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LONDON: CITY OF GATES
North London
West London Central London East London
South London
THE SOUTHERN ESTATES
SOUTHWARK: the Waking World
Situated opposite the central City of London, Southwark borough extends south from the River Thames over such areas and historic villages as Rotherhithe, Southwark (including Bankside, a historic street along the Thames), Bermondsey, Walworth, Camberwell, Peckham (in part), Nunhead, East Dulwich, Herne Hill (in part), Dulwich, and Sydenham Hill. Southwark village, in the borough's northern section, has been important as a junction of roads and as a commanding point to the approach to London ever since the Romans constructed a bridge there across the Thames.

Old Southwark, known traditionally as "The Borough," was a market town from early Saxon times and many of the regular stallholders of the Floating market once hawked their wares from there. It became a haven for criminals and prostitutes in the Middle Ages, an indication of how Unseelie the location had become. As the Fionna Kings and Queens began to spend less and less time in their Winter Palace and the Unseelie Changelings became a permanent fixture, the darker aspects of the Dreaming took hold of the populace. From the 15th century on, Southwark was known for its inns, theatres, spas, country resorts, and other places of entertainment and recreation, but it also grew in notoriety for its poorer, run-down districts. In the mid-16th century it became known as the "Bridge Ward Without" or the ward of "Bridge-without."

BEDLAM
Bedlam was the nickname of Bethlem Royal Hospital, the first asylum for the insane in England. It is currently located in Beckenham, Kent. The word bedlam came to be used generically for all insane asylums and is used colloquially for an uproar. While the institution has moved several times, its parasitical Fae patrons have always secreted themselves in its shadows.
In 1247 the asylum was founded at Bishopsgate, just outside the London wall, by Simon FitzMary, former sheriff of London; it was then known as the Priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem (from which sprang the variant spellings Bedlam and Bethlem). Bedlam was mentioned as a hospital in 1329, and some permanent patients were accommodated there by 1403. In 1547 it was granted by Henry VIII to the City of London as a hospital for the insane. It subsequently became infamous for the brutal ill-treatment meted out to its inmates. In the 17th and 18th centuries Bedlam was open to fee-paying spectators, becoming as popular a night out as the cinema is today, but this disruptive practice was ended in 1770. The hospital was moved in 1675/76 to Moorfields (just north of the ancient London wall at Moorgate), in 1815 to St. George's Fields (now in Southwark), and in 1930 to Monks Orchard, Beckenham. Since 1936 the old hospital building in Southwark has been the site of the Imperial War Museum.
Among the borough's educational and cultural institutions are Dulwich College, the South London Art Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Cuming Museum, the Design Museum at Butler's Wharf, and the Imperial War Museum. Berthed along Southwark's riverfront are the HMS Belfast and a reconstruction of The Golden Hinde, Sir Francis Drake's 16th-century flagship. other landmarks include Waterloo Station, the district of Newington (the transportation hub for south London south), the Elephant and Castle (a large traffic roundabout named for an 18th-century inn), the Metropolitan Tabernacle (1861), the London College of Printing, and Bermondsey. Bermondsey was a centre for leatherworking in the Middle Ages and was granted a virtual monopoly of the trade in 1703. Bermondsey was the site of the second tunnel under the River Thames (completed in 1869), and it has been a railway terminus since the 1830s. London Bridge Station stands in its northern section along with the London Dungeon, the George Inn (1677), and Guy's Hospital. Also notable is the St. Mary Magdalen Church (1680).

Two former Southwark landmarks have given rise to popular phrases: to be in the clink (i.e., imprisoned), derived from the prison on Clink Street; and a state of bedlam (i.e., animated confusion), derived from the disorder at Bedlam, a royal hospital for the mentally ill. The Bedlam insane hospital was moved here In the 19th Century and the Unseelie gorged themselves on the Dark glamour produced by its unfortunate inmates Before it closed down the Hospital was a favourite playground for the Unseelie, whose manipulation of the patients sleeping minds and careful husbanding of Glamour allowed them to breed nightmare Chimera and to supplement their reaping of Glamour.

Most of South London's architecture postdates World War II, but some Victorian structures remain. Wartime destruction and large-scale redevelopment schemes completely changed parts of the borough, notably the former docks of Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, and Southwark, as well as the Newington area. From the mid-1980s the borough's riverfront east of London Bridge has been the site of the so-called "London Bridge City" development.

THE DREAMING
The Kings winter palace was the residence of House Ailil in the old days, and at Samhain the two courts would switch. Seelie and Unseelie, when they followed the old ways, would alternate between the Tower Freehold on the north bank of the River and the palace in the South. The transference from the 'Inner city, where-it-all-started' theme of the tower gateway and the 'outside the walls, across-the-river-and-faraway' feeling of the Southern Estate had as much effect on the fae mind as the switch from summer court to winter.

During the interregnum, when Unseelie Sidhe were thin on the ground the Commoners tried to play the flip side of House Fionna's regency but the statement seemed less obvious, the world was less Black and white. Those Unseelie who were resident in the Winter palace became more of a figurehead, less of a co-ruler, eventually they moved out of the palace altogether and the shadow court ceased to operate in the open. From thier new stronghold deep beneath the ground in the deepest recesses of Chislehurst caves the Unseelie, Sluagh and Recaps for the main part, continued to harvest Glamour and to follow their own agenda.

By the beginning of the Twentieth century the Winter palace was all but deserted, with little more than a skeleton staff of Boggans and Kinain to prevent it from falling into disrepair. When the Freeholds physical seeming was destroyed by Bombing during the second world war the building had been empty for months and there were no witnesses to watch the Balefire splutter its last.

CHILEHURST CAVES
The Caves are a labyrinth of dark mysterious passageways which have been hewn by hand from the chalk, deep beneath Chislehurst. There are over 22 miles of known caverns and passageways dating back to 2000BC and dug over a period of 8000 years, and probably twice as many secret passageways and chasms known only to the supernatural dwellers of London. The vast complex of caves are a maze of ancient mines originally carved out in the search for flint and chalk. They are divided into three main sections, Saxon, Druid and Roman. Each section was later connected by digging joining passages.

The Druids worshipped in them (and possibly sacrificed humans if you believe the nonsense put out by national heritage); marking the caves as sacred to the Wyck and the Fae who paid homage to the earth Mother by descending into her womb for their celebrations. A colony of Sluagh moved into the deepest and dampest caverns and remained undetected by the Nockers who mined for Chalk in the upper levels for many years.

The last time the mines were known to have been worked was around the 1830's when the Saxon section was used by a flintmaker and limeburner, but Kinain of the Nockers have long worked the dark tunnels. The local railway made the mines, the Druid Altar and the Haunted Pool more accessible in 1865, and this aided its formation as a tourist attraction, but the influx of nosey mortals and their banality driven tourest industry drove the Nockers out of the upper levels and forced them into the deeper caverns already claimed by the Sluagh and outlawed Thallain. The Cannibal Doones, Redcap highwaymen, have made the caves their home for several generations, and their currant leader, Carne Ach Doone, has no intention of giving up his well appointed hideaway.

During the Second World War, the caves formed shelters from air raids for local families; The war and the constant bombings over London turned the caves into a massive air raid shelter within easy reach from London and its main suburbs. The caves also became the setting for several underground concerts in the early 1900's, in the Sixties, Cream, Hendrix and Bowie played gigs there - an ideal place, perhaps for the stars of the musical underground! During this heyday Changeling's inspired and nurtured the caves as a beatnik hotspot, which it remains to this day!!

THE GLOBE THEATRE
Many of William Shakespeare's plays were first produced at the Globe Theatre on Bankside; and it was a favourite haunt of Changelings, some of whom claim to have been the Bard's muse. A reconstruction of the theatre was opened near the original site in 1997. Its building was the lifelong dream of late actor Sam Wannamaker (whose daughter Zoë is one of the most beauiful women in England, if not the world, and whose Face and form are undeniably Elfin).

THE SOUTHBANK

HMS BELFAST: The Floating Market.

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