to figure in Council Tax, which will not be included in the rental prices on Rightmove or Zoopla). Both are about half an hour from the Heron Tower, the one by foot (or taxi at rush hour; ten min by taxi at 2am), the other by train. Really just depends on the lifestyle you want to live.