Timeline of London

The following is a timeline of the history of London, the capital of England in the United Kingdom. The area covered is that of modern Greater London.

Prehistory

• 6000 BCE – Hunter-gatherers on the site of Heathrow Terminal 5.^[1]
• 4000 BCE – Mesolithic timber structure on the River Thames foreshore, south of the site of Vauxhall Bridge.^[2]
• 3800 BCE – Stanwell Cursus constructed.^[1]
• 2300–1500 BCE – Possible community on Chiswick Eyot in the Thames.
• 1500 BCE – Bronze Age bridge from the foreshore north of Vauxhall Bridge. This bridge either crossed the Thames, or went to a now lost island in the river.^[3]

Early history to 11th century

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• 43 CE – Settlement named Londinium.^[4]
• 50 – London bridge is constructed out of wood.
• 60 or 61 – Londinium sacked by forces of Boudica.^[4]
• 122 – Construction of forum in Londinium is completed;^[5] Emperor Hadrian visits. There is a major fire in the city at about this time.
• c. 190–225: London Wall constructed.
• c. 214 – London becomes capital of the province of Britannia Inferior.
• c. 240 – London Mithraeum built.
• c. 250 – Coasting barge "Blackfriars I" sinks in the Thames at Blackfriars.
• 255 – Work begins on a riverside wall in London.^[6]
• 368 – City known as Augusta by this date, indicating it is a Roman provincial capital.
• 490 – Saxons in power; city largely abandoned.^[4]
• By early 7th century: Settlement at Lundenwic (modern-day Aldwych).
• c. 604 – First Bishop of London in the modern succession consecrated, Mellitus.
• 650 – Market active.^[7]
• 675
  • An early fire of London destroys the wooden Anglo-Saxon cathedral which is rebuilt in stone over the following decade.
  • Church of All Hallows-by-the-Tower founded in the City by Barking Abbey.
• 798 – An early fire of London.
• 838 – First mention of Kingston upon Thames.
• 842 – Raided by Vikings with "great slaughter".^[5]
• 851 – Besieged by Vikings.^[8]
• 871 – Autumn: Danes take up winter quarters in Mercian London.
• 886
  • Alfred the Great restores London to Mercia.^[4]
  • London Mint established.
• 911 – Edward the Elder, King of Wessex, transfers London from Mercia to Wessex.^[5]
• 925 – 4 September: Coronation of Æthelstan as King of Wessex at Kingston upon Thames.
• 978 – Coronation of Æthelred as King of the English at Kingston upon Thames.
• 982 – An early fire of London.
• 989 – An early fire of London burns from Aldgate to Ludgate.

11th–15th centuries

• 1009 – August: Vikings attack London.^[5]
• 1014? – Olaf II Haraldsson of Norway perhaps attacks London and burns the wooden London Bridge in support of Æthelred.^[9]
• 1016 – May: Battle of Brentford: King Edmund Ironside defeats Cnut the Great, who then besieges London.^[5]
• 1066
  • 25 December: William the Conqueror crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.^[10]
  • Tower of London established.^[11]
• 1067 – City of London chartered.^[12]
• c. 1078 – Construction of the White Tower (Tower of London) begins;^[12] it is probably largely completed by 1088.^[5]
• 1087 – An early fire of London destroys much of the city including St Paul's Cathedral.^[13]
• 1091 – 23 October: London tornado of 1091 destroys the wooden London Bridge and severely damages the church of St Mary-le-Bow and other buildings.
• 1099 – Westminster Hall built.^[13]
• 1100
  • 5 August: Coronation of Henry I at Westminster Abbey by Maurice (bishop of London).
  • 15 August: Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, becomes the first person imprisoned in the Tower of London, by the new king for supposed embezzlement;^[14] on 3 February 1101 he becomes the first person to escape from the Tower.
• 1106 – Southwark Priory refounded by Augustinians.
• 1109 – First charter to Kingston upon Thames.
• 1114 – Merton Priory established.
• 1123 – St Bartholomew's Hospital,^[12] St Bartholomew-the-Great priory and Smithfield meat market^[15] established.
• 1133 – A royal charter establishes the first annual Bartholomew Fair at Smithfield; later to become England's largest cloth fair.^[5]
• 1135 – 26 May: The Great Fire of 1135 destroys the wooden London Bridge.^[16]
• c. 1140s – Winchester Palace built in Southwark.
• 1141 – July: The Anarchy: Matilda I of Boulogne, wife of the imprisoned King Stephen, recaptures London.^[5]
• 1147 – St Katharine's by the Tower church and hospital founded.
• 1155 – Worshipful Company of Weavers chartered.^[12]
• 1163 – New wooden London Bridge built.^[17]
• 1176 – Construction of the first stone-built London Bridge begins.^[16]
• 1180 – Guild of Pepperers, predecessor of the Worshipful Company of Grocers and the Apothecaries, is founded.
• 1185 – 10 February: Temple Church consecrated.
• 1189
  • 3 September: Coronation of Richard I in Westminster Abbey.^[18] Rising against Jews in London.
  • Henry Fitz-Ailwin de Londonestone becomes first mayor of London.^[19]
  • Fair active.^[7]
• 1196 – Spring: A popular uprising of the poor against the rich is led by William Fitz Osbert (who is hanged).
• c. 1200 – The royal treasury is transferred to Westminster from Winchester.^[20]
• 1205 – January: Exceptionally cold.
• 1209 – Rebuilding of London Bridge in stone completed.^[21]
• 1210 – c. November: Three "leopards" (probably lions) given to Henry III of England by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, become the first creatures in the menagerie at the Tower of London.^[14]
• 1212 – 10 July: The Great Fire of 1212 in Southwark. Thatched roofs are prohibited in the City as a consequence.^[22]
• 1215 – 17 May: Rebellious barons occupy London.^[18]
• 1216 – 21 May: First Barons' War: Louis, Count of Artois invades England in support of the barons, landing in Thanet. Entering London without opposition, he is proclaimed, but not crowned, King of England at St Paul's Cathedral.^[5]
• c. 1219 – First, timber, Kingston Bridge completed.
• 1222 – 15 July: Rioting after London defeats Westminster in an annual wrestling contest; ring-leaders hanged or mutilated in punishment.^[5]
• 1234 – 2 December: A royal decree prohibits institutes of legal education within the City.^[23]
• 1240 – Old St Paul's Cathedral is consecrated.
• 1241 – White Friars' monastery founded.^[24]
• 1245 – Savoy Palace built.^[24]
• 1247 – Bethlem Royal Hospital founded as the Priory of the New Order of St Mary of Bethlem.^[16]
• 1253 – Austin Friars monastery founded.^[24]
• 1262 – First church of St Mary Abbots in Kensington founded.
• 1263 – 16 July: Rebels occupy London.^[5]
• 1265 – Covent Garden market established.^[15]
• 1267 – 9 April: Second Barons' War: Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford occupies London.^[5]
• 1272 – Worshipful Company of Cordwainers and Worshipful Company of Curriers granted rights to regulate the leather trade in the City; Fishmongers Company chartered.
• By 1290 – St Etheldreda's Church built; after 1878 it will be the oldest Roman Catholic church building in London.
• 1291–4 – Eleanor crosses erected across England marking the route of the funeral procession at the end of 1290 of Edward I's Queen, Eleanor of Castile, to Westminster Abbey. In London they are erected at Westcheap and Charing Cross.^[18]
• 1295 – Southwark (UK Parliament constituency) established.^[25]
• 1296 – Edward I brings the Stone of Scone from Scotland to Westminster Abbey;^[18] it will be returned in 1996.
• 1298 – City of London (UK Parliament constituency) established.
• 1299 – A fire damages the Palace of Westminster.^[16]
• 1304 – Recorder of London appointed.^[24]
• 1307 – The Tabard inn established in Southwark.
• 1309 – Thames freezes.
• 1314
  • Completion of Old St Paul's Cathedral.
  • Mayor prohibits playing of football in environs of London.
• 1320 – Hanseatic League merchants establish the Steelyard, a Kontor, in Dowgate.
• 1322 – Armourers' Guild instituted.^[16]
• 1326 – 15 October: Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter and Lord High Treasurer is murdered by the London mob.^[18]
• 1327 – Goldsmiths' Company, Merchant Taylors' Company and Skinners' Company incorporated.^[26]
• c. 1329 – Marshalsea prison in operation in Southwark.
• 1331 – Butchers' Guild granted the right to regulate the meat trade in the City.
• 1344 – Clifford's Inn founded.
• c. 1345 – Durham House built in Westminster.
• 1348 – September–May 1349: Outbreak of Black Death at its peak.^[19]
• 1354 – Title of Lord Mayor of London first granted.
• 1361 – Company of Drapers founded (chartered 1364).
• 1363 – 15 July: Company of Vintners chartered.^[27]
• 1366 – Jewel Tower of Palace of Westminster completed.
• 1371 – London Charterhouse established.
• 1377
  • 20 February: Riots in London after John of Gaunt attacks the privileges of the City.^[5]
  • Royal Mews at Charing Cross.
• 1378 – Staple Inn becomes one of the Inns of Chancery.
• 1381 – Peasants' Revolt:
  • 12 June: Rebels from Kent and Essex, led by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, meet at Blackheath, where they are encouraged by a sermon from renegade Lollard priest John Ball.^[5]
  • 14 June: Rebels destroy John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace and storm the Tower of London, finding and beheading Simon Sudbury, and also Robert Hales, Lord High Treasurer. King Richard II (age 14) meets the leaders of the revolt and agrees to reforms such as fair rents and the abolition of serfdom.^[18]
  • 15 June: Peasants' Revolt: During further negotiations, Wat Tyler is murdered by the King's entourage. Noble forces subsequently overpower the rebel army, the rebel leaders are captured and executed and Richard revokes his concessions.^[28]
• 1382 – 21 May: Shocks from an earthquake in Canterbury are felt as an 'Earthquake Synod' is held in London.
• 1388 – Inner and Middle Temples recorded as corporate bodies.
• 1392 – King Richard II retakes control of London.^[5]
• 1394 – Mercers Company incorporated.
• 1397 – 6 June: Richard Whittington nominated mayor^[12] for the first of four terms, arranging for the City to buy back its liberties from the Crown.
• 1403 – Stationers' Company formed.
• 1407
  • Company of Merchant Adventurers of London chartered.
  • Plague.^[19]
• 1414 – 9 January: A Lollard rebellion in London is suppressed.^[18]
• 1415
  • Syon Monastery founded
  • Approximate date: Moorgate rebuilt.
• 1416
  • Guildhall rebuilt.^[19]
  • Worshipful Company of Ironmongers chartered.
• 1422 – Lincoln's Inn recorded as a corporate body.
• 1425 – 30 October: Henry Beaufort, Lord Chancellor, tries to occupy London.^[5]
• 1428 – Company of Grocers is granted a royal charter and completes its hall.
• 1430 – Tavern established in High Holborn which in modern times becomes Henneky's Long Bar and the Cittie of Yorke.
• 1434 – 23 November: The Thames freezes downstream of London Bridge.^[29]
• 1437 – Worshipful Company of Vintners incorporated.
• 1442 – City of London School established.
• 1444 – 24 April: Serious fire at Old St Paul's Cathedral.^[16]
• 1448 – Haberdashers Company chartered.
• 1450
  • July: War tax rebellion.^[30]
  • September: Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York marches an army to London and attacks alleged traitors in the royal government.^[5]
• 1452 – First record of a Lord Mayor's barge.
• 1455 – 22 May: Battle of St Albans occurs near London.^[30]
• 1460
  • 26 June: Wars of the Roses: Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and Edward, Earl of March (eldest son of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York) land at Sandwich with an army and march on London. Here the Earl of Salisbury remains and, with the support of the citizens, besieges the Tower of London whose Lancastrian commander, Lord Scales, on 4 July turns its weapons against the city.^[31]
  • 19 July: Lord Scales surrenders the Tower of London to the Yorkists; he is subsequently murdered by a mob.^[31]
  • 29 July: Hansa merchants expelled from London as Anglo-Hanseatic War breaks out with the Hanseatic League.^[5]
• 1461 – Barbers Company incorporated.^[32]
• 1466 – Crosby Hall built in Bishopsgate by wool merchant John Crosby (died 1476).
• 1471 – Wars of the Roses
  • 14 April: At the Battle of Barnet, Edward IV defeats the Lancastrian army under Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, who is killed.^[18]
  • May: Lancastrian commander Thomas Neville is prevented from entering the City but burns Southwark.
• 1474 – Pewterers Company incorporated.^[32]
• 1475 – Construction begins on the new hall of Eltham Palace.^[5]
• 1476 – September/December: William Caxton sets up the first printing press in England, at Westminster,^[33] producing his first full-length book on 18 November 1477.
• 1477 – Carpenters Company chartered.^[16]
• 1478 – Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales published by Caxton at Westminster.
• 1480 – Fullers' Company chartered, a predecessor of the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers.
• 1481 – Royal charter to Kingston upon Thames granting borough status.
• 1484 – 10 April: An award by Sir Robert Billesdon, Lord Mayor of London, decides the order of precedence of the City livery companies, resolving a dispute between the Merchant Taylors and Skinners by a compromise.
• 1485 – Yeoman Warders of His Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London formed by the new king Henry VII.
• 1486
  • Bakers' Company chartered.^[16]
  • Rebuilding of church of St Margaret's, Westminster begins.
• 1497 – 17 June: Cornish rebels under Michael An Gof are soundly defeated by Henry VII at the Battle of Deptford Bridge.^[5]

1500s

• 1500 – Wynkyn de Worde moves his print shop from Westminster to join others in Fleet Street.
• 1501 – March: First royal court held at the new Richmond Palace.^[5]
• 1503 – 24 January: Construction of Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster Abbey begins.^[5]
• 1504 – St. John's Gate built.^[34]
• 1508 – Shearmens' Company chartered, a predecessor of the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers.
• 1509 – St Paul's School, London, is founded by John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's.^[5]
• 1512
  • Savoy Hospital opens.
  • Woolwich Dockyard established for the Royal Navy.
• 1513 – Deptford Dockyard established for the Royal Navy.
• 1514
  • 20 May: Trinity House is established as a guild of mariners at Deptford to regulate pilotage.^[18]
  • 13 June: Henry Grace à Dieu, at over 1,000 tons the largest warship in the world at this time, built at the new Woolwich Dockyard, is dedicated at Erith.^[5][35][36]
  • 15 September: Thomas Wolsey is appointed Archbishop of York and begins to build York House.^[5]
  • Thomas Wolsey leases Hampton Court Palace; in 1515 he becomes a Cardinal and begins to rebuild it lavishly.^[37]
• 1517 – 1 May: Evil May Day unrest occurs at St Paul's Cross.
• 1523 – Rebuilding of church of St Margaret's, Westminster completed.
• 1527 – Sir George Monoux College, Walthamstow, is founded as a grammar school by Sir George Monoux, draper and Lord Mayor of London.
• 1528
  • 18 January: Worshipful Company of Clothworkers incorporated by royal charter, merging the Fullers' and Shearmens' Companies and taking over the latter's hall.
  • June?: Thomas Wolsey gives Hampton Court Palace to King Henry VIII.
  • July: Major outbreak of sweating sickness in London.^[5]
• 1532
  • St Andrew Undershaft church built.^[34]
  • Erection of "Holbein Gate" across Whitehall is completed.
  • Henry VIII purchases the area surrounding the Tyburn (stream) which will become St. James's Park.
• 1535
  • 4 May: First Carthusian Martyrs of London. From now until 1681, 105 Catholic martyrs will be executed at Tyburn.
  • Sutton House built as Bryck Place in Hackney by Ralph Sadler.
• 1536
  • 19 May: Anne Boleyn executed at the Tower of London.^[38]
  • 22 December: Thames freezes.
  • St James's Palace built in Westminster.
  • Hyde Park acquired by the king from the canons of Westminster Abbey and enclosed as a deer park.
• 1537
  • 25 August: Honourable Artillery Company chartered.
  • 18 May: Dissolution of the Monasteries: London Charterhouse dissolved.
• 1538 – Dissolution of the Monasteries:^[12] Merton Priory dissolved.
• 1539 – Dissolution of the Monasteries: Syon Monastery dissolved and community exiled; St Thomas' Hospital closed; and Convent of Holy Trinity, Minories surrendered.
• 1540
  • 28 July: Thomas Cromwell is executed on order from the king on charges of treason in public on Tower Hill.^[18]
  • Dissolution of the Monasteries: Westminster Abbey granted the status of cathedral (which it retains until 1550) and Southwark Priory surrendered to the Crown.
• 1543
  • Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge in Epping Forest completed for Henry VIII.^[16]
  • Approximate date: Wyngaerde's panorama of London engraved.
• 1545
  • Westminster (UK Parliament constituency) established.^[25]
  • St Giles-without-Cripplegate church rebuilt.^[34]
• 1547
  • 20 February: Coronation of Edward VI of England in Westminster Abbey.^[12]
  • Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England, begins the construction of Somerset House.^[5]
• 1550 – 24 July: French Protestant Church of London established by Royal Charter.
• 1551 – St Thomas' Hospital re-established on its former site in Southwark by the Corporation of London, taken as the founding date for St Thomas's Hospital Medical School.
• 1552 – First pupils enter Christ's Hospital school for orphans at Newgate;^[26] it receives its royal charter on 16 June 1553.^[5]
• 1553 – 19 July: Thomas White, Lord Mayor of London, proclaims Mary as the rightful heir to Edward VI. On 9 August she arrives in London.^[5]
• 1554 – 25 January: Wyatt's rebellion begins.^[38] Kingston Bridge is broken as a precautionary measure. On 9 February Thomas Wyatt surrenders.^[5]
• 1555 – 4 February: John Rogers, burned at the stake at Smithfield, London, is the first Marian Protestant martyr.^[5]
• 1556
  • 27 June: Thirteen Protestant Stratford Martyrs are burned at the stake.
  • The City takes over Bridewell Palace as a prison and a hospital for homeless children.^[39]
• 1557
  • May: Benedictine monks allowed to return to Westminster Abbey; they will again be expelled in 1559.^[5]
  • 4 May: Stationers' Company chartered.^[40]
  • Hampton School founded by Robert Hammond.
• 1558 – 25 May: Enfield Grammar School founded (incorporating an earlier endowment).
• 1559
  • 15 January: Elizabeth I of England is crowned in Westminster Abbey.^[29]
  • New Custom House built.^[41]
  • The predecessor of the private banking house of Child & Co. (which will still exist in the 21st century) is established.^[42]
  • Salters Company incorporated.
• 1560 – Westminster School re-established.^[43]
• 1561
  • 4 June: Old St Paul's Cathedral is badly damaged by fire and the spire is destroyed after being struck by lightning.^[16][18]
  • Merchant Taylor's School founded.^[33]
• 1563 – June–October: Outbreak of plague in London kills over 20,000.^[5]
• 1565
  • Thomas Gresham founds the Royal Exchange.
  • College of Physicians of London first licensed to carry out human dissection.^[5]
• 1567 – John Brayne builds the Red Lion theatre just east of the City of London, a playhouse for touring productions and the first known to be purpose-built in the British Isles since Roman times. However, there is little evidence that the theatre survives beyond this summer's season.^[44][45]
• 1569 – Gray's Inn recorded as a corporate body.
• 1570
  • Whitechapel Bell Foundry known to be in existence. By the early 21st century it will be the oldest manufacturing company in Great Britain.^[46]
  • The home and library of John Dee at Mortlake begin to serve as an informal prototype English academy for gentlemen with scientific interests.^[47]
• 1571
  • 23 January: Royal Exchange opens.^[38]
  • 28 May: Corporation of London authorised to improve the Lee Navigation.
  • 25 July: The Free Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth of the Parishioners of the Parish of Saint Olave in the County of Surrey is established in Tooley Street.
  • Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths chartered.^[16]
  • First permanent London gallows erected at Tyburn.^[16]
• 1572 – Harrow School founded by John Lyon.^[48]
• 1573 – Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School for Boys established in Barnet at the petition of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.
• 1576 – December: James Burbage opens London's second permanent public playhouse (and the first to have a substantial life), The Theatre, in Shoreditch.^[5]
• 1579 – Nonsuch House built on London Bridge.
• 1580
  • 6 April: 1580 Dover Straits earthquake causes some damage and the death of two children in London.
  • 6 July: New building prohibited on less than 4 acres (16,000 m²) of ground within three miles of the City.^[49]
• 1581
  • 4 April: Francis Drake knighted by order of Queen Elizabeth I^[29] aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford.
  • Waterwheel installed at London Bridge.^[12]
• 1585 – Claimed date: Spaniards Inn on the Hampstead and Highgate boundary is established.
• 1586 – College of Antiquaries (society) formed.^[50]
• c. 1586–90: New building for Enfield Grammar School constructed.
• 1587 – The Rose theatre is built by Philip Henslowe in Southwark.
• 1592 – December: Outbreak of plague in London; 17,000 deaths over the next twelve months.^[5]
• 1593
  • 5 May: "Dutch church libel": Bills posted in London threatening Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands allude to Christopher Marlowe's plays.
  • 30 May: Marlowe is stabbed to death in a dispute over the bill at a lodging house in Deptford.^[18]
• 1594 – Bevis Bulmer sets up a system at Blackfriars to pump water to London.^[5]
• 1595 – The Swan (theatre) built in Southwark.^[51]
• 1596
  • 14 February: Archbishop John Whitgift begins building his hospital at Croydon.
  • Blackfriars Theatre opens.^[18]
• 1597 – Gresham College founded in the City.
• 1598
  • c. May?: Première of William Haughton's Englishmen for My Money, or, A Woman Will Have Her Will, considered the first city comedy,^[52] probably by the Admiral's Men at The Rose theatre.
  • 22 September: Playwright Ben Jonson kills actor Gabriel Spenser in a duel at Hoxton and is briefly held in Newgate Prison but escapes capital punishment by pleading benefit of clergy.
  • 28 December: The Theatre is dismantled.^[29]
  • Stow's Survey of London published.^[12]
• 1598–1600 – Damned Crew at large.
• 1599 – Spring/Summer: Globe Theatre opens in Southwark, using building material from The Theatre.

1600s

• 1600 – 31 December: East India Company granted a Royal Charter.^[12]
• 1603
  • 24 March: Elizabeth I dies at Richmond Palace and is succeeded on the throne of England by her cousin James VI of Scotland.
  • c. April: Outbreak of plague in which 29,000 die.^[53]
  • 28 April: Funeral of Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey.
  • 7 May: Crowds welcome James's arrival in London.
  • 25 July: Coronation of James I in Westminster Abbey.^[29]
  • The new king orders the creation of St. James's Park.
• 1604 – 15 March: Royal Entry of King James to London.^[54]
• 1605
  • 5 November: Gunpowder Plot: A plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and the King is foiled when, following an anonymous tip-off, Catholic plotter Guy Fawkes is found in a cellar below the Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder.^[18]
  • Worshipful Company of Gardeners and Worshipful Company of Butchers chartered.^[16]
  • Approximate date: Construction of Northumberland House at Charing Cross for Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton, begins.
• 1608
  • July–December: Plague (which recurs in the two following years).
  • Foundation of Royal Blackheath Golf Club claimed.^[55]
• 1609 – Lord Mayor's Show revived.
• 1611
  • Thomas Sutton founds Charterhouse School on the site of the old Carthusian monastery in Charterhouse Square, Smithfield.
  • Hicks Hall built.^[56]
• 1613
  • 29 September: New River opens to supply London with fresh water.
  • The Honourable The Irish Society incorporated as a consortium of City livery companies to colonise County Londonderry during the Plantation of Ulster.
• 1614 – October: Hope Theatre opens in Southwark.^[51] On 31 October Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy debuts here.
• c. 1615 – Clerkenwell Bridewell (prison) in operation.
• 1616
  • The Anchor Brewery is established by James Monger next to the Globe Theatre in Southwark; it will be the world's largest by the early nineteenth century and brew until the 1970s.^[57]
  • Engraved Visscher panorama of London published.
• 1616–35 – Queen's House built at Greenwich to a design by Inigo Jones.
• 1617
  • 23 August: The first one-way streets are created in alleys near the Thames.^[29][58]
  • December: Worshipful Society of Apothecaries incorporated.^[32]
  • Aldersgate rebuilt.
  • Goldsmiths' Company barge built.
  • Approximate date: New Prison in operation.
• 1618 – The Company of Adventurers of London Trading to the Ports of Africa granted a monopoly on trade from Guinea.
• 1619
  • January: The royal Banqueting House, Whitehall is destroyed by fire. Inigo Jones is commissioned to design a replacement.^[18]
  • 21 June: Alleyn's College of God's Gift established by actor-manager Edward Alleyn at Dulwich, incorporating the school, Dulwich College.
• 1620 – July: The Mayflower embarks about 65 Pilgrims at its home port of Rotherhithe bound for Cape Cod in North America.
• 1621
  • Spring–October (approx.): Corante: or, Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France, one of the first English language newspapers (translated from the Dutch), circulates in London.^[59]
  • Hackney coach first recorded.
• 1622
  • 6 January (probable date): New Banqueting House, Whitehall, opens with a performance of Ben Jonson's The Masque of Augurs designed by the building's architect, Inigo Jones.^[60]
  • 23 May: Nathaniel Butter begins publication of Newes from Most Parts of Christendom or Weekley Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries.^[59]
• 1623 – November/December: Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies published by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount.
• 1624 – The Latymer School and Latymer Upper School are founded by the bequest of Edward Latymer.
• 1625
  • c. August: Over 40,000 killed by bubonic plague in London; court and Parliament temporarily move to Oxford.^[18][61]
  • Queen's Chapel completed in Westminster.
• 1626 – 2 February: Coronation of Charles I of England in Westminster Abbey.^[10]
• 1629
  • May: Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers founded.
  • Approximate date: Development of Lincoln's Inn Fields for housing begins.
• 1630 – The central square of Covent Garden is laid out and a market begins to develop there.
• 1631
  • 31 January: Rebuilt St Katharine Cree church consecrated by William Laud, Bishop of London.^[34]
  • Population: 130,163 residents.
• 1632 – Forty Hall, Enfield, completed.
• 1633 – St Paul's, Covent Garden, designed by Inigo Jones in 1631 overlooking his piazza, opens to worship, the first wholly new church built in London since the English Reformation.
• 1635 – First General Post Office opens to the public, at Bishopsgate.^[5]
• 1636 – Goldsmith's Hall rebuilt.
• 1636–37 – Plague.
• 1637 – Hyde Park opens to the public in Westminster.
• 1640 – 11 December: Root and Branch petition presented to Parliament.
• 1642
  • 4 January: Charles I attempts to arrest five leading members of the Long Parliament, but they escape.^[62] This is the last time any monarch will enter the House of Commons.
  • 2 September: London theatre closure 1642: Parliament orders closure of London's playhouses, effectively ending the era of English Renaissance theatre.^[62]
  • 12 November: Battle of Brentford (First English Civil War): Royalist victory.
  • 13 November: Battle of Turnham Green (First English Civil War): Royalist forces withdraw in face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to take London.^[62]
• 1647
  • 7 August: Oliver Cromwell takes control of the Parliament of England with the New Model Army, an attempt by Presbyterian MPs to raise the City of London having been unsuccessful.^[18]
  • Original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross demolished.
  • Wenceslaus Hollar's Long View of London from Bankside etched in Antwerp.
• 1648
  • 11 September: The Levellers' largest petition, "To The Right Honourable The Commons Of England" (The humble Petition of Thousands well-affected persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Sonthwark Hamblets, and places adjacent), is presented to the Long Parliament after amassing signatories including about a third of all Londoners (including women).^[63]
  • 6 December: Pride's Purge: Troops of the New Model Army under the command of Colonel Thomas Pride (and under the orders of General Ireton) arrest or exclude Presbyterian members of the Long Parliament who are not supporters of the Army's Grandees or Independents, creating the Rump Parliament.^[18]
• 1649
  • 3 January: An explosion of several barrels of gunpowder in Tower Street, London kills 67 people and destroys 60 houses.^[64][65]
  • 30 January: Charles I of England executed outside the Banqueting House, Whitehall.^[66]
• 1652 – Coffee house in business near Cornhill, opened by Pasqua Rosée.^[12]
• 1656
  • May: First performance of The Siege of Rhodes, Part I, by Sir William Davenant, the first English opera (under the guise of a recitative), in a private theatre at his home, Rutland House, in the City. This also includes the innovative use of painted backdrops and the appearance of England's first professional actress, Mrs. Coleman.
  • Winter?: Lisle's Tennis Court built in Lincoln's Inn Fields for real tennis.
• 1657
  • 8 January: Miles Sindercombe and his group of disaffected Levellers are betrayed in their attempt to assassinate Oliver Cromwell by blowing up the Palace of Whitehall and arrested.^[67]
  • 4 February: Resettlement of the Jews in England: Oliver Cromwell gives Antonio Fernandez Carvajal the assurance of the right of Jews to remain in England. This year the country's first synagogue (in Creechurch Lane) and Jewish cemetery in modern times open in London.^[68]
  • England's first chocolate house opens in London,^[69] together with the Rainbow Coffee House, the city's second such establishment.
• 1658
  • 10 March: New London, Connecticut named.
  • Earliest surviving terrace houses in London built on Newington Green.
• 1660
  • 1 January: Samuel Pepys begins writing his diary.^[70]
  • 3 February: Colonel George Monck and his regiment arrive in London.^[5]
  • February: John Rhodes reopens the old Cockpit Theatre, forms a company of young actors and begins to stage plays. His production of Pericles will be the first Shakespearean performance of the Restoration era.
  • 29 May: Charles II arrives in London and assumes the throne, marking the beginning of the English Restoration.^[5]
  • 13–17 October: 8 regicides of Charles I are hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross.
  • 28 November: Royal Society founded at Gresham College.^[33]
  • The new king orders the remodelling of St. James's Park in the French style.
  • Approximate date: Vauxhall Gardens open as the New Spring Gardens.
• 1661
  • 6 January: The Fifth Monarchists unsuccessfully attempt to seize control of London. George Monck's regiment defeats them.
  • 23 April: Coronation of Charles II of England in Westminster Abbey.^[71]
  • 28 June: Lisle's Tennis Court in Lincoln's Inn Fields opens as a playhouse.
  • September: Pall Mall laid out as a thoroughfare in Westminster.
• 1662
  • 9 May: Pepys witnesses a Punch and Judy show in Covent Garden, the first on record.
  • 23 August: An extravagant pageant on the Thames greets the arrival of Charles II and his new queen Catherine of Braganza at the Palace of Whitehall from Hampton Court.^[72]
  • Streets, London and Westminster Act 1662 passed and first hackney carriage licences issued.
  • John Graunt, in one of the earliest uses of statistics, publishes information about births and deaths in London.
• 1663 – 7 May: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane opens.^[73]
• 1664
  • Francis Child enters the London goldsmith's business which, as the private banking house of Child & Co., will still exist the 21st century.^[42]
  • The Russian ambassador donates the first pelicans to live in St. James's Park.
• 1665
  • 6 March: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society begins publication.^[40]
  • March: 15-year-old Nell Gwyn makes her first definitely recorded appearance as an actress on the London stage, having previously been a theatre orange-seller.
  • 12 April: The first recorded victim of the Great Plague of London dies.^[19] On 7 July the King and court leave London to avoid the plague, moving first to Salisbury, then (from 25 September to 1 February 1666) Oxford (where in October Parliament convenes). The City begins use of Bunhill Fields as a burial ground for the victims.
  • Approximate date: Grecian Coffee House established at Wapping.
• 1666 – 2–5 September: Great Fire of London: A large fire which breaks out in the City in the house of a baker on Pudding Lane destroys more than 13,000 buildings including Old St Paul's Cathedral but only 6 people are known to have died.^[19]
• 1667
  • First London Building Act passed to enforce fireproof construction in the rebuilding of the City.^[22]
  • Hedges & Butler established as wine merchants.^[42]
• 1668
  • 23 March (Easter): Bawdy House Riots of 1668 break out.
  • Carmen's Company established.^[16]
• 1669 – Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, visits the Tower of London and gives the Yeomen Warders the nickname "Beefeaters".^[74]
• 1670
  • 21 January: French-born gentleman highwayman Claude Duval, active particularly at Holloway, is hanged at Tyburn; he is thought subsequently to have been buried in St Paul's, Covent Garden.
  • Second rebuilding act passed, raising the tax on coal to provide funds for rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and other City churches destroyed in the Great Fire.
  • Leicester Square laid out.
  • Apothecaries' Hall^[34] and Brewers Hall^[34] built.
• 1671
  • 9 May: Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.^[29]
  • 6 June: Rebuilt Vintners' Company Hall in use in the City.^[27]
  • Dorset Garden Theatre opens.^[75]
  • Merchant Taylors' Hall rebuilt.^[34]
  • Royal Arsenal established as a storage facility at Woolwich.
• 1672
  • Ludgate, Moorgate, and Newgate rebuilt. Rebuilding begins to the designs of Christopher Wren of Temple Bar and the church of St Stephen's, Walbrook in the City.^[18]
  • First public concerts in England; organised by John Banister at Whitefriars, near Fleet Street.^[5]
  • Richard Hoare becomes a partner in the London goldsmith's business which, as private banking house C. Hoare & Co., will survive through to the 21st century.^[76]
• 1673
  • 22 January: Impostor Mary Carleton is hanged in Newgate Prison for multiple thefts and returning from penal transportation.
  • Rebuilding of Temple Bar gate across Fleet Street to a design by Wren completed.^[12]
  • Apothecaries' Garden laid out in Chelsea.^[77]
  • Approximate date: Berkeley House (later Devonshire House) completed in Piccadilly.
• 1674
  • Theatre Royal, Drury Lane reopens having been rebuilt after the Great Fire.^[73]
  • Court house rebuilt.
  • Worshipful Company of Farriers chartered.
  • Two skeletons of children are discovered at the White Tower (Tower of London) and believed at this time to be the remains of the Princes in the Tower; they are subsequently buried in Westminster Abbey.^[78]
• 1675
  • c. 21 June: Reconstruction of St Paul's Cathedral under Sir Christopher Wren begins.^[29]
  • 10 August: Charles II places the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, designed by Wren.^[29]
  • c. October: Equestrian statue of Charles I, Charing Cross (cast c. 1633 to a design by Hubert Le Sueur) erected.
  • 19 December: St Bride's Church, rebuilt to a design by Wren, reopens.^[79]
  • The Green Ribbon Club founded; the earliest political club, based in Fleet Street.^[5]
  • Charles II issues a "Proclamation for the suppression of Coffee Houses" due to the political activity which is occurring in the newly popular establishments.^[80]
  • York Buildings Company ("The Governor and Company for raising the Thames Water at York Buildings") established.
  • Bethlem Hospital for the insane moves to new buildings in Moorfields designed by Robert Hooke.
• 1676
  • 26 May: Fire in Southwark destroys 625 houses.^[5]
  • Summer: The Royal Greenwich Observatory, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, is completed.^[81]
  • Exeter Exchange built, Wren's rebuilt St Magnus-the-Martyr church^[34] completed, and first Greek Orthodox church in England, at Hog Lane, consecrated.^[5]
  • The hatters that become James Lock & Co. of St James's is established by Robert Davis.
• 1677
  • Monument to the Great Fire of London, designed by Wren and Hooke, completed.^[12]
  • The George Inn, Southwark rebuilt.
  • The John Roan School is established in Greenwich.
  • The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair comes into the hands of the Grosvenor family when Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet marries the heiress Mary Davies.
• 1678 – 17 October: Magistrate Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey is found murdered in Primrose Hill; Titus Oates claims it as a proof of the (fabricated) "Popish Plot".^[5]
• 1679
  • 17 November: After a large procession through the streets of London, an effigy of the Pope is burned.
  • 27 November: The Duke of Monmouth enters London amid scenes of widespread celebration.
  • New churches of St Edmund, King and Martyr and St Stephen's, Walbrook, completed to designs by Wren.^[79]
  • Joseph Truman acquires the Black Eagle Brewery in Brick Lane, forming Truman's Brewery.
  • Approximate date: First bagnio opens in London.^[82]
• 1680
  • 27 March: William Dockwra's London Penny Post mail service begins.
  • York Buildings^[75] built.
  • Approximate date: Jonathan's Coffee-House in business.
• 1681
  • June–July: The City's Court of Common Council orders inscriptions for the Monument to the Great Fire of London and the house in Pudding Lane where the fire started blaming it on Papists.^[83]
  • 1 July: Oliver Plunkett, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, falsely convicted of treason, is hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, the last Catholic martyr to die in England.^[84] Catholic intriguer Edward Fitzharris is executed on the same day.
  • 22 December: Charles II issues a warrant for the building of the Royal Hospital Chelsea for wounded and retired soldiers.^[18]
• 1682
  • 11 March: Work begins on construction of the Royal Hospital Chelsea^[29] to a design by Wren; it will open to Chelsea pensioners in 1692.
  • 19 November: Fire at Wapping makes 1,500 homeless.^[5]
  • Hungerford Market built in Westminster.
• 1683
  • 12 December: River Thames frost fair begins, lasting several months.^[12] The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty begins when James Chipperfield introduces performing animals to England at the fair in 1684.
  • Churches of St Benet's, Paul's Wharf and St James Garlickhythe, rebuilt to designs by Wren, completed.^[34]
  • Richard Sadler opens the first Sadler's Wells Theatre as a "Musick House".
  • Friendly Society of London, an early fire insurance company, in business.^[49]
• 1684
  • 10 Downing Street built in Westminster.
  • Clarendon House demolished for the construction of Albemarle Street.
• 1685
  • 23 April: Coronation of the Catholic James II in Westminster Abbey.^[5]
  • September: Edward Hemming establishes the first organised street lighting, using oil lamps, in London.^[5]
  • 18–19 October: Louis XIV of France issues the Edict of Fontainebleau, which revokes the Edict of Nantes and deprives Huguenots of civil rights. Many flee to London where they establish a domestic silk weaving industry in Spitalfields and "French ordinaries" (restaurants) in Soho.
  • 23 October: Elizabeth Gaunt, burned at the stake at Tyburn for alleged complicity in the Rye House Plot, becomes the last woman executed for political treason in England.
  • Kensington Square laid out.^[85]
• 1686 – St Andrew Holborn church, rebuilt to a design by Wren, completed.^[34]
• 1687 – Christ Church Greyfriars (Newgate Street)^[34] and churches of St Lawrence Jewry and St Clement's, Eastcheap, all rebuilt to designs by Wren, completed.^[86]
• 1688
  • By July: First definitely known performance of the Henry Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas, at Josias Priest's girls' school in Chelsea.^[87]
  • 18 December: Glorious Revolution: William of Orange enters London.^[5]
  • Old Palace Terrace built in Richmond.^[85]
  • Over the next five years Lloyd's of London marine insurance market begins to form on the premises of Edward Lloyd (coffeehouse owner).^[12]
• 1689
  • 13 February: William III and Mary II are proclaimed co-rulers of England in a ceremony at Guildhall.^[88]
  • 11 April: Coronation of William and Mary in Westminster Abbey by the Bishop of London, Henry Compton.^[10] In May work begins on remodelling Hampton Court Palace to the design of Sir Christopher Wren for them^[89] together with the Hampton Court Maze; this summer the royal couple purchase Nottingham House and commission Wren to expand it to form Kensington Palace; and William commissions a new royal barge (shallop) for Mary.
• 1690
  • 7 January: The first recorded full peal is rung, at St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City, marking a new era in change ringing.
  • March: London, Quo Warranto Judgment Reversed Act 1689 ("An Act for Reversing the Judgment in a Quo Warranto against the City of London and for Restoreing the City of London to its antient Rights and Privileges") passed by Parliament.^[90]
  • Approximate date: Great Synagogue of London built for Ashkenazi Jews.
• 1691 – 9 April: A fire at the Palace of Whitehall destroys its Stone Gallery.
• 1693
  • 27 February: The Ladies' Mercury, the first periodical specifically for women, begins publication^[59] but lasts only for four weeks.
  • Financier Richard Hoare relocates Hoare's Bank (founded 1672) from Cheapside to Fleet Street.
  • White's established as "Mrs. White's Chocolate House" in Mayfair by Francesco Bianco.
• 1694
  • February: Première of Thomas Southerne's play The Fatal Marriage at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.^[73]
  • 27 July: Bank of England established by royal charter.^[12]
  • 25 October: Queen Mary II founds the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich;^[91] first section completed 1705.
  • New All Hallows Lombard Street church completed to a design by Wren.^[34]
  • Approximate date: Development of Seven Dials begins.
• 1695
  • Flying-Post newspaper begins publication.^[40]
  • Trinity Hospital in the Mile End Road established as almshouses for "28 decay’d Masters & Commanders of Ships or the Widows of such"^[92] by Trinity House.
  • Première of Purcell's opera The Indian Queen.^[75]
  • "Don Saltero's Coffee Shop" opens in Chelsea.
• 1696
  • Queenhithe windmill built.
  • Dawk's News-Letter (evening newspaper) begins publication.^[59]
• 1697 – 2 December: St Paul's Cathedral holds its first service after rebuilding (to celebrate the Treaty of Ryswick).
• 1698
  • 4 January: The Palace of Whitehall is destroyed by fire.^[16]
  • 11 January–21 April: Czar Peter I of Russia visits England as part of his Grand Embassy, making a particular study of shipbuilding.^[93]
  • December: Chalybeate well given to the poor of Hampstead.
  • The widow Bourne sets up the business which becomes Berry Bros. & Rudd. They will still be operating as wine merchants in the 21st century.^[94]
• 1699
  • Billingsgate Fish Market is sanctioned as a permanent institution by Act of Parliament.^[95]
  • Howland Great Wet Dock opens as the first of what become the Surrey Commercial Docks.^[96]

1700s

• c. 1700 – Kit-Cat Club established.^[97]
• 1701
  • Bevis Marks Synagogue built.^[12]
  • Illustrated magazine Memoirs for the Curious begins publication.^[59]
• 1702 – 23 April: Coronation of Anne, Queen of Great Britain in Westminster Abbey.^[10]
• 1703 – Buckingham House built in Westminster.
• 1704 – Aaron Hart becomes rabbi of the Great Synagogue of London and de facto the country's first chief rabbi.^[98]
• 1705 – 9 April: The Queen's Theatre in Haymarket is opened by John Vanbrugh and William Congreve.^[73]
• 1706 – October^[42]
  • Thomas Twining opens Twinings in the Strand as Britain's first known tea house; it will still be in business into the 21st century.
  • The predecessors of food manufacturers Crosse & Blackwell set up business in London.
• 1707
  • 17 December: Major breach of Thames embankment at Dagenham.^[96]
  • London Building Act passed to prevent use of combustible façade materials in the City,^[49] extended to Westminster.^[22]
  • Fortnum & Mason in business in Westminster.
• 1708 – 26 October: Completion of construction of the new St Paul's Cathedral.^[99]
• 1709
  • 12 April: Tatler magazine begins publication; on 8 July The Female Tatler follows.^[59]
  • 19 April: Worshipful Company of Fan Makers chartered.
• 1710
  • 1 March: Sacheverell riots.^[5]
  • Commission for Building Fifty New Churches set up by the New Churches in London and Westminster Act 1710.
  • Sun Fire Office (insurance firm) set up.^[77]
• 1710–12: Roehampton House built.
• 1710–28: Church Road, Hampstead, built up.^[85]
• 1711
  • 24 February: Première of Handel's Rinaldo, the first Italian opera written for the London stage, at the Queen's Theatre, Haymarket.^[100]
  • 1 March: The Spectator begins publication.
  • Crown Court Church established in Westminster.
  • Marlborough House (begun 1709) completed.
• 1711–14 – Hawkubites gang at large.
• 1712 – Spring: Mohocks gang supposedly at large.
• 1713 – Hanover Square development begins.
• 1714
  • March: The Scriblerus Club, an informal group of literary friends, is formed by Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, John Arbuthnot (at whose London house they meet), Thomas Parnell, Henry St. John and Robert Harley.^[101]
  • Geffrye Almshouses established by the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers in Kingsland Road.
• 1715
  • January: Custom House severely damaged in a fire, requiring complete rebuilding.
  • 3 May: A total solar eclipse is the last total eclipse visible in London for almost 900 years.
  • 1 August: Watermen first compete in a rowing race on the Thames for the Doggett's Coat and Badge sponsored by actor-manager Thomas Doggett.
  • Allen & Hanburys are established as pharmacists by Silvanus Bevan at Old Plough Court.^[42]
• 1716
  • An accidental explosion at The Foundery in Moorfields kills the owner and 16 workers.
  • John Gay publishes the poem Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London.
• 1717
  • 1 January: Count Carl Gyllenborg, the Swedish ambassador, is arrested in London over a plot to assist the Pretender James Francis Edward Stuart.^[18]
  • 2 March: Dancer John Weaver performs in the first ballet in Britain, shown at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, The Loves of Mars and Venus.
  • 24 June: Grand Lodge of London and Westminster, the first Freemasonic Grand Lodge (modern-day United Grand Lodge of England), is founded.^[29]
  • 17 July: George Frideric Handel's Water Music performed on a barge on the Thames for King George I.^[18]
  • August: Handel becomes house composer at Cannons.
  • September (Autumnal Equinox): The first known Druid revival ceremony is held by John Toland at Primrose Hill to found the Mother Grove, which is later to become the Ancient Order of Druids.
  • Thomas Fairchild, a nurseryman at Hoxton in the East End, becomes the first person to produce a successful scientific plant hybrid, Dianthus Caryophyllus barbatus, known as "Fairchild's Mule".^[102]
  • The Royal Brass Foundry is established at Woolwich Arsenal in a building designed by Sir John Vanbrugh.
• 1719 – Hellfire Club and Hand in Hand Fire & Life Insurance Society^[103] founded.
• 1720
  • May: First patient admitted to the Westminster Public Infirmary, predecessor of St George's Hospital.
  • 11 June: Royal Exchange (marine insurers) and London Assurance companies incorporated^[104] by the "Bubble Act".
  • 29 December: Haymarket Theatre opens.
• 1721
  • Grosvenor Square development begins in Westminster.
  • Thomas Guy founds Guy's Hospital, originally for incurables discharged from St Thomas'.^[105]
• 1722
  • March: Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year is published under the initials H.F., purporting to be an eyewitness account of the Great Plague of London in 1665.
  • Bakers Hall built.^[34]
  • Traffic on London Bridge required to keep left.^[17]
• 1724
  • 16 November: Notorious criminal Jack Sheppard hanged at Tyburn.
  • Completion of Cannons, a house in Edgware for James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, and Maids of Honour Row, terraced houses on Richmond Green.
• 1725
  • 2 March: A night watchman finds a severed head by the Thames; it is later recognized to be that of the husband of Catherine Hayes. She and an accomplice are later executed.^[106]
  • 24 May: Jonathan Wild, fraudulent "Thief Taker General", is hanged at Tyburn, for actually aiding criminals.^[107]
  • Church of St George's, Hanover Square completed.
  • A fire in Wapping destroys 70 houses.^[16]
• 1726
  • 20 October: New church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Westminster dedicated.^[108][109]
  • Fournier Street built in Spitalfields, mainly occupied by Huguenot silk weavers.^[85]
  • Original Academy of Vocal Music founded.
• 1727 – 11 October: Coronation of George II of Great Britain^[10] in Westminster Abbey.
• 1728
  • 29 January: Première of Gay's Beggar's Opera at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
  • Queen Caroline divides Kensington Gardens from Hyde Park.
• 1729
  • November: Completion of the first (wooden) Putney Bridge as the only fixed crossing of the Thames between London Bridge and Kingston.
  • Completion of East India House;^[26] Christ Church, Spitalfields^[33] and St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate church^[34] (both designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor); and Marble Hill House, Twickenham. Chiswick House is designed by the owner, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, and William Kent.
  • Opening of Dr Williams's Library as a research centre for nonconformist theology.^[18]
• 1730
  • 3 February: The Daily Advertiser is founded as the first newspaper funded by advertising.^[18]
  • River Westbourne dammed to form The Serpentine (lake) in Hyde Park.
  • Perfumer Floris of London is established as a barber's.
• 1731
  • 1 January: Gentleman's Magazine begins publication.^[110]
  • May: Round Pond completed in Kensington Gardens.^[96]
  • 23 October: Fire at Ashburnham House damages the nationally-owned Cotton library, housed here at this time.
• 1732
  • Prince Frederick's Barge built.
  • 7 December: The original Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (the modern-day Royal Opera House) is opened by John Rich.^[29]
• 1733
  • 16 October: Devonshire House, the former Berkeley House in Piccadilly, is destroyed by fire.
  • St Giles in the Fields church rebuilt.
  • St George's Hospital opens at Hyde Park Corner.
• 1734 – The Bank of England moves to its modern-day location in Threadneedle Street.
• 1735
  • 22 September: Sir Robert Walpole becomes the first Prime Minister to occupy 10 Downing Street as his official residence in his capacity as First Lord of the Treasury.
  • Sublime Society of Beef Steaks founded.^[97]
  • William Hogarth produces his A Rake's Progress series of paintings.^[18]
• 1736
  • 19 February: Première of Handel's Alexander's Feast at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.
  • 27 July: Riots in east London protesting at Irish immigrants providing cheap labour.^[5]
  • Parliament passes the Gin Act 1736 in an attempt to curb the Gin Craze.
• 1738
  • 24 May: Aldersgate Day: John Wesley experiences a spiritual rebirth at a Moravian Church meeting in Aldersgate, essentially launching the Methodist movement.^[74]
  • Marylebone Gardens open.^[111]
• 1739
  • 16 January: First performance of George Frideric Handel's oratorio Saul at The King's Theatre, Haymarket.^[18]
  • 29 January: Building of Westminster Bridge begins.
  • 4 April: First performance of Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt at The King's Theatre.^[18]
  • 17 October: Foundling Hospital incorporated by Thomas Coram.^[26]
  • 25 December: Thames freezes.
  • Building on Oxford Street begins.
• 1740
  • 23 September: London Infirmary established;^[19] it opens on 3 November in Moorfields.
  • Thomas Witherby establishes his stationery business in London, specializing in printing and publishing for the marine insurance industry. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, as Witherby Seamanship, it will claim to be the oldest independent publisher in the English speaking world.
  • Approximate date:
    • Devonshire House completed in Piccadilly.
    • Booth's London dry gin first produced.
• 1741
  • 19 October: London stage debut of actor David Garrick in Richard III.^[18]
  • Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, established to train officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers.^[112]
  • St Katherine Coleman church rebuilt.
• 1742
  • 28 May: Opening in London of first known British bagnio to offer a swimming pool.^[82]
  • September: Construction starts on the Foundling Hospital.^[16]
  • Chelsea Water Works Company introduces a Newcomen atmospheric engine at Pimlico, the first economically successful steam pumping engine in London.^[113]
  • Samuel Whitbread forms a partnership to acquire breweries, foundation of the Whitbread hospitality business.
  • Wilton's restaurant begins life as an oyster stall in Haymarket.^[114]
• 1743
  • 21 February: Première of Handel's oratorio Samson at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.
  • Ranelagh Gardens opens as pleasure grounds in Chelsea.
• c. 1743–45 – Chelsea porcelain factory established.
• 1744
  • Auctioneer Baker (later Sotheby's) in business.
  • Baltic Exchange formed in the City.
  • Rebuilding of St Botolph's Aldgate church by George Dance completed.^[34]
• 1745
  • 28 September: The song later to become the British national anthem God Save the King is first performed at the Drury Lane Theatre in a setting by Thomas Arne.^[29]
  • 4 December: Jacobite rising: Jacobite forces from Scotland reach as far south as Derby causing panic in London.^[18]
  • West towers of Westminster Abbey (begun 1722) completed to a design by Nicholas Hawksmoor.^[5]
• 1746
  • Carmen become a livery company.
  • Rocque's Map of London published.
• 1747
  • 31 January: The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital.^[29]
  • Piers of Westminster Bridge, under construction, are found to be sinking.^[17]
• 1748
  • 28 March: A fire in the City causes over a million pounds worth of damage.^[16]
  • Henry Fielding organises the forerunner of the Bow Street Runners, with eight men at first.^[74]
  • George and Vulture pub built in the City.
• 1750
  • 8 February: An earthquake is felt in London.^[115]
  • 8 March: A second more powerful earthquake is felt in London.^[115]
  • 18 November: First Westminster Bridge opens,^[116] the only fixed crossing of the Thames between London Bridge and Putney.
  • Berners Street laid out in Westminster.^[25]
  • Whitbread acquire a porter brewery in Chiswell Street.
• 1751
  • Society of Antiquaries of London incorporated.
  • St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics founded.^[77]
• 1752
  • Mansion House completed.
  • Liberty Bell originally cast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry for Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia.
• 1753
  • 29 January: After a month's absence, Elizabeth Canning returns to her mother's home in London and claims that she was abducted. The following criminal trial causes uproar.
  • 7 June: British Museum established by Act of Parliament.^[19]
  • 13 December: First Hampton Court Bridge opens, built of wood in Chinoiserie style.
  • First stage of Horace Walpole's Gothic Revival 'Castle' at Strawberry Hill completed.
• 1755 – 15 April: Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published by the group of London booksellers who commissioned it in June 1746.^[117] Johnson has been working on the project at his home, 17, Gough Square.
• 1756
  • 25 June: The Marine Society founded.
  • First section of New Road opens.
• 1757
  • 4 April: Lord Mayor of London's State Coach commissioned.
  • Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, the annual directory of prostitutes, is first published.
  • Simpson's Tavern, Cornhill, established.^[118]
• 1758 – 11 April: A temporary wooden bridge erected while the centre stone span of London Bridge is under repair, burns down.
• 1759
  • 15 January: The British Museum opens at Montagu House, Bloomsbury.^[29]
  • 4 June: First Kew Bridge, a wooden toll bridge over the Thames, opens to the public, replacing a ferry.
  • August: Holbein Gate demolished.
• 1760
  • Hamleys toy shop in business in High Holborn.
  • Berkeley Square laid out.^[25]
  • Bishopsgate, Cripplegate and Ludgate of the London Wall demolished.^[12]
• 1761
  • 8 February: An earthquake breaks chimneys in Limehouse and Poplar.
  • 8 March: A second earthquake occurs in north London, Hampstead and Highgate.
  • 22 September: Coronation of George III of Great Britain in Westminster Abbey.^[10]
  • Buckingham Palace is sold to George III; remodelling as a house for his new wife Queen Charlotte begins the following year.^[119]
  • Orangery and pagoda in Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, designed by William Chambers.
• 1762
  • January: The "Cock Lane ghost" appears.
  • 22 May: Royal family first takes up residence at Buckingham House.^[5]
  • The last remaining buildings are cleared from London Bridge.^[120]
• 1763 – 16 May: James Boswell is introduced to Samuel Johnson at Thomas Davies's bookshop in Covent Garden.
• 1764
  • February: Joshua Reynolds co-founds The Club (dining club) with Samuel Johnson.
  • 23 April: Mozart family grand tour: 8-year-old W. A. Mozart settles in London for a year.^[121]
  • December: Benjamin Franklin arrives in London to represent the American colonies (following a previous visit in 1757).
  • Horse Shoe Brewery established at St Giles Circus for the production of porter.
  • Lloyd's Register of Ships begins publication.^[12]
• 1765 – February: Almack's Assembly Rooms open in St James's.^[122]
• 1766
  • May: London Paving and Lighting Act.
  • 5 December: James Christie holds the first sale at Christie's auction house.^[18]
  • Tattersalls founded by Richard Tattersall at Hyde Park Corner.
• 1768
  • 9 January: Philip Astley stages the first modern circus, with acrobats on galloping horses.
  • 10 May: John Wilkes is imprisoned for writing an article for The North Briton severely criticising King George III. This action provokes protesters to riot; in Southwark, troops fire on the mob, killing seven, the Massacre of St George's Fields.^[123]
  • 10 December: Royal Academy of Arts established.^[124]
  • John Murray (publisher) established.
  • Rebuilding of Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing by George Dance for his own use.
• 1769
  • 25 April–27 May: First Royal Academy summer exhibition held.
  • 28 June: The Morning Chronicle newspaper begins publication.
  • 7 August: Hackney Cut opens.
  • September: Spitalfield Riots by silk weavers attempting to maintain their pay rates culminate in arrests by soldiers and the killing of two weavers.
  • 19 November: First Blackfriars Bridge opens.^[12]
  • Work on Syon House, to the design of Robert Adam, ceases.^[125]
  • Gordon's London dry gin first produced.^[126]
• 1770
  • August: Lady's Magazine begins publication.^[110]
  • 17 September: Limehouse Cut opens.
  • Original Coal Exchange opens.
• 1771
  • November: The first Battersea Bridge, a wooden toll bridge over the Thames at Chelsea, opens to pedestrians (to vehicles, 1772).^[17]
  • St George's Circus intersection built.
• 1772
  • 2 November: The Morning Post newspaper begins publication.^[110]
  • Adelphi Buildings constructed in Westminster by Robert Adam and his brothers.
• 1773
  • An informal Stock Exchange opens at Threadneedle Street.^[5]
  • Astley's Amphitheatre founded in Westminster Bridge Road.
  • The original sundial column is removed from Seven Dials and acquired by James Paine.
• 1774
  • 17 April: The first avowedly Unitarian congregation, Essex Street Chapel, is founded by Theophilus Lindsey.
  • 2 May: The Society of Antiquaries of London open the coffin of King Edward I in Westminster Abbey and discover that his body has been perfectly preserved for 467 years.^[127]
  • London Building Act ("Black Act") aims to standardise the quality and construction of buildings.^[49]
  • Residential development of Highbury Fields begins.^[85]
• 1776
  • 23 May: First purpose-built Freemasons' Hall in England opened in Great Queen Street to a design by Thomas Sandby.
  • Somerset House construction begins in Westminster.
• 1777
  • 12 January: Richmond Bridge over the Thames opens to traffic, replacing a ferry.
  • 8 May: First performance of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy of manners The School for Scandal at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.^[18]
  • 24 July: Rebuilt church of St Alphege London Wall opens.^[34]
  • Hans Place is laid out in Knightsbridge.^[85]
• 1778
  • 1 November: Wesley's Chapel in the City Road opens for worship.
  • Second wooden Hampton Court Bridge built.
  • Joseph Bramah patents an improved form of flush toilet which he begins to manufacture.^[128]
  • Flint & Clark, the predecessors of Debenhams, begin trading as drapers.^[129]
• 1779 – Robert Adam completes his remodelling of Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath for William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield begun in 1764.
• 1780
  • 2 June: An Anti-Catholic mob led by Lord George Gordon marches on Parliament leading to the outbreak of the Gordon Riots, in which the City banks are attacked.^[29]
  • 7 June: The Gordon Riots are ended by the intervention of troops. About 285 people are shot dead, with another 200 wounded and around 450 arrested.^[33]
  • Finsbury Dispensary founded.^[77]
  • Middlesex Sessions House opens on Clerkenwell Green.
  • The original Craven Cottage is built by William Craven, 6th Baron Craven.
• 1781 – July: Barclay Perkins & Co take over the Anchor Brewery in Southwark for the brewing of porter from Hester Thrale.
• 1782
  • 10 October: Sarah Siddons makes a triumphant return to the Drury Lane Theatre in the title rôle of Garrick's adaptation of Thomas Southerne's Isabella, or, The Fatal Marriage.
  • 4 November: Surrey Theatre opens as the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy in Blackfriars Road.^[59]
  • First Foot Patrol in London.
  • Rebuilt Newgate Prison completed.^[39]
• 1783
  • March–May: Zong massacre trials held.^[130]
  • 8 June: Surrey Chapel, Southwark, is established by evangelical preacher Rowland Hill.
  • 7 November: The last public execution is held at Tyburn. From 9 December executions are held outside the new Newgate Prison.^[29]
• 1784
  • c. April–August: William Roy sets out the baseline of the Anglo-French Survey (1784–1790) on Hounslow Heath.
  • 2 April: Construction of Severndroog Castle on Shooter's Hill begins.
  • 21 August: Joseph Bramah patents the Bramah lock which he begins to manufacture.^[131]
  • 15 September: Italian Vincenzo Lunardi makes the first hydrogen balloon flight in Britain, from Moorfields to South Mimms.^[29]
  • Development of Somers Town begins.
• 1785
  • London Hospital Medical College opens as England's first chartered medical school.
  • New Spring Gardens renamed Vauxhall Gardens.
• 1787
  • 31 May: The original Lord's Cricket Ground holds its first cricket match;^[18] Marylebone Cricket Club founded.^[5]
  • John Courage acquires the Anchor Brewhouse in Shad Thames.
• 1788
  • 1 January: First edition of The Times newspaper published under this title (launched 1785 as The Daily Universal Register).^[130]
  • Admiralty House built on Whitehall.
  • Revolution Society formed.
  • The group that later becomes the Royal Philanthropic Society is formed to assist homeless children.
• 1789
  • 4 May: Boydell Shakespeare Gallery opens.
  • 22 September: First stone Kew Bridge opens.
  • London plane trees (Platanus × acerifolia) planted in Berkeley Square.
  • Rowney, established in 1783 as perfumers, enter the artists' supplies business.^[42]
• 1790 – 23 June: Alleged London Monster arrested; he later receives two years' imprisonment for three assaults.
• 1791
  • 1 January: Austrian composer Joseph Haydn arrives in England at the invitation of London resident impresario Johann Peter Salomon; here his concerts are huge successes. On 11 March the first of his London symphonies, Symphony No. 96, is premièred at the Hanover Square Rooms. He visits again in 1794.
  • First St James's, Spanish Place (Roman Catholic) built as a chapel, primarily to serve the Spanish Embassy.
  • Camden Town development begins.^[25]
  • Giltspur Street Compter (prison) built.^[26]
  • Architect John Soane begins reconstruction of the Bank of England.
• 1792
  • 25 January: Radical London Corresponding Society formed.^[130]
  • 21 June: Iolo Morganwg holds the first Gorsedd ceremony, on Primrose Hill.
  • 29 September: First St Patrick's Church, Soho Square (Roman Catholic) consecrated as a chapel, primarily to serve the Irish.
  • Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna establish the newsagent's business in Little Grosvenor Street which will become W H Smith.^[132]
• 1793
  • Painter Robert Barker opens his panorama in a purpose-built rotunda off Leicester Square.
  • Permanent Cavalry Barracks, Hounslow, established.
• 1794
  • 12 March: Rebuilt Theatre Royal, Drury Lane opens.^[74]
  • 23 July: Ratcliffe Fire destroys over 400 homes.
  • Construction of houses on the edge of Blackheath, designed by Michael Searles, begins: The Paragon (a crescent), South Row and Montpelier Row; they will be completed in 1805.^[85]
  • Coldbath Fields Prison rebuilt.
  • William Blake publishes Songs of Experience including the poem "London".
• 1795
  • 22 September: London Missionary Society established.^[21]
  • 29 October: George III pelted with stones by an angry mob as bread riots continue.^[5]
  • Pantheon rebuilt.^[41]
  • Ackermann print-shop in business.
• 1796
  • 1 February: Protests over the price of bread culminate in Queen Charlotte being hit by a stone as she and George III return from a trip to the theatre.^[5]
  • December: Coldest day recorded in London, –6 °F (–21.1 °C) in Greenwich.
• 1797
  • 15 January: London haberdasher John Hetherington wears the first top hat in public and attracts a large crowd of onlookers. He is later fined £50 for causing public nuisance.^[29]
  • Hatchards bookshop established in Piccadilly by John Hatchard.
• 1798
  • Henry Maudslay sets up the mechanical engineering business that becomes Maudslay, Sons and Field.
  • Rules (restaurant) is opened by Thomas Rule in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden as an oyster bar, making it London's oldest restaurant on its original site.^[133]
• 1799 – Gunter's Tea Shop in business.

19th century

1800s–1840s

• 1800
  • 8 January: First soup kitchens open in London.^[5]
  • 13 January: Royal Institution granted a royal charter.^[74]
  • 22 March: Company of Surgeons granted a royal charter to become the Royal College of Surgeons in London.^[74]
  • 15 May: George III survives two assassination attempts in London: In Hyde Park, a bullet intended for him hits a man standing alongside; and later at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, two bullets fired by an insane man hit the wooden panel behind him.^[134]
  • Henry Maudslay, in London, develops the first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe, allowing standardisation of screw thread sizes for the first time,^[135][136] and at about this date develops a bench micrometer.^[59]
• 1801
  • 1 March: London Stock Exchange founded^[74] as a regulated institution; its new building is completed on 30 December.
  • 10 March: The first British census is carried out. Population: 128,129; county 831,181; Greater London 1,114,644.^[137][138]
• 1802
  • 19 April: Joseph Grimaldi first presents his white-faced clown character "Joey", at Sadler's Wells Theatre.^[139]
  • 28 June: Balloonist André-Jacques Garnerin ascends from Chelsea.^[140]
  • 5 July: Garnerin and Edward Hawke Locker make a 17-mile (27.4-km) balloon flight from Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood to Chingford in just over 15 minutes.
  • 10 July: Grand Junction Canal opens its arm to Paddington Basin; passenger boat service to Uxbridge starts.
  • 27 August: West India Docks, first commercial docks in London, open.^[5]
  • 3 September: William Wordsworth's sonnet "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" written.
  • 16 November: Arrest of ringleaders of the Despard Plot. On 21 February 1803 seven are hanged and decapitated publicly at Horsemonger Lane Gaol before a crowd of at least 20,000, one of the largest public gatherings ever up to this date.^[141][142]
  • Marie Tussaud first exhibits her wax sculptures in London.^[18]
  • London Fever Hospital founded.
• 1803
  • After April: Richard Trevithick's London Steam Carriage is demonstrated on the roads.
  • 26 July: The Surrey Iron Railway, a horse-worked wagonway between Wandsworth and Croydon, opens, being the first public railway line in England.
  • Frederick Albert Winsor gives a demonstration of gas lighting at the old Lyceum Theatre.^[143]
  • Trinity Buoy Wharf established.
  • The Globe newspaper begins publication.
• 1804
  • Horticultural Society of London founded.
  • Rebuilding of Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing by John Soane for his own use completed.
• 1805
  • 20 January: London Docks open.^[29]
  • 25 March: Moorfields Eye Hospital is opened as the London Dispensary for Curing Diseases of the Eye and Ear by John Cunningham Saunders.^[144]
  • 4 June: First Trooping the Colour ceremony on Horse Guards Parade.^[29]
  • September: Merchantman Boddington (1781 ship) stranded and wrecked in the Thames off Blackwall.
  • 6 November: News of the victory at Trafalgar and Nelson's death reaches London in the early hours of this morning,^[145] the bearer, Lieut. Lapenotière, having made his last change of horses on his post from Falmouth the previous evening at Hounslow.
  • 9 December: City Canal opens across the Isle of Dogs (later incorporated into West India Docks).
  • Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, given its Royal prefix.
• 1806
  • 9 January: Funeral procession of Lord Nelson from The Admiralty to St Paul's Cathedral.
  • 18 January: London Institution founded to promote higher education.^[21]
  • East India Docks completed.^[96]
  • Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, opens its new building designed by James Wyatt.
  • Royal Philanthropic Society incorporated.
• 1807
  • 28 January: First demonstration of street gas lighting, in Pall Mall.
  • 23 February: Around forty people are killed in a crush attending a public hanging.^[146]
  • 13 March: Dock at Rotherhithe built by Grand Surrey Canal company opens; the first section of canal follows.
  • Addington Palace becomes a summer residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, Croydon Palace being sold.
• 1808
  • 8 July-18 September: Richard Trevithick's steam locomotive Catch Me Who Can is demonstrated in London.
  • 20 September: The original Theatre Royal, Covent Garden is destroyed by fire along with most of the scenery, costumes and scripts. Rebuilding begins in December.
• 1809
  • 24 February: The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is destroyed by fire. On being encountered drinking in the street while watching the conflagration, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the proprietor, is reported as saying: "A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside."^[147]
  • 18 September: A new Theatre Royal, Covent Garden opens to replace the first burnt down in 1808, with a performance of Macbeth. An increase in ticket prices causes the Old Price Riots which last for 64 days until the manager, John Philip Kemble, reverses the price rise.
  • 22 October: Croydon Canal opens.
  • 10 November: The Berners Street Hoax: Theodore Hook manages to attract dozens of people to 54 Berners Street.
• 1810
  • April: Rioting after the imprisonment of Sir Francis Burdett, MP, charged with libel against Parliament after calling for reform of the House of Commons.^[5]
  • 8 July: Vere Street Coterie: Police raid a "molly house" and arrest 27 men for sodomy or attempted sodomy; a man and a boy are eventually hanged on conviction.
  • Stepney Academy established as a Baptist ministry training college.
  • Rev. Dr. William Pearson establishes Temple Grove School at East Sheen,^[148] perhaps the earliest preparatory school in the country.
  • Sake Dean Mahomet opens the Hindoostanee Coffee House, the first Indian restaurant in London.^[149]
  • Thomas Cubitt sets up his building firm in Gray's Inn Road.
• 1811
  • 7–19 December: Ratcliff Highway murders.
  • Building of Regent Street begins John Nash's development of the West End.^[5]
  • Building of Tobacco Dock begins.^[96]
  • Novello & Co music publisher in business.^[150]
• 1812
  • 13 April: Attempted road tunnel at Archway collapses during construction.
  • 10 October: Rebuilt Theatre Royal, Drury Lane opens.
  • Gas street lighting begins.^[151]
  • New North Road built as a turnpike.
  • French chef Jacques Mivart founds a hotel in Mayfair that will become Claridge's.
• 1813
  • 24 January: The Philharmonic Society of London is formed, holding its first concert on 8 March.
  • 21 August: Archway Road cutting opens.
  • 25 December: William Debenham joins Thomas Clark in a partnership to manage a draper's store in London, origin of the modern-day Debenhams department stores.
  • 27 December–3 January 1814: A thick fog blankets London causing the Prince Regent to turn back from a trip to Hatfield House and a mail coach to take 7 hours to reach Uxbridge on its way to Birmingham.^[16]
  • 31 December: Westminster Bridge is illuminated by gas lighting provided by the Gas Light and Coke Company from the world's first public gasworks nearby.^[152]
• 1814
  • 14 January: Last River Thames frost fair.^[29]
  • 12 February: A fire destroys the Custom House.^[16]
  • 21 February: Great Stock Exchange Fraud.
  • 1 April: The Gas Light and Coke Company begins the world's first permanent public gas lighting of streets in the parish of St Margaret's, Westminster,^[153] extending to other parts of London by 25 December.^[154]
  • April: Louis XVIII of France visits the city.^[155]
  • 28 August: Most remains of Winchester Palace in Southwark are destroyed in a fire.
  • 17 October: London Beer Flood: A large vat of porter in Meux's Brewery bursts, demolishing buildings and killing nine.
• 1815
  • 23 January: First Thames steamer known to enter regular service, Margery on the "Long Ferry" to Gravesend.
  • 7 April: Lord Byron and Walter Scott meet for the first time, in the offices of publisher John Murray, 50 Albemarle Street.^[156]
  • 21 June: News of the Battle of Waterloo reaches London.
  • London Victory Parade of 1815.
  • London Docks completed at Wapping.
  • Jones, Watts and Doulton begin life as a stoneware pottery in Lambeth.
  • New building for London Institution opens in Finsbury Circus, the first major building contract for Thomas Cubitt.
• 1816
  • 4 June: First Vauxhall Bridge opens, the first iron bridge over the Thames.
  • 14 June: Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace founded.^[157]
  • 26 June: Millbank Prison admits its first prisoners, all women.^[39]
  • 12 August: Regent's Canal opens from Paddington to Camden.
  • 15 November & 2 December: Spa Fields riots by supporters of the radical Thomas Spence.
  • English Opera House opens.
  • Boosey, music publisher, moves to Holles Street.^[150]
  • Royal Small Arms Factory completed at Enfield.
  • Name Griffin Brewery first applied to the 17th century site in Chiswick.
• 1817
  • 18 June: First Waterloo Bridge, designed by John Rennie, opens.^[116]
  • 6 August: Gas lighting is introduced on stage in the West End theatre by The English Opera House (extended to the auditorium on 8 September). On 6 September it is introduced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (where it is already installed in the auditorium and foyer) and the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (as a demonstration).^[158]
  • Dulwich Picture Gallery, designed by John Soane as the first purpose-built public art gallery, is completed and opens to the public.
  • Apsley House is acquired by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, from his brother.
  • Wimbledon Windmill built.
• 1818
  • Alterations to the King's Theatre by architect John Nash and George Repton are completed, including construction at the rear of the Royal Opera Arcade, London's first shopping arcade.
  • The Old Vic founded as the Royal Coburg Theatre in South London by James King, Daniel Dunn and John T. Serres.
• 1819
  • 20 March: Burlington Arcade opens.
  • 24 March: First Southwark Bridge, designed by John Rennie as a toll bridge with iron arches, opens.
  • April: John Keats begins his "Great Year" or "Living Year", during which he is at his most productive, having given up work at Guy's Hospital and taken up residence at a new house, Wentworth Place, on Hampstead Heath. On 3 April, Charles Wentworth Dilke lets his house, next door to Keats, to Mrs Brawne, whose daughter Fanny would become the love of Keats' life. Between 21 April and the end of May Keats writes La Belle Dame sans Merci and most of his major odes: Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Indolence and Ode on Melancholy; in the summer he writes Lamia;^[159] and on 19 October proposes marriage to Fanny.
  • Bookseller William Pickering in business as a publisher.^[160]
• 1820
  • 23 February: A plot to murder the Cabinet, the Cato Street conspiracy, is exposed.^[29]
  • 10 March: Astronomical Society of London established.
  • 1 May: The Cato Street conspirators are the last to suffer decapitation following their hanging for treason outside Newgate Prison.
  • 1 August: Regent's Canal opens from Camden to Limehouse Basin.
  • c. September: John Constable begins painting on Hampstead Heath regularly.
  • Approximate date: Clerkenwell Prison in operation.
• 1821
  • 4 July: Redesigned Haymarket Theatre opens.^[5]
  • 19 July: George IV is crowned in Westminster Abbey.^[29] His estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, is turned away from the coronation ceremony. This is the last coronation at which the full ceremony of the King's Champion is carried out.
  • December: "Spa Fields Congregational families" begin an Owenite community in Islington inspired by George Mudie.^[161]
  • De Beauvoir Town and Ladbroke Estate developments begin.
• 1822 – Royal Academy of Music founded (opens March 1823).
• 1823
  • Dr. George Birkbeck establishes the London Mechanics' Institute, predecessor of Birkbeck, University of London^[162] and Finsbury Midwifery Institution^[77] is established.
  • Pimm's oyster bar in business.
• 1824
  • 16 February: Athenaeum Club founded;^[16] established in temporary premises by May.
  • 10 May: National Gallery opens to the public in John Julius Angerstein's former house in Pall Mall.^[163]
  • 30 November: Banker Henry Fauntleroy is hanged for forgery before a crowd of 100,000.^[16]
  • Thomas Cubitt is commissioned by Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster, to create a great swathe of building in Belgravia centred on Belgrave Square and Pimlico.^[164] The following year, Cubitt begins to lay out estates in Clapham.
  • Grosvenor Canal opens in Pimlico.
• 1825
  • 21 March: British première of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (1824) is presented by the Philharmonic Society of London (who had commissioned it in 1817) at its Argyll Rooms conducted by Sir George Smart (and with the choral "Ode to Joy" sung in Italian).
  • 15 June: Foundation stone for new London Bridge laid.
  • 3–5 Porchester Terrace built in Westminster.^[165]
  • Regent Street laid out.
  • Reconstruction of Buckingham Palace by architect John Nash.
  • The first horse-drawn omnibuses established in London.
  • The Terrific Register: Or, Record of Crimes, Judgments, Providences, and Calamities first published.
  • Approximate date: London is estimated to overtake Peking as the world's largest city.^[166]
• 1826
  • 11 February: University of London established.^[167]
  • April: Zoological Society of London established.
  • King's Library, the first purpose-built part of the British Museum, is completed.
  • Bridge over The Serpentine, designed by John and George Rennie, opens.^[96]
  • Waterman's Arms pub built in Putney.
  • Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge established.
  • London, Ontario established.
• 1827
  • 21 May: The Standard newspaper begins publication.
  • 6 October: First Hammersmith Bridge, a toll suspension bridge over the Thames, opens.
  • Clarence House completed in Westminster.
  • Remodelling of St. James's Park by John Nash completed.
  • Metropolitan Turnpike Trust established.
• 1828
  • 17 April: Royal Free Hospital, established as the London General Institution for the Gratuitous Care of Malignant Diseases by surgeon William Marsden, opens.
  • 27 April: London Zoo opens;^[168] the Tower of London menagerie is transferred there.
  • 21 June: King's College London founded.^[5]
  • July: Stone Kingston Bridge opens.
  • 12 August: Kensington Canal opens.
  • 25 October: St Katharine Docks open.
  • New Guildhall Library opens.^[12]
  • Samuel Reiss's Grand Cigar Divan opens.
• 1829
  • 21 March: A duel is fought between the Prime Minister (the Duke of Wellington) and George Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of Winchilsea, in Battersea Fields, provoked by the Duke's support for Catholic Emancipation and foundation of the secular King's College London. Deliberately off-target shots are fired by both and honour is satisfied without injury.
  • 4 July: George Shillibeer introduces his three-horse Omnibus between the Yorkshire Stingo near Paddington Green and Bank via the New Road.
  • 29 September: Metropolitan Police of Sir Robert Peel starts operation within a 7-mile (11 km) radius of Charing Cross.^[130]
  • November: Thomas Hornor's Panoramic view of London, the largest panoramic painting ever created, is completed in the London Colosseum, purpose-designed by Decimus Burton in Regent's Park.
  • General Post Office headquarters building in St Martin's Le Grand completed.
• 1830
  • Spring: Hertford Union Canal opens to connect Regent's Canal with Lee Navigation.
  • 28 July: First police officer to be killed on duty in the UK, Joseph Grantham in Somers Town.
  • 6 December: The City's Court of Common Council orders removal of inscriptions on the Monument to the Great Fire of London and the house in Pudding Lane where the fire started falsely blaming it on Papists.^[83]
  • 16 December: Last hanging for piracy at Execution Dock, Wapping.
  • Geographical Society of London founded.
  • London Mechanics' Institute admits its first women students.
  • Price's Patent Candles founded by William Wilson at Vauxhall
• 1831
  • 29 March: Exeter Hall opens in The Strand.
  • 1 August: The new London Bridge is officially opened in the presence of the new king.^[12]
  • 8 September: Coronation of King King William IV in Westminster Abbey.^[29]
  • c. September: Lowther Arcade opens.^[56]
  • October: King's College London opens.
  • July–August 1832: St Dunstan-in-the-West church in Fleet Street rebuilt.^[34]
  • Young's take over the 16th century Ram Brewery in Wandsworth.
  • The house which will eventually contain Abbey Road Studios is built in the St John's Wood district.
• 1832
  • 12 February: Second cholera pandemic begins to spread in London, starting from the East End. It is declared officially over in early May but deaths continue. It will claim at least 3000 victims.
  • 11 July: Kensal Green Cemetery authorised by Act of Parliament,^[111] first of the "Magnificent Seven cemeteries" (consecrated 24 January 1833).
  • Finsbury (UK Parliament constituency), Lambeth (UK Parliament constituency), Marylebone (UK Parliament constituency), and Tower Hamlets (UK Parliament constituency) established.^[25]
• 1833
  • 1 January: London Fire Engine Establishment formed under the leadership of James Braidwood merging the existing insurance company brigades.
  • New Hungerford Market building opens.^[56]
• 1834
  • 14 July: Lyceum Theatre opens.
  • 16 October: Burning of Parliament.^[169]
  • 23 December: Architect and inventor Joseph Hansom patents the Hansom cab.^[29][151]
  • Old Bailey renamed as the Central Criminal Court.
  • The Institute of British Architects in London, predecessor of the Royal Institute of British Architects, is formed.
  • Harrods founded as a grocer in Stepney in the East End.^[170]
• 1835
  • November: The Grand Junction Canal company's Kingsbury ("Welsh Harp") Reservoir in Brent is first filled.^[171]
  • Regent's Park opens to the public.
  • Madame Tussauds wax museum in business.
  • Geological Museum founded as The Museum of Practical Geology.^[172]
• 1836
  • 2 January: Bentley's Miscellany literary magazine begins publication under the editorship of Charles Dickens.
  • 8 February: First section of London and Greenwich Railway, the first steam-worked line in London, begins operating between Spa Road and Deptford.^[173]
  • 2 April: Charles Dickens marries Catherine Hogarth at St Luke's Church, Chelsea.^[174]
  • 9 June: London Working Men's Association formed; later a centre for Chartism.^[151]
  • 28 November: University of London chartered.^[5]
  • December: Dickens first meets his lifelong friend, the biographer and critic John Forster.^[174]
  • 14 December: London and Greenwich Railway trains begin to start from London Bridge station, making it the first permanent London terminus.^[175]
  • Statue of King George IV at Kings Cross completed by this date; it is demolished in 1845.
• 1837
  • 11 January: The Royal Institute of British Architects in London is granted its royal charter.^[124]
  • 20 January: Death of the neo-classical architect Sir John Soane gives effect to the creation of his London house as Sir John Soane's Museum.
  • February: Serialisation of Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist begins in Bentley's Miscellany.^[149]
  • 1 June: The Government-funded Normal School of Design, predecessor of the Royal College of Art, begins classes at Somerset House.
  • 3 June: The London Hippodrome opens in Bayswater.
  • 20 June: At 6.00 a.m., Francis Conyngham, 2nd Marquess Conyngham (Lord Chamberlain) and William Howley (Archbishop of Canterbury) call on Princess Victoria of Kent at Kensington Palace to tell her she has become Queen Victoria on the death of her uncle William IV.
  • 13 July: Queen Victoria moves from Kensington Palace into Buckingham Palace, the first reigning British monarch to make this, rather than St James's Palace, their London home.^[29]
  • 20 July: Euston railway station, London's first mainline railway terminus, is opened by the London and Birmingham Railway.^[29]
  • 28 August: Army and Navy Club founded.
  • 7 December: West Norwood Cemetery consecrated (authorised 1836).
  • Art Union of London founded.
• 1838
  • 10 January: A fire destroys Lloyd's Coffee House and the Royal Exchange.^[16]
  • 8 April: The National Gallery first opens to the public in the building purpose-designed for it by William Wilkins in Trafalgar Square (which is being cleared at this time).^[56]
  • 4 June: First section of the Great Western Railway opens from original London Paddington station to Maidenhead.^[176]
  • 28 June: Coronation of Queen Victoria in Westminster Abbey.^[10]
  • 6 August: The Polytechnic Institution, Britain's first polytechnic, opens in Regent Street.^[177]
  • Hampton Court Palace state rooms and gardens open to the public, without charge.^[37]
  • Kew Bridge Pumping Station at Brentford begins operation.
  • Langham Sketching Club formed.^[124]
• 1839
  • 20 May: Highgate Cemetery dedicated.
  • 5 June: London and Croydon Railway begins operating.
  • Sisters of Mercy establish the first Roman Catholic convent in England since the Reformation, at Bermondsey.^[178]
  • City of London Police given statutory authority.
• 1840
  • 10 February: Marriage of Queen Victoria in St James's Palace.
  • 15 April: King's College Hospital opens in Portugal Street,.
  • 27 April: The foundation stone of the new Palace of Westminster is laid as its reconstruction following the Burning of Parliament in 1834 begins (completed in 1860).^[179]
  • June: World Anti-Slavery Convention held in Exeter Hall.
  • 1 July: Eastern Counties Railway extended to a new London terminus, Bishopsgate railway station,^[175] known until 1847 as Shoreditch.
  • 6 July: London and Blackwall Railway (cable worked) opens to a temporary City terminus in Minories.^[175]
  • 15 September: Northern and Eastern Railway opens its first section from Stratford together with the first Stratford Depot which over the next century will become the largest motive power depot in the UK.
  • 30 September: Foundation of Nelson's Column laid,^[29] Trafalgar Square being laid out and paved during the year.^[5]
  • Abney Park, Nunhead and Brompton, three of the "Magnificent Seven cemeteries", are opened.
  • W. Harrison Ainsworth's novels Guy Fawkes and The Tower of London and Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop are serialised.
• 1841
  • February–November: Charles Dickens' novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty is published serially.
  • 8 March: Establishment of The Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, predecessor of the Royal Brompton Hospital.
  • 6 June: United Kingdom Census 1841: Population: 123,563; county 1,825,714; Greater London 2,235,344.^[137]
  • 12 July: London and Brighton Railway begins operating from Norwood Junction (extended 21 September through to Brighton).
  • 17 July: Punch magazine begins publication.
  • 2 August: Fenchurch Street railway station opens for the London and Blackwall Railway.^[175]
  • 30 October: A fire at the Tower of London destroys its Grand Armoury and causes a quarter of a million pounds worth of damage.^[16]
  • Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, first open to the public.
  • The City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery, last of the "Magnificent Seven cemeteries" open.
  • London Library begins operation in Pall Mall.^[21]
  • Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes founded.
  • Chemical Society of London and London Philanthropic Society^[21] founded.
• 1842
  • 14 May: The Illustrated London News begins publication.^[40][59]
  • 10 & 19 November: Fleet and Marshalsea debtors' prisons closed.
  • Pentonville Prison begins operating.^[39]
  • Charles Edward Mudie begins his Mudie's Select Library business from his stationery shop in Bloomsbury.^[40]
• 1843
  • 20 January: Daniel M'Naghten shoots and kills the Prime Minister's private secretary, Edward Drummond, in Whitehall.^[180]
  • 25 March: Marc Isambard Brunel's Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel under the river, opens to pedestrians.^[29]
  • 2 September: The Economist newspaper first published (preliminary issue dated August).
  • 3–4 November: The statue of Nelson placed atop Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.^[163]
  • Development of Cubitt Town begins.^[181]
  • International Peace Congress held.
• 1844
  • 27 May: West London Railway opens.
  • 6 June: Young Men's Christian Association founded.
  • 28 October: Royal Exchange opens.^[182]
  • First recorded eel and mash shop in London.^[183]
• 1845
  • 3 January: First known arrest of a fugitive achieved through use of the then new electric telegraph when John Tawell is arrested after being followed by a detective alerted prior to Tawell's arrival at Paddington station.
  • 7 February: In the British Museum, a drunken visitor smashes the Portland Vase which takes months to repair.^[184]
  • 15 March: First University Boat Race to use the modern-day Putney to Mortlake course (albeit in the reverse direction to that later adopted).^[5]
  • 26 March: Sisterhood of the Holy Cross ('Park Village Community') established as the first Anglican sisterhood, to minister to the poor of St Pancras.^[185]
  • 1 May
    • Hungerford Bridge opens as a tolled suspension footbridge.^[163]
    • First cricket match to be played at the Kennington Oval.^[5]
  • Fuller's Brewery established as a partnership to run the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick.
  • Laying out of Victoria Park in the East End, the first "People's Park", begins.
  • Metropolitan Buildings Office established.
• 1846
  • 3 April: Last London-based mail coach runs, to Norwich.^[186]
  • 26 August: North London Railway authorised as East & West India Docks & Birmingham Junction Railway, opening from 1850.
• 1847
  • New Oxford Street constructed.
  • Entrance wing to British Museum constructed.
  • Royal Brompton Hospital admits its first patients.
  • Bernard Quaritch sets up his own bookselling business.
• 1848
  • 10 April: "Monster" Chartist rally on Kennington Common.^[163]
  • 11 July: Waterloo station opens.^[29]
  • The Palm house at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, designed by architect Decimus Burton and iron-founder Richard Turner, is completed and opened.
  • The Duke of Wellington, Constable of the Tower since 1826, has a north bastion added to the Tower of London in response to the Chartist threat.^[14]
  • Metropolitan Evening Classes for Young Men, a predecessor of London Metropolitan University, are instituted at Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate, by Rev. Charles Mackenzie.^[187]
  • Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes completes its first dwellings, Metropolitan Buildings, at Kings Cross.
  • Queen's College, London, founded, the world's first school to award academic qualifications to young women.
  • Samuel Reiss's Grand Cigar Divan becomes Simpson's Grand Divan Tavern.
• 1849
  • May: First exhibition of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: John Everett Millais' Isabella and Holman Hunt's Rienzi at the Royal Academy summer exhibition, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Girlhood of Mary Virgin at the Free Exhibition on Hyde Park Corner.
  • July: Second cholera pandemic (1849–51): Horsleydown cholera outbreak.^[188]
  • 9 August: "The Bermondsey Horror": Marie Manning and her husband, Frederick, murder Patrick O'Connor. On 13 November they are hanged together publicly by William Calcraft at Horsemonger Lane Gaol for the crime.^[189]
  • 12 October: 5 workmen are killed by toxic gases in a Pimlico sewer.^[190]
  • 17 December: The customer, probably Edward Coke, collects the first bowler hat (devised by hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler) from hatters James Lock & Co. of St James's.^[191]
  • Bedford College (London) founded by Elizabeth Jesser Reid as the Ladies College in Bedford Square, a non-sectarian higher education institution to provide a liberal female education.
  • Harrods moves to Knightsbridge,^[192] and Gatti's cafe in Holborn in business.
• 1850
  • 4 April: North London Collegiate School for girls established in new premises with Frances Buss as Principal.
  • 25 May: The hippopotamus Obaysch arrives at London Zoo from Egypt, the first to live in the British Isles since prehistoric times.
  • London butchers C Lidgate opens for the first time.

1850s–1870s

• 1851
  • March: Marble Arch relocated to Hyde Park.
  • 1 May: The Great Exhibition opens in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.^[193]
  • 16 July: A Roman Catholic educational training college, predecessor of St Mary's University, is established in Hammersmith.
  • The Royal Marsden is established as the Free Cancer Hospital by surgeon William Marsden, the world's first specialist cancer hospital.
  • Ticket office at Tower of London erected by Office of Works, the UK's first government-funded tourist infrastructure.
  • Hungerford Hall built in Westminster.
  • Westminster College, a Methodist teacher training institution, is established.
  • Wandsworth Prison (Surrey House of Correction) admits its first inmates.
  • Henry Mayhew's social survey London Labour and the London Poor is collected in book form.
• 1852
  • 11 February: The first British public toilet for women opens in Bedford Street.
  • 14 February: Great Ormond Street Hospital admits its first child patient.^[29]
  • March: Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House begins serialization.
  • May: The Museum of Manufactures, predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, opens, initially at Marlborough House.^[194]
  • 14 October: King's Cross railway station opens.^[175]
  • 11 November: New Palace of Westminster opens.
  • Metropolis Water Act 1852 prohibits extraction of drinking water from the Thames tideway after 31 August 1855.
  • Taylor & Francis publisher in business.^[195]
• 1853
  • 20 January: Photographic Society of London founded.
  • May: The world's first public aquarium opens in Regent's Park.^[59]
  • Uriah Maggs establishes the antiquarian bookselling business that becomes Maggs Bros Ltd.^[160]
  • Edward Stanford sets up as a mapseller.
• 1854
  • 16 January: The permanent Paddington station train shed, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, opens.^[196]
  • 18 March: Royal Panopticon opens.
  • April: Charles Spurgeon, aged 19, becomes preacher of the Baptist Metropolitan Tabernacle at the New Park Street Chapel.
  • 10 June: The Crystal Palace reopens in Sydenham.^[29]
  • 31 August–8 September: An epidemic of cholera kills 10,000. Dr John Snow traces the source of the Broad Street cholera outbreak (that killed 500) to a single water pump, validating his theory that cholera is water-borne, and forming the starting point for epidemiology.^[197]
  • 13 November: London Necropolis Company (established by Act of Parliament 30 June 1852) begins operating Brookwood Cemetery near Woking in Surrey with a connecting London Necropolis Railway service from its own station adjacent to Waterloo.^[198]
  • Kennington Park opens.
• 1855
  • 11 April: First six post boxes in London begin to function.^[12]
  • By June: Victoria Dock opens, the first in London designed to accommodate steamships.
  • June
    • Metropolitan Cattle Market^[199] opens.
    • Riot over Sunday Trading Bill.
  • 29 June: The Daily Telegraph newspaper begins publication.^[29]
  • 3 September: Last Bartholomew Fair.^[200]
  • December: Charles Dickens' novel Little Dorrit begins serialisation.
  • 12 December: Stepney Academy moves to Holford House as Regent's Park College, a Baptist institution.
  • 17 December: London General Omnibus Company established in Paris as the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus de Londres; in the following year it absorbs a substantial proportion of the horse-bus operators in London.
  • 22 December: Metropolitan Board of Works established.
  • London and Middlesex Archaeological Society established.
  • The London School of Jewish Studies opens as the Jews' College, a rabbinical seminary.
  • First municipal underground public toilet opens in the City for gentlemen.
• 1856
  • 5 March: Fire destroys Covent Garden Theatre.^[29]
  • 15 March: The Boat Race 1856, first of the annual series rowed between Cambridge and Oxford University Boat Clubs on the Thames in London.
  • 22 August: Eastern Counties Railway opens its branch to Loughton; from 1947 this will be the oldest section of the London Underground.
  • 9 November: Last Lord Mayor's Show in which barges on the Thames are used.
  • 2 December: National Portrait Gallery formally established.^[201]
• 1857
  • 2 May: British Museum Reading Room opens.^[199]
  • 22 June: South Kensington Museum is opened^[202] by the Queen. It is a predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum but includes the collection of machinery which becomes the Science Museum; it is also the world’s first museum to incorporate a refreshment room.^[203]
• 1858
  • 1 January: Designation of London postal districts completed.^[12]
  • 31 January: Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Eastern is launched at Millwall.
  • 3 April: Chelsea Bridge, a toll iron suspension bridge over the Thames, opens to the public.
  • 10 April: Big Ben, the Great Bell for the Palace of Westminster's clock tower, is recast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
  • 1 July: Papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace announcing a theory of evolution by natural selection are read at the Linnean Society of London.^[29]
  • 2 July–August: Great Stink.
  • 17 July: Salvage of the Lutine bell, which is subsequently hung in Lloyd's of London.
  • Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes completes Albert Cottages, Stepney.^[204]
  • Blackheath F.C. founded, an early rugby football club.
• 1859
  • 15 January: National Portrait Gallery opens.^[5]
  • 16 March: Jewish Board of Guardians first meets, in the East End.
  • 21 April: First drinking fountain erected by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.
  • 7 September: The clock and chimes of the newly completed Clock Tower at the Palace of Westminster become fully operational. The great bell, which first chimed on 11 July, acquires the nickname "Big Ben" by association with Benjamin Hall, 1st Baron Llanover.
  • Red House in Bexleyheath, a key building in the Arts and Crafts Movement, is designed by its owner, William Morris, and the architect Philip Webb.
  • Wilton's Music Hall opens in the East End.
  • Approximate date: Rail service to Great Northern Cemetery at New Southgate begins.
• 1860
  • 9 July: The Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses, the first nursing school based on the ideas of Florence Nightingale, opens at St Thomas' Hospital.
  • 1 October: First section of Victoria station opens, with trains using the Grosvenor Bridge across the Thames.^[175]
  • November: The 'Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs', predecessor of the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, is established by Mary Tealby.
  • 29 December: The world's first ocean-going (all) iron-hulled and armoured battleship, HMS Warrior is launched on the Thames at Blackwall.^[29]
• 1861
  • 20 February: Storms damage the Crystal Palace.
  • 18 March: Metropolitan Tabernacle dedicated.
  • 23 March: First of George Francis Train's demonstration horse-drawn trams in London begins operating on the Bayswater Road; none last beyond the end of the year.
  • 22 June: Tooley Street fire breaks out; James Braidwood is killed while fighting it.
  • 31 July: Church of St James the Less, Pimlico, consecrated.
  • Crimean War Memorial unveiled, including sculptures of Other Ranks.
  • Stationers' Company's School established.
  • Amateur Photographic Association formed.^[205]
• 1862
  • 26 March: Peabody Trust housing association established by London-based American banker George Peabody as the Peabody Donation Fund.
  • 1 May–1 November: 1862 International Exhibition or "Great London Exposition" held in South Kensington.^[173]
  • 24 May: New Westminster Bridge, an iron arched bridge designed by Thomas Page, opens.^[206]
  • 10 November: First Lambeth Bridge, a toll suspension bridge designed by Peter W. Barlow, opens.
  • c. November: Joseph Bazalgette begins construction of the Thames Embankment.^[5][207]
  • Royal Agricultural Hall opens in Islington.
  • Science collections of the South Kensington Museum move to separate buildings on Exhibition Road.^[208]
  • Derry & Toms established as drapers in Kensington High Street.
  • Edward Stanford first publishes Stanford's Library Map of London and its suburbs.
• 1863
  • 10 January: The first section of the London Underground, the Metropolitan Railway between Paddington and Farringdon Street, opens to the public, operated by steam.^[33]
  • March: American-born painter James McNeill Whistler settles close to the Thames in Chelsea, where he will live for most of the rest of his life.
  • 12 June: The Arts Club is founded by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Frederic Leighton and others in Mayfair as a social meeting place for those involved or interested in the creative arts.^[124]
  • 26 October: The Football Association is founded at the Freemasons' Tavern in Long Acre.^[74]
  • 19 December: The first game is played under the new Football Association rules at Mortlake between Ebenezer Morley's Barnes Club and Richmond F.C., ending in a goalless draw.^[209]
  • Alexandra Park opens in Haringey.
  • William Whiteley opens the drapery that becomes Whiteleys department store in Westbourne Grove^[210] and Curwen Press^[150] in business.
  • Lyon's Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery, is dissolved and demolished
• 1864
  • 11 January: Charing Cross railway station and bridge are opened by South Eastern Railway. New Hungerford Bridge opens 1 May to pedestrians as part of Charing Cross Bridge and Strand Musick Hall opens in arches underneath station.
  • April: Giuseppe Garibaldi visits London.
  • 13 June: Hammersmith & City line is opened.
  • 28 September: International Workingmen's Association founded in London.^[211]
  • 21 December: Blackfriars Railway Bridge is opened by London, Chatham and Dover Railway.
  • Aerated Bread Company opens the first A.B.C. tea shop, in the forecourt of Fenchurch Street railway station.
• 1865
  • 7 February: Pall Mall Gazette newspaper begins publication.
  • April: Official opening of Crossness Pumping Station, a major landmark in completion of the new London sewerage system designed by Joseph Bazalgette for the Metropolitan Board of Works.^[74] Construction of the complementary Abbey Mills Pumping Station begins and is completed in 1868.
  • 10 April: New Hampton Court Bridge, built in iron, opens.
  • June: Jumbo, a large African elephant, is transferred to London Zoo and becomes a popular attraction.
  • 2 July: The Christian Mission, later renamed The Salvation Army, is founded in Whitechapel by William and Catherine Booth.^[29][74]
  • 1 November: Broad Street station opens as a City terminus for passengers on the North London Railway.
  • c. November: Eleanor cross reproduction erected in front of Charing Cross railway station.
  • Café Royal in business in Piccadilly.
  • Major outbreak of rinderpest in British cattle leads to the abolition of urban cowkeeping by London dairies.
• 1866
  • 1 January: Metropolitan Fire Brigade set up by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act 1865 under control of the Metropolitan Board of Works and under the leadership of Eyre Massey Shaw.
  • July: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson opens the St Mary's Dispensary in Bryanston Square, Marylebone, where women can seek medical advice from exclusively female practitioners.^[74]
  • 23–25 July: Demonstrations in Hyde Park in favour of parliamentary reform turn violent.^[5]
  • 1 September: Cannon Street station is opened as a terminus by the South Eastern Railway.
  • A cholera epidemic in London causes over 5,000 deaths.^[74]
  • Charing Cross Music Hall established.
  • John I. Thornycroft & Company established as shipbuilders by John Isaac Thornycroft at Chiswick.
• 1867
  • 15 January: 40 skaters are killed when ice breaks in Regent's Park.
  • By February: The Society of Arts inaugurates the blue plaque scheme, advanced by William Ewart, for erecting memorial tablets on London houses previously the homes of notable people, the first being at Lord Byron's birthplace, 24 Holles Street, off Cavendish Square.^[212]
  • 20 May: Laying of the foundation stone of the Royal Albert Hall by Queen Victoria.^[29]
  • October
    • Thomas Barnardo opens his first shelter for homeless children, in Stepney.^[5]
    • Hop and Malt Exchange opens in Southwark.
  • 13 December: Clerkenwell explosion ("Clerkenwell Outrage") at Clerkenwell Prison during a Fenian escape attempt; 12 local residents are killed.^[5]
  • Autumn/Winter: Wasps Rugby Football Club formed.
  • Rebuilding of Palace of Westminster completed.^[169]
• 1868
  • 14 March: Millwall Dock opens
  • 26 May: Last public hanging in Britain – Fenian bomber Michael Barrett outside Newgate Prison for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion.^[213]
  • 1 October
    • St Pancras railway station train shed, designed by W. H. Barlow, opens (construction of the permanent station buildings and Midland Grand Hotel, designed by George Gilbert Scott, has only just begun).^[175]
    • Metropolitan Railway extended from Paddington (Bishop's Road) station to Gloucester Road via Bayswater and Notting Hill Gate Underground stations.
  • 24 November: Smithfield Meat Market opens.^[29]
  • 8 December: The Echo newspaper begins publication.
  • 10 December: The world's first traffic lights are installed in Parliament Square.^[29]
  • 21 December: New Gaiety Theatre opens.^[51]
  • 24 December: First section of District line of the London Underground opens from South Kensington to Westminster.^[214]
  • Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society established as the Royal Arsenal Supply Association, a consumers' co-operative.
• 1869
  • 6 March: The first international cycle race is held at Crystal Palace.^[29]
  • 22 May: Sainsbury's first store opens, in Drury Lane.^[215]
  • 6 November: New Blackfriars Bridge and Holborn Viaduct are opened by Queen Victoria.^[12]
  • November: Albert Embankment, engineered by Joseph Bazalgette, completed.
  • 7 December: First train runs through the Thames Tunnel on the East London Line.^[96]
  • The Royal Navy closes its Deptford and Woolwich Dockyards.
• 1870
  • 16 April: Vaudeville Theatre opens.
  • 2 May: First permanent horse-drawn street trams in London, in the Brixton Road.
  • July: Monet and Pissarro move to London, fleeing the Franco-Prussian War.
  • 13 July: Victoria Embankment, engineered by Joseph Bazalgette, opens.^[199]
  • 2 August: Official opening of the Tower Subway beneath the Thames, the world's first underground passenger "tube" railway.^[29] Although this lasts as a railway operation only until November, it demonstrates the technologically successful first use of the cylindrical wrought iron tunnelling shield devised by Peter W. Barlow and James Henry Greathead.^[96]
  • Gas Light and Coke Company opens Beckton Gas Works which becomes the largest in Europe.^[216]
  • Barkers of Kensington established as drapers in Kensington High Street.
  • Opera Comique opens in Westminster.^[51]
• 1871
  • 29 March: Royal Albert Hall opens in South Kensington.
  • 24 April: Murder of servant girl Jane Clouson in Eltham.
  • Spring: James McNeill Whistler publishes Sixteen etchings of scenes on the Thames and paints his first "moonlights" (later called "nocturnes") of the river.
  • c. May: French painter James Tissot flees Paris for London.
  • 14 June: Camille Pissarro marries his mistress Julie Vellay in Croydon and returns to France.
  • 18 July: Slade School of Fine Art established.
  • 15 September: The Army & Navy Co-operative Society Ltd is incorporated, origin of the Army & Navy Stores.
  • Metropolitan Board of Works purchases its first portion of Hampstead Heath to preserve it from housing development.^[217]
  • Maison Bertaux patisserie founded in Soho.
  • Approximate date: Berners Club for Women active.^[210]
• 1872
  • 16 March: In the first ever final of the FA Cup, the world's oldest association football competition, Wanderers F.C. defeat Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington.^[29]
  • 14 May: New church of St Mary Abbots in Kensington, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, consecrated.
  • 24 June: Bethnal Green Museum opens in the East End.^[202]
  • 1 July: Metropolitan Turnpike Trust dissolved.
  • 3 July: Queen Victoria opens the Albert Memorial in memory of her husband Prince Albert.^[218]
  • 18 July: Philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts, becomes the first woman to be made an Honorary Freeman of the City of London.
  • 3 August: The Artizans', Labourers' and General Dwellings Company (a philanthropic organisation established in 1867) begins building cottages for social housing, the Shaftesbury Park Estate in Battersea (completed 1877).^[85]
  • 16 November: London Metropolitan Police strike.
• 1873
  • March: An American gang defrauds the Bank of England of £100,000.^[219]
  • 5 May: Midland Grand Hotel fronting St Pancras railway station is substantially completed and opened, the world's largest hotel at this time.^[220]
  • c. 19 May: Vincent van Gogh begins an 18-month spell living and working in London for an art dealer.
  • 9 June: Alexandra Palace destroyed by fire only a fortnight after its opening.^[16]
  • 23 August: Albert Bridge opens.
  • 27 September: First Wandsworth Bridge opens.
  • 17 November: Criterion Restaurant opens in Piccadilly.
  • New Guildhall Library building opens.^[221]
  • Butler's Wharf warehouses completed.
  • Work begins on the Natural History Museum.^[5]
• 1874
  • 2 February: Liverpool Street station opens as the City terminus of the Great Eastern Railway.^[175]
  • 2 March: Holborn Viaduct station opens as a City terminus of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway.
  • 2 October: A barge carrying gunpower on the Regent's Canal blows up under Macclesfield bridge at Regent's Park.
  • October: Northumberland House at Charing Cross purchased by the Metropolitan Board of Works to clear the site for construction of Northumberland Avenue (completed by 1876).
  • Autumn: London School of Medicine for Women founded.^[222]
  • Chelsea Embankment opens.^[199]
  • HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs begun: it is completed by prisoners.
  • College for Working Women established.^[187]
  • Kirkaldy Testing and Experimenting Works in Southwark opens.
• 1875
  • September: Joseph Bazalgette completes the 30-year construction of London's sewer system.^[5]
  • Cabmen's Shelter Fund set up.
  • Arthur Liberty sets up the Liberty business in Regent Street.
  • Belgravia Roller Skating Rink opens.^[223]
  • Society for Photographing Relics of Old London established.
• 1876
  • 7 October: First greyhound race to use an artificial hare is held, at Hendon.^[5]
  • November: Hampstead Cemetery opens.^[224]
• 1877
  • 20 July: New Billingsgate Fish Market building opens.
  • Richard Norman Shaw appointed architect to Bedford Park (laid out 1875).^[85]
  • Grosvenor Gallery opens to show contemporary art.
  • The Peter Jones draper's moves to the King's Road.
• 1878
  • 2–13 January: Wren's Temple Bar is dismantled. In 1880 a monument is erected on its original site marking the entrance to the City; the gateway is re-erected at Theobalds Park in Hertfordshire.^[225]
  • 24 February: Anti-Russian demonstrations in Hyde Park.
  • 5 March: William Burges moves into The Tower House which he has designed for himself in the Holland Park district.
  • 25 May: Opening of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera HMS Pinafore, at the Opera Comique on the Strand^[5] with a first run of 571 performances.
  • July: American-born painter James McNeill Whistler moves into the White House, designed by E. W. Godwin in Tite Street, Chelsea; also this year Oscar Wilde moves (initially) into No. 1 in the same street by the same architect.
  • 8 August: Epping Forest Act requires it to be preserved for public recreation in the care of the Corporation of London.
  • August: Gaiety Theatre becomes the first in London to light its stage with carbon arc lamps.^[96]
  • 3 September: Over 640 die when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice collides with the collier Bywell Castle in the Thames off Woolwich.
  • 12 September: Cleopatra's Needle erected on the Victoria Embankment.^[199]
  • October
    • The University of London becomes the first in the UK to admit women on equal terms with men.
    • William Morris moves into Kelmscott House on the Thames waterfront at Hammersmith.^[226]
  • Gamages open.
  • St John's Wood Art School and Sette of Odd Volumes (club)^[124] founded.
• 1879
  • 2 March: Murder of Julia Martha Thomas at Richmond.
  • 24 May: Metropolitan Board of Works frees Albert, Chelsea, Vauxhall and Lambeth Bridges of tolls.
  • 1 August: D'Oyly Carte Opera Company established.
  • 16 August: Fulham F.C. founded as the Fulham St Andrew's Church Sunday School football club.
  • November–March 1880: Probably the longest ever fog in its history engulfs London.^[16]
  • First telephone exchange in London.
  • Electric street lighting introduced, initially on the Thames Embankment and Waterloo Bridge.^[5]

1880s–1890s

• 1880
  • 31 May: St James's Gazette newspaper begins publication.
  • 24 June: Royal Albert Dock opens.^[227]
  • 27 September: Guildhall School of Music opens.
  • 28 October: London Topographical Society founded as the Topographical Society of London.^[228]
  • 17 November: The University of London awards the first degrees to women.^[29]
  • The Old Vic theatre is taken over by Emma Cons as the Royal Victoria Hall and coffee tavern.
  • Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire purchased by the Corporation of London to preserve the woodlands for public recreation.
• 1881
  • 3 April: United Kingdom Census 1881: Population: 50,569; county 3,779,728; Greater London 4,766,661.^[137] One-seventh of the UK population live in London.
  • 18 April: The Natural History Museum opens.^[229]
  • 26 July: First publication of The Evening News.^[18]
  • 10 October: Richard D'Oyly Carte's Savoy Theatre opens, the world's first public building to be fully lit by electricity, using Joseph Swan's incandescent light bulbs.^{[18][230][231]} The run of Gilbert and Sullivan's new satirical opera Patience transfers from the Opera Comique. The stage is first lit electrically on 28 December.^[232]
  • "Great Paul", Britain's heaviest swinging bell, is hung in the south-west tower of St Paul's Cathedral.
  • London Municipal Reform League founded.^[21]
  • Leadenhall Market rebuilt.
  • Leyton Orient F.C. formed by members of the Glyn Cricket Club.
• 1882
  • 25 January: London Chamber of Commerce founded.^[5]
  • 24 March: Jumbo the elephant departs from Britain having been sold by London Zoo to the American showman P. T. Barnum.
  • 5 September: Tottenham Hotspur F.C. founded as Hotspur F.C.
  • 25 September: Young Men’s Christian Institute, the former Royal Polytechnic Institute and a predecessor of the University of Westminster, opens in new premises in Regent Street provided by Quintin Hogg.^[5]
  • 22 October: London Press Club established.
  • 25 November: The Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Iolanthe is first produced at the Savoy Theatre.^[29]
  • 4 December: Royal Courts of Justice open on the Strand in Westminster.
  • London and Provincial Photographic Association established.^[205]
• 1883
  • 17 March: Karl Marx buried at Highgate Cemetery.
  • 7 May: Royal College of Music opens with George Grove as first Director.^[5]
  • 30 October: Two Clan na Gael dynamite bombs explode in the London Underground.
• 1884
  • January: London Hydraulic Power Company set up by Act to merge the Wharves & Warehouses Steam Power and Hydraulic Pressure Co. (1871) and the General Hydraulic Power Company (1882).
  • 4 January: Fabian Society founded^[211] in Osnaburgh Street.
  • 16 April: Permanent Brompton Oratory consecrated.
  • 17 April: Empire Theatre opens.
  • 4 June: The East London Aquarium in Spitalfields is destroyed by fire with numerous animals killed.^[233]
  • 8 July: The NSPCC is founded as the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.^[29]
  • 6 October: Circle line (London Underground) completed.
  • 22 October: International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. fixes the Greenwich meridian as the world's prime meridian.
  • Samuel and Henrietta Barnett with Raymond Unwin establish (and begin living at) the first university settlement, at Toynbee Hall in the East End.
  • St Columba's Church (Church of Scotland) built in Knightsbridge.
  • Swimming pool opens in Dartmouth Road, Forest Hill.
  • Society of Architects formed.^[124]
• 1885
  • 10 January: Japanese Village, Knightsbridge exhibition opens.
  • 24 January: Irish terrorists damage Westminster Hall and the Tower of London with dynamite.^[5]
  • 14 March: Première of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado at the Savoy Theatre.^[234]
  • 6–9 July: Eliza Armstrong case: Campaigning journalist W. T. Stead publishes a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon exposing the extent of female child prostitution in London.^[18]
  • 3 October: Millwall F.C., formed by the workers of J. T. Morton's canning factory on the Isle of Dogs as Millwall Rovers, play their first match.
  • Electrical power station installed at Grosvenor Gallery, the first permanent installation for public supply in London.^[96]
  • The first modern pedestal flush toilet is demonstrated by Frederick Humpherson of the Beaufort Works, Chelsea.^[235]
  • The Science Collections of the South Kensington Museum are renamed as the Science Museum.
  • Guildhall Art Gallery^[12] and Huguenot Society of London established.
• 1886
  • 18 January: The Hockey Association is founded,^[5] largely on the initiative of sports clubs in the London area, and codifies the rules for hockey.^[236][237]
  • 7–8 February: Rioting in the West End and Trafalgar Square by the unemployed, coinciding with the coldest winter in thirty years; John Burns encourages the demonstrators.^[167]
  • 10 March: First Crufts dog show held.^[29]
  • 10 May: London, Chatham and Dover Railway duplicates Blackfriars Railway Bridge by construction of the parallel St Paul's Railway Bridge to serve a new terminus north of the Thames, St Paul's (renamed Blackfriars station in 1937).
  • 29 May: Replacement Putney Bridge in stone opens over the Thames.
  • 11 December: Arsenal F.C., formed as Dial Square by (mostly Scottish) workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, play their first match, on the Isle of Dogs; the club is renamed Royal Arsenal soon afterwards, supposedly on 25 December.^[238]
  • 25 December: Great snow storm in London.^[186]
  • 26 December: Olympia exhibition centre opens as the National Agricultural Hall.
  • Queens Park Rangers F.C. formed by merger of existing clubs in north-west London.
  • Shaftesbury Avenue completed.
  • Highgate Wood purchased by the Corporation of London to preserve it for public recreation.
• 1887
  • April–May: First Colonial Conference held at the Colonial Office.
  • 14 May: People's Palace,^[187] a predecessor of Queen Mary University of London, is opened in the East End by Queen Victoria.
  • 11 June: Replacement Hammersmith Bridge, a suspension bridge over the Thames, opens.
  • 6/7 August: A fourth major fire devastates Whiteleys department store in Bayswater.^[239]
  • 13 November ("Bloody Sunday"): A large socialist demonstration addressed by respectable speakers is violently broken up by the police; at a 20 November demonstration against police brutality a bystander is killed.
  • November: Arthur Conan Doyle's first detective novel, A Study in Scarlet, is published in Beeton's Christmas Annual by Ward Lock & Co. in London, introducing the London consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend and chronicler Dr. Watson.^[111]
  • London Social Camera Club^[205] established.
• 1888
  • 13 February: The first issue of the Financial Times goes on sale^[5] (originally launched on 9 January by Horatio Bottomley as the London Financial Guide).
  • 23 March: A meeting called by William McGregor to discuss establishment of The Football League is held in London.^[240]
  • 3 April: Prostitute Emma Elizabeth Smith is brutally attacked by two or three men, dying of her injuries the following day, first of the Whitechapel murders but probably not a victim of Jack the Ripper.
  • 26 May: Punch magazine begins serialisation of George and Weedon Grossmith's humorous The Diary of a Nobody, the first entry being for "April 3".
  • June: London matchgirls strike of 1888 organised by Annie Besant.
  • 7 August: Whitechapel murders: The body of prostitute Martha Tabram is found, a possible victim of Jack the Ripper.^[29]
  • 13 August: The Local Government Act, effective from 1889, establishes the County of London.^[21]
  • 31 August: Whitechapel murders: The mutilated body of prostitute Mary Ann Nichols is found in Buck's Row, perhaps the first victim of Jack the Ripper.
  • 8 September: Whitechapel murders: The mutilated body of prostitute Annie Chapman is found. She is considered to be the second victim of Jack the Ripper.
  • 27 September: Whitechapel murders: The 'Dear Boss letter' signed "Jack the Ripper", the first time the name is used, is received by the Central News Agency.^[29]
  • 30 September: Whitechapel murders: The bodies of prostitutes Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, the latter mutilated, are found. They are generally considered Jack the Ripper's third and fourth victim respectively.
  • 2 October: The Whitehall Mystery: Dismembered remains of a woman's body are discovered at three central London locations, one being the construction site of New Scotland Yard.
  • 3 October: Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy opera The Yeomen of the Guard premières at the Savoy Theatre.
  • 9 November: Whitechapel murders: The mutilated body of prostitute Mary Jane Kelly is found. She is considered to be the fifth, and last, of Jack the Ripper's victims. A number of similar murders in England follows, but the police attribute them to copy-cat killers.
  • 17 December: The Lyric Theatre opens in the West End.^[29]
  • The Star newspaper begins publication, covering the Whitechapel murders intensively.
  • Parliament Hill purchased by the Metropolitan Board of Works to preserve it as a public viewpoint.
  • First police boxes erected in London.
  • Eagle Cricket Club renamed Orient Football Club.
• 1889
  • 23 March: Woolwich Free Ferry inaugurated.
  • 1 April: Elected London County Council takes up its powers, in succession to the Metropolitan Board of Works.^[21] Lord Rosebery is its first chairman.^[5]
  • 24 April: Garrick Theatre opens.
  • 6 July: Several aristocrats are implicated in the Cleveland Street scandal after police raid a male brothel.^[18]
  • 6 August: Savoy Hotel opens.
  • 14 August–15 September: London Dock Strike of 1889: Dockers strike for a minimum wage of sixpence an hour ("The dockers' tanner"), which they eventually receive, a landmark in the development of New Unionism.^[167]
  • 30 August: Official opening of Royal Mail Mount Pleasant Sorting Office.
  • Morley Memorial College for Working Men and Women opens in south London.
  • Chenies Street Chambers Ladies Residential Dwellings open in Bloomsbury as partly co-operative residential apartments for single women.^[161]
• 1890
  • 21 July: Replacement Battersea Bridge over the Thames opens.^[29]
  • 10 October: Brentford F.C. established by members of Brentford Rowing Club.
  • November: Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, moves to a building on the Victoria Embankment, as New Scotland Yard.
  • 4 November: The City & South London Railway, the first deep-level electric underground railway in the world, opens.^[29] It runs a distance of 5.1 km (3.2 mi) between the City of London and Stockwell.
  • Blackwall Buildings, Whitechapel, noted philanthropic housing, is built in the East End.
  • Construction begins of Britain's first council housing at Arnold Cross, Shoreditch in the East End.^[241]
  • Pearson move their building contractor's business to London.^[242]
  • The Rhymers' Club, a group of poets, begins to meet informally at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street.
• 1890–1 – Construction of the first large-scale electrical power station, at Deptford.^[5]
• 1891
  • January: The Strand Magazine is first published. On 25 June, Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional London private consulting detective Sherlock Holmes appears in it for the first time, in the story "A Scandal in Bohemia" (issue dated July).^[29]
  • May: William Morris establishes the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith.^[226]
  • 26 December–January 1893: Venice in London spectacular at Olympia.
  • George Gissing's novel New Grub Street is published.
• 1892
  • 30 September: Borough Polytechnic Institute, predecessor of London South Bank University, opens. Also this year, West Ham Technical Institute, predecessor of the University of East London, is founded.
  • 23 November: London Chamber of Arbitration instituted.^[21]
  • Rosebery Avenue completed.
  • Bibliographical Society established.
• 1893
  • 29 June: Unveiling of the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain (with its statue of Anteros), designed by Alfred Gilbert, at Piccadilly Circus.^[243]
  • 25 November: Queen's Hall opens as a concert venue in Langham Place.
  • A director for the Science Museum is appointed.^[244]
• 1894
  • 15 February (04:51 GMT): French anarchist Martial Bourdin attempts to destroy the Royal Greenwich Observatory with a bomb.^[245]
  • 19 May: Richmond Lock and Footbridge open.
  • 30 June: Tower Bridge opens to traffic.
  • 20 September First Lyons tea shop opens in Piccadilly.^[42]
  • 18 October: Kinetoscope Parlour, the first in the UK, is opened to the public in Oxford Street.
  • 29 September: Royal Commission on the Amalgamation of the City and County of London report issued.
  • December: Frederick Bremer, a plumber and gasfitter from Walthamstow, runs the first British four-wheeled petrol-engined motor car (self-built) on the public highway.^[246][247]
  • Alfred Harmsworth buys the London Evening News newspaper.^[18]
  • Survey of London project begins as the Survey of the Memorials of Greater London established by C. R. Ashbee; it is taken over by the London County Council in 1897.
  • London Camanachd sport club formed.
• 1895
  • 1 January: Bishopsgate Institute opens.
  • 14 February: Première of Oscar Wilde's last play, the comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, at St. James' Theatre.^[29]
  • 18 February: The Marquess of Queensberry (father of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's lover), leaves his calling card at the Albemarle Club, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite", i.e. a sodomite, inducing Wilde to charge him with criminal libel.^[248]
  • 3–5 April: Libel case of Wilde v Queensberry at the Old Bailey: Queensberry, defended by Edward Carson, is acquitted. Evidence of Wilde's homosexual relationships with young men renders him liable to criminal prosecution under the Labouchere Amendment.
  • 6 April: Oscar Wilde is arrested at the Cadogan Hotel for "unlawfully committing acts of gross indecency with certain male persons" and detained on remand in Holloway Prison.
  • 25 May: Criminal case of Regina v. Wilde: After a retrial at the Old Bailey, Oscar Wilde is convicted of gross indecency and is taken to Pentonville Prison to begin his two years' sentence of hard labour.^[249]
  • 29 June: Formation of Thames Ironworks F.C. by workers at the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company in Canning Town, predecessors of West Ham United F.C., is announced.
  • 17 July: Great Wheel opens at the Earl's Court exhibition grounds; at 308 ft (94 m) it is the world's tallest Ferris wheel at this date. Last used in October 1906, it is demolished in 1907.
  • 10 August: The first ever indoor promenade concert, origin of The Proms, is held at the Queen's Hall, Langham Place, opening a series promoted by impresario Robert Newman with 26-year-old Henry Wood as sole conductor.^[29]
  • 25 September: Snow falls in London.
  • October: London School of Economics holds its first classes.
  • November: The Lee–Enfield rifle, produced at the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, is adopted as standard issue by the British Army, remaining in service until the 1960s.^[250]
  • Lyric Theatre (Hammersmith) opens.
  • The Agapemonites complete the Ark of the Covenant church in Upper Clapton.
• 1896
  • 10 January: Birt Acres demonstrates his film projector, the Kineopticon, the first in Britain, to the Lyonsdown Photographic Club in New Barnet, the first film show to an audience in the UK.^[251]
  • 14 January: Acres demonstrates his Kineopticon to the Royal Photographic Society at the Queen's Hall.^[252]
  • 20 February:^[253]
    • Robert W. Paul demonstrates his film projector, the Theatrograph (later known as the Animatograph), at the Alhambra Theatre.
    • The Lumiere Brothers first project their films in Britain, at the Empire Theatre of Varieties, Leicester Square.
  • 21 March: Kineopticon opened on Piccadilly Circus/Shaftesbury Avenue corner, but is destroyed by fire after a few weeks.
  • May: "Watkin's Tower" at Wembley Park opens to public. Never completed beyond its first stage, it is demolished by 1907 and Wembley Stadium (1923) eventually built on the site.^[254]
  • 4 May: Daily Mail newspaper begins publication.
  • 19 May: Croydon Town Hall complex opens.^[255]
  • July: Robert W. Paul shoots the first actuality film of a London street scene, Blackfriars Bridge (first screened the following month).
  • 26 July–1 August: International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress held in London.
  • 17 August: Bridget Driscoll becomes the first person in the world to be killed in a car accident, in the grounds of The Crystal Palace.^[29]
  • November: Arthur Morrison's social realist novella A Child of the Jago is published.
  • Completion of the first flats in the London County Council's Boundary Estate in the East End, the country's earliest public housing scheme, replacing part of the notorious Old Nichol slum.^[256]
  • Trocadero restaurant of J. Lyons and Co. and Knight, Frank & Rutley, estate agents, established.
• 1897
  • 22 May: The Blackwall Tunnel, at this time the world's longest subaqueous tunnel, opens for road traffic beneath the Thames in the East End.^[29]
  • 22 June: Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
  • 21 July: The National Gallery of British Art (modern-day Tate Britain) opens on Millbank.
  • 10 August: The Automobile Club of Great Britain (modern-day Royal Automobile Club) founded in London.^[29]
  • 19 August: First horseless, electric, taxicabs begin operating in London.^[29]
• 1898
  • 21 June: At the launch of HMS Albion from the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company at Blackwell, 34 spectators drown when a stage collapses.
  • 19 July: French novelist Émile Zola arrives in London to escape imprisonment for criminal libel over his open letter J'accuse on the Dreyfus affair.
  • 8 August: Waterloo & City line, a physically isolated Tube line operated by the London and South Western Railway, opens to the public.
  • 16 November: Harrods department store in Knightsbridge install the first (stepless) escalator in the UK.^[257][258]
  • Hotel Russell built in Russell Square.
  • Lilian Baylis takes over management of The Old Vic theatre.
  • Orient Football Club renamed Clapton Orient.
• 1899
  • 25 February: In an accident at Grove Hill, Harrow, Edwin Sewell becomes the world's first driver of a petrol-driven vehicle to be killed; his passenger, Maj. James Richer, dies of injuries three days later.^[259]
  • 15 March: Marylebone station, the last mainline London terminus, is opened by the Great Central Railway.
  • 17 May: Foundation stone of the Victoria and Albert Museum is laid by Queen Victoria, her last public engagement.^[29]
  • 24 May: Kensington Palace state rooms are opened to the public by the Office of Works.
  • 13 July: London Government Act 1899 divides the County of London into 28 metropolitan boroughs with effect from 1 November 1900:^[260] Battersea, Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Camberwell, Chelsea, Deptford, Finsbury, Fulham, Greenwich, Hammersmith, Hackney, Hampstead, Holborn, Islington, Kensington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Paddington, Poplar, St Marylebone, St Pancras, Shoreditch, Southwark, Stepney, Stoke Newington, Wandsworth, Westminster, and Woolwich (including North Woolwich).^[261]
  • 9 October: The Motor Traction Company introduces the first motor buses in regular London service, from Kennington to Victoria station.

20th century

1900s–1930s

• 1900
  • 9 January: Influenza outbreak in London.
  • 15 January: London Hippodrome opens as a venue for circus performances.
  • c. July: Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice at Postman's Park in the City unveiled.
  • 5 July: Thames Ironworks F.C. relaunched as West Ham United F.C.
  • 30 July: Central London Railway (the modern-day Central line Tube) opens.
  • First historic building acquired by London County Council, Prince Henry's Room at 17 Fleet Street.^[262]
  • Completion of the Arnold Cross estate, Shoreditch, Britain's first council estate to be commenced (10 years previously).^[263]
• 1901
  • 2 February: Funeral procession of Queen Victoria.
  • 21 February: Apollo Theatre opens in Shaftesbury Avenue.^[264]
  • 12 March: The Whitechapel Art Gallery, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opens.
  • 1 April: United Kingdom Census 1901; Population: 26,923; county 4,509,618; Greater London 6,581,402.^[137]
  • 4 April: Electric trams introduced.^[5]
  • 18 May: Alexandra Palace opens to the public.^[29]
  • 20 June: Edward Elgar premières his concert overture Cockaigne (In London Town) at the Queen's Hall.
  • 29 June: The Horniman Museum, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opens in Forest Hill.
  • 5 August: Britain's first permanent cinema opens in Islington.^[29]
  • Ealing Tenants begin development of Brentham Garden Suburb housing cooperative.^[85]
  • London County Council begins development of Norbury Estate, the first beyond its boundaries at this time.^[265]
  • London County Council takes over blue plaque scheme from the Society of Arts.
  • Will Barker begins making moving pictures in London.
• 1902
  • 1 March: First GPO telephone exchange in London opens, Faraday Building.
  • April
    • Underground Electric Railways Company of London formed to consolidate the group of Underground lines controlled by American financier Charles Yerkes.
    • April: Vladimir Lenin (under the alias Jacob Richter) begins a year's stay in London where he edits the newspaper Iskra, studies in the British Museum Reading Room and in October first meets Leon Trotsky.
  • June: A cast of Thomas Thornycroft's sculpture Boadicea and Her Daughters is erected posthumously on the Victoria Embankment in Westminster.
  • 4 August: Greenwich foot tunnel opens.
  • 22 November: Golders Green Crematorium, the first in London, opens.
  • 1 December: Metropolis Water Act creates Metropolitan Water Board to absorb existing water suppliers on 24 June 1904.
  • Ealing Studios established by Will Barker.
  • Original Hammersmith Hospital established.
• 1903
  • 27 January: Fire at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum kills 51.^[266]
  • 6 March: Tyburn Convent and Shrine of the Martyrs established by Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre.
  • 20 May: New Kew Bridge is opened by King Edward VII.
  • By June: Westminster Cathedral (Roman Catholic) is opened.^[169]
  • 18 June: Explosion at Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, kills 16.^[267]
  • August: 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party moves from Brussels to London.
  • 2 November: Tabloid newspaper Daily Mirror begins publication.^[59]
  • November: The London County Council erects its first blue plaque, to Thomas Babington Macaulay (d. 1859) at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill.^[268]
  • 16 December: The London County Council erects its earliest surviving blue plaque, to novelist Charles Dickens (d. 1870) on his former home in Doughty Street.
  • The London County Council's Latchmere Estate in Battersea opens, the first public housing in the United Kingdom to be built using a council's own direct labour force.
  • New Baltic Exchange (building) completed.
  • William Foyle and his brother Gilbert establish the bookselling business of Foyles.
  • Pepys Club founded.
  • Clement's Inn, last of the Inns of Chancery, is dissolved and demolished to make way for the redevelopment of Aldwych.
• 1904
  • 9 February: City of London by-election, 1904 held.
  • 9 June: The London Symphony Orchestra performs its first concert.^[269]
  • 4 July: Branch railway to original Uxbridge station is opened by the Metropolitan Railway.^[270]
  • 15 August: Metropolitan Fire Brigade renamed as London Fire Brigade.
  • 1 September: Brentford F.C. first plays at Griffin Park.
  • 11 October: Loftus Road Stadium is first used by Shepherd's Bush F.C.
  • Late October: The first members of what will become the Bloomsbury Group move to the Bloomsbury district.^[271]
  • 24 December: The Coliseum Theatre opens.^[29]
  • 27 December: Première of Peter Pan.^[29]
  • Herbert Beerbohm Tree establishes an Academy of Dramatic Art, which will become RADA, at His Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket.
  • G. K. Chesterton's novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill is published.
• 1905
  • February: Lots Road Power Station begins generating electricity for the Underground Group railways and tramways. Through the year, the District Railway and Circle line convert their passenger operations from steam to electric trains.^[214]
  • 1 May: Anglican Diocese of Southwark created, raising the Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie to the dignity of Southwark Cathedral.
  • 10 March: Chelsea Football Club founded.
  • 6 May: Naval, Shipping and Fisheries Exhibition opens at Earl's Court.
  • 18 October: London County Council's new street at Kingsway and redevelopment of Aldwych are opened.
  • 21 October: Henry Wood first conducts a performance of his Fantasia on British Sea Songs at a Trafalgar Day concert.
• 1906
  • 24 February: Kingsway tramway subway opens.
  • 27 February: City of London by-election, February 1906 held.
  • 10 March: Bakerloo line opens.^[29]
  • 15 May: Our Dumb Friends League opens its first animal hospital, in Victoria.^[272]
  • 24 May
    • The Ritz Hotel opens in Piccadilly, the first significant steel-framed building in London (although regulations require the masonry external walls to be loadbearing).
    • Greenwich Power Station (begun 1902) begins generating electricity for the London County Council Tramways.^[273]
  • 26 May: Replacement Vauxhall Bridge opens.^[29]
  • 28 July: Tooting Bec Lido is opened as Tooting Bathing-Lake on Tooting Commons.
  • 23 October: Suffragettes disrupt the State Opening of Parliament.^[5]
  • 15 December: Piccadilly line opens.^[29]
  • Hampstead Garden Suburb established by Samuel and Henrietta Barnett and laid out by Raymond Unwin.^[85]
  • Brown Dog affair: Anti-vivisection Brown Dog statue erected in Battersea, provoking riots.
• 1907
  • 7 February: The "Mud March", the first large procession organized by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, takes place.
  • 11 February: Explosions at Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, shatter windows within a large radius.
  • 27 February: Old Bailey (criminal court) building opens.^[12]
  • 22 March: The first taxicabs with taximeters begin operating in London.
  • 13 May–1 June: 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party held at the Brotherhood Church in Hackney.^[274] Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Litvinov attend, the latter two staying in the Whitechapel Rowton House.
  • September: A cast of G. F. Watts' sculpture Physical Energy is erected posthumously in Kensington Gardens.
  • 11 September: Camden Town Murder.
• 1908
  • 26 May–October: Franco-British Exhibition held at what becomes known as White City in Shepherd's Bush.
  • 12 June: Rotherhithe Tunnel opens to road traffic and pedestrians.^[275]
  • 13 June: Women's suffrage march and rally at the Royal Albert Hall.
  • June: The distinctive 'bar and circle' design of station nameboards is introduced on the London Underground.^[276]
  • 13–25 July: 1908 Summer Olympics held at the White City Stadium as part of the Franco-British Exhibition and of a festival of sport beginning on 14 May. The marathon is run on 24 July and the Winter Olympics are held here on 19–31 October.^[29]
  • 19 July: The Metropolitan Railway converts the last of its steam-hauled passenger services south of Harrow to electric operation.^[270]
  • October: First Ideal Home Exhibition held, at Olympia sponsored by the Daily Mail newspaper.
  • November: Horace, Eustace and Oswald Short found Short Brothers, the first aircraft manufacturing company in England, in Battersea.
  • Walter Sickert paints the series of problem pictures The Camden Town Murder.^[277]
• 1909
  • 23 January: The Tottenham Outrage, an armed robbery and the murder of a ten-year-old boy and a police constable in Tottenham, carried out by two Latvian anarchists.
  • 26 February: First film shown in colour using Kinemacolor at the Palace Theatre.^[29]
  • 15 March: Selfridges, Oxford Street (department store) opens.
  • 31 March: Port of London Authority takes over the London docks,^[278] and also management of the Thames Tideway from the Thames Conservancy.
  • 9 May: Metropolitan Water Board's Honor Oak covered reservoir inaugurated.^[96]
  • 20 May: Imperial International Exhibition opens at White City.
  • 5 June: Alliott Verdon Roe begins flights in the first fixed-wing aircraft of all-British manufacture, the Roe I Triplane, from Walthamstow Marshes.
  • 26 June: The Victoria and Albert Museum opens in the building designed for it by Aston Webb in South Kensington by Edward VII and Queen Alexandra;^[5] the Science Museum is constituted as a fully independent institution.^[208]
  • 2 October: The first rugby football match at Twickenham Stadium is played.
  • 1 December: The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway publicly inaugurates England's first suburban surface railway electrification system on its South London line, known as the "Elevated Electric".^[279]
  • The owners of J. Lyons and Co. open the Strand Palace Hotel and their first Corner House restaurant (in Coventry Street).
• 1910
  • 24 February: Electric Cinema, Notting Hill opens.
  • 14 May–29 October: Japan–British Exhibition at White City.
  • 28 June: Westminster Cathedral (Roman Catholic) is consecrated.^[29]
  • 26 December: London Palladium music hall opens.^[5]
  • Admiralty Arch completed.^[5]
  • Crosby Hall moved from Bishopsgate to Chelsea.
  • Fine Art Trade Guild established in London.^[124]
• 1911
  • 3 January: Siege of Sidney Street: The Metropolitan Police and Scots Guards engage in a shootout with a criminal gang of Latvian anarchists holed up in a building in the East End following a bungled jewel robbery on 16 December 1910 in Houndsditch and the shooting of three policemen.
  • 1 February: The last and largest warship built on the Thames, HMS Thunderer is launched by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company at Blackwall.
  • 11 March: Victoria Memorial dedicated outside Buckingham Palace.
  • 2 April: The 1911 census is taken. Suffragette Emily Davison hides in a cupboard in the crypt of the Palace of Westminster so that she can legitimately be recorded as resident on census night at the House of Commons.^[280]
  • 12 May: Festival of Empire opens at The Crystal Palace to celebrate the forthcoming Coronation.
  • 18 May: The Other Club political dining society holds its first dinner.
  • 22 June: Coronation of George V in Westminster Abbey.
  • 9–26 September: World's first scheduled airmail post service is flown between Hendon and Windsor, Berkshire.^[186][281]
  • 4 October: First escalator on the London Underground system opens to the public, at Earl's Court tube station.^[5]
  • 18 October
    • Dr. Crippen put on trial for at the Old Bailey for uxoricide, of which he is convicted on 22 October.^[29] He is hanged on 23 November in Pentonville Prison.
    • First B-type double-decker bus, built and operated by the London General Omnibus Company, enters service. Designed by Frank Searle and considered the first mass-produced bus, around 2,800 are built up to 1919, displacing LGOC’s last horse buses by the end of 1911 and with examples in regular use up to 1926, about 900 seeing service on the Western Front (World War I).^[282]
  • 21 November: Suffragettes storm Parliament. All are arrested and choose prison terms.
  • Completion of Westminster Central Hall as a Wesleyan Methodist church.
  • Completion of Gidea Park as Romford Garden Suburb^[85] and of Totterdown Fields, the first London County Council cottage estate.^[283]
  • Camden Town Group of post-Impressionist artists established.
• 1912
  • 1 January: Underground Electric Railways Company of London takes over the London General Omnibus Company, leading to widespread adoption of the 'bar and circle' logo in publicity.^[276]
  • 1 March: Suffragettes smash shop windows in the West End, especially around Oxford Street.^[5]
  • April/May: Thousands of Jewish workers in the West End garment trade in the strike, followed by thousands more in the East End inspired by Rudolf Rocker.
  • May: East Finchley Picturedrome (built 1910) opens as a cinema.
  • 1 May: Statue of Peter Pan appears in Kensington Gardens.
  • 10 August: Frank McClean flies a Short Brothers floatplane up the Thames between the upper and lower parts of Tower Bridge and underneath London Bridge.^[284]
  • 26 October: Woolwich foot tunnel opens.
• 1913
  • 8 January: Poetry Bookshop established in Bloomsbury by Harold Monro; it becomes a literary meeting place.
  • 10 February: News reaches London of the failure of Capt. Scott's 1912 Polar expedition.^[186]
  • 15 March: King George V Reservoir in Enfield inaugurated for the Metropolitan Water Board.^[285]
  • 20 May: First Chelsea Flower Show.^[29]
  • 26 June: First woman magistrate appointed, Miss Emily Dawson.
  • 19 July: London County Council Tramways operates its last horse trams, in Islington.
  • 26 July: 50,000 women take part in a pilgrimage in Hyde Park organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.^[286]
  • 6 September: Arsenal F.C., previously based in Plumstead in South London, move into their new stadium at Highbury.^[287]
  • John Archer becomes the first black mayor of a London borough, Battersea.
  • Caroline Spurgeon becomes the first woman professor at the University of London.^[288]
  • Sir Aston Webb remodels Buckingham Palace's main East Front.^[289]
  • Twickenham Film Studios established.
  • Carter's Crisps of London introduce commercial manufacture of potato crisps to the UK.^[290]
• 1914
  • 10 March: Suffragette Mary Richardson damages the Velázquez painting the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery, with a meat cleaver.^[286]
  • 4 May: Suffragette Mary Wood attacks John Singer Sargent's portrait of Henry James at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition with a meat cleaver. At the same exhibition on 12 May, Gertrude Mary Ansell attacks the recently deceased Hubert von Herkomer's portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and on 26 May 'Mary Spencer' (Maude Kate Smith) attacks George Clausen's painting Primavera.^[291]
  • 1 July: Isleworth Studios officially opens for film production.
  • 31 July: London Stock Exchange closes.
  • 4 August
    • Last horsebus in London operates, in Peckham.
    • Declaration of war by the United Kingdom on the German Empire at 23:00.
  • September: Cover of magazine London Opinion first carries the iconic drawing by Alfred Leete of Lord Kitchener with the recruiting slogan Your Country Needs You used as poster in the London district.^[292]
  • 14 October: Royal Flying Corps first permanently stations aircraft at Hounslow Heath Aerodrome.
  • 6 November: Carl Hans Lody becomes the first of eleven convicted World War I German spies to be shot at dawn by firing squad in the Tower of London up to 1916.^[293]
  • Geffrye Museum is opened in Shoreditch by the London County Council.
  • City Livery Club founded.^[16]
• 1915
  • 1 January: Ilford rail crash kills ten on the Great Eastern Main Line.
  • February: London County Council establishes an emergency ambulance corps, predecessor of the London Ambulance Service, under the control of the London Fire Brigade. By July 1916 it is staffed entirely by women.
  • 3 May: Royal Flying Corps opens Northolt aerodrome.
  • 31 May: Bombing by German Zeppelins begins.^[12][294]
  • 19 July: A cast of Auguste Rodin's sculpture The Burghers of Calais is unveiled in Victoria Tower Gardens in Westminster.
  • October: Stag Lane Aerodrome set up.
  • 'Metro-land' first coined to promote the area served by the Metropolitan Railway.
• 1916
  • 5 June: School of Oriental Studies chartered.
  • 3 August: The musical comedy Chu Chin Chow, written, produced, directed and starring Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, premières at His Majesty's Theatre. It will run for five years and a total of 2,238 performances (more than twice as many as any previous musical), a record that will stand for nearly forty years.
  • 28 November: First bombing of central London by a fixed-wing aircraft when a German LVG C.II biplane drops 6 bombs near Victoria station.^[295]
  • Underground Electric Railways Company of London adopts Johnston (typeface) as part of its corporate identity.^[296][297]
• 1917
  • 19 January: Silvertown explosion: a blast at a munitions factory in east London kills 73 and injures over 400. The resulting fire causes over £2M-worth of damage.^[16]
  • 6/7 May: Bomb dropped on London by a fixed-wing aircraft: 1 killed.^[298]
  • 7 May: The mass explosion of mines in the Battle of Messines on the Western Front (World War I) can be felt in London.
  • 13 June: Daylight bombing raid on London by fixed-wing aircraft: 162 killed.^[298]
  • 7 July: A bomb damages Ironmongers' Hall beyond repair.
• 1918
  • 28 January: Night of unusually heavy bombing in London and south-east England.^[5]
  • 30 August: Strike of 20,000 London policemen with demands of increased pay and union recognition.
  • 27 October–2 November: 2,200 deaths in London over this period due to "Spanish Flu".^[5]
  • British Antique Dealers' Association headquartered in London.^[124]
  • South Suburban Co-operative Society, a consumers' co-operative, is formed by merger of the Croydon Co-operative Society (established 1887) with others.
• 1919
  • March: "Battle of Bow Street" between North American servicemen and the Metropolitan Police.
  • 18 July: The Cenotaph, Whitehall, unveiled as a temporary memorial.^[29]
  • 31 July: Police strike in London and Liverpool for recognition of the National Union of Police and Prison Officers; over 2,000 strikers are dismissed.
  • 25 August: Aircraft Transport and Travel airline begins operating its daily route to Paris–Le Bourget Airport from Hounslow Heath Aerodrome.^[299]
  • 30 December: Lincoln's Inn admits its first woman bar student.
  • Construction of Wormholt Estate in Hammersmith, a pioneering example of postwar public housing, begins.^[85]
  • City Literary Institute established.
• 1920
  • 17 March: Edith Cavell Memorial unveiled by Queen Alexandra in St Martin's Place.
  • 29 March: Croydon Aerodrome opens.
  • 9 June: Imperial War Museum opens at The Crystal Palace.
  • 13 July: London County Council bans foreigners from almost all council jobs.
  • 18 August: First night bus services introduced.
  • September: London Co-operative Society, a consumers' co-operative, is established by merger of the Stratford and Edmonton Co-operative Societies.
  • 11 November: The Cenotaph, Whitehall, designed by Edwin Lutyens, unveiled to commemorate the dead of World War I; The Unknown Warrior is buried in Westminster Abbey.
  • Devonshire House in Piccadilly demolished.
  • London School of Journalism founded.
• 1921
  • 17 March: Dr Marie Stopes opens the UK's first birth control clinic in Holloway.^[29]
  • 26 April: Police patrol London on motorcycles for the first time.
  • 6 June: Southwark Bridge opens.
  • 8 July: Port of London Authority opens King George V Dock, the last of London's upstream enclosed docks to be constructed.^[96]
  • 1 September: Poplar Rates Rebellion: Led by George Lansbury, the Borough council in Poplar withholds collection of part of its rates, leading to six weeks’ imprisonment for thirty councillors (including six women) and hasty passage of The London Authorities (Financial Provision) Act through Parliament to equalise tax burdens between rich and poor boroughs.^[300][301]
  • 9 September: Charlie Chaplin visits London (where he was probably born in 1889) and is met by thousands.
  • London County Council begins construction of a large estate of public housing at Bellingham; it is followed from 1924 by the nearby Downham Estate.^[85]
• 1922
  • 21 March: Rebuilt Waterloo Station officially opens.
  • 11 May: Radio station 2LO begins daily broadcasts from Marconi House in The Strand.
  • 19 May: City of London by-election, 1922 held.
  • 17 July: County Hall opens as the new headquarters of the London County Council.^[5]
  • July: HMS President (1918) is moored permanently on the Thames alongside Victoria Embankment as a drill ship for the Royal Naval Reserve.
  • Ada Salter becomes the first woman mayor of a London borough, Bermondsey.
• 1923
  • 28 April: The Empire Stadium, Wembley, opens to the public for the first time and holds the FA Cup Final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United football clubs. Crowds are cleared from the pitch by mounted police, including one on a white horse.^[18]
  • September: T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922) is first published in Britain in book form complete with notes in a limited edition by the Hogarth Press of Richmond upon Thames, run by Eliot's Bloomsbury Group friends Leonard and Virginia Woolf, the type handset by Virginia (completed in July).^[302][303]
  • 27 November: City and South London Railway Tube tunnel under reconstruction collapses under Newington Causeway.^[304]
• 1924
  • 1 February: City of London by-election, 1924 held.
  • 31 March: The last of 1,702 new steam locomotives is built at Stratford Works, a GER Class L77^[305] for suburban services from Liverpool Street station. This is the last full-size locomotive built in London.
  • 20 April: Opening of a Euston–Camden Town links connects the previously-separate City & South London and Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Tube railways.^[304]
  • 23 April: British Empire Exhibition opens at Wembley for the first of two seasons.
• 1925
  • 14 May: Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway is published by the Hogarth Press in Bloomsbury.^[306] Woolf is beginning work on To the Lighthouse.
  • 19 May: Jacob Epstein's Rima, the Hudson memorial, is unveiled in Hyde Park by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, who is among those disconcerted by the sculpture's modernity.^[307]
  • 13 June: Metropolitan Water Board's Queen Mary Reservoir opens in Middlesex.^[308]
  • 22 July: The first of Ben Travers' "Aldwych farces", A Cuckoo in the Nest, opens at the Aldwych Theatre.^[309]
  • 2 October
    • John Logie Baird successfully transmits the first television pictures with a greyscale image.^[310]
    • London's first double-decker buses with covered top decks are introduced.^[29][311]
  • West African Students' Union established.^[312]
• 1926
  • 16 January: BBC radio play about worker's revolution causes a panic in London.
  • 26 January: John Logie Baird demonstrates his television system from a room in Frith Street, Soho. In 1928 Selfridges sell the first set.
  • 9 February: Flooding of London suburbs.
  • 3–12 May: 1926 United Kingdom general strike.
  • 13 September: An extension of the London Underground Tube line from Clapham Common to Morden and a new link under the Thames between Kennington and Charing Cross complete a through rail route between Morden and Edgware^[304] of 19.32 mi. (31.94 km), known initially as the Edgware, Highgate & Morden line, later the Northern line. Station buildings for the Morden extension are the first significant designs for the network by Charles Holden.
  • K2 red telephone box designed by Giles Gilbert Scott introduced, chiefly in London area.^[313]
• 1927
  • 14 February: Alfred Hitchcock's silent film thriller The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog released.
  • 12 May: Police raid the London office of the Soviet trading company ARCOS.
  • 29 May: 120,000 people welcome Charles Lindbergh to Croydon Airport.
  • 7 October: Death of Anglo-Irish businessman and philanthropist Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, at Grosvenor Place; he leaves Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath to the nation as a museum for his art collection, the "Iveagh Bequest", and the surrounding estate is added to the Heath to preserve it from housing development and opens to the public in 1928.
  • 3 December: Post Office Railway, a private Tube line for carrying mail, opens.
  • 12 December: 1600 people hospitalised in London when they hurt themselves on the icy streets.
  • Delhi–London air traffic begins.^[59]
  • Evelyn Sharp's The London Child about the plight of slum children in London is published.
• 1928
  • 6–7 January: 1928 Thames flood. 14 drown. On 7 January the moat at the Tower of London (drained in 1843 and planted with grass) is completely refilled by a tidal wave and the basement of the Tate Gallery floods.
  • March: Science Museum opens in its own building in Exhibition Road.^[244]
  • 3 September: Alexander Fleming, at St Mary's Hospital, accidentally rediscovers the antibiotic Penicillin.^[314]
  • October: Firestone Tyre Factory on the 'Golden Mile' of the Great West Road, designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners in Art Deco style, opens.
  • 20 December: Gas explosion in High Holborn.^[315]
  • British Home Stores opens its first department store at Brixton.
  • First police boxes with telephones erected in London.
• 1929
  • 5 July: Heston Air Park opens.
  • 20 September: Clarence Hatry confesses to financial forgery.
  • 3 October: Dominion Theatre opens in Tottenham Court Road.
  • 28 October: Sharp fall on the London Stock Exchange, following a similar crash on Wall Street on 24 October.^[5]
  • 1 December: Underground Electric Railways Company of London officially opens its notable new headquarters building at 55 Broadway, above St. James's Park station, designed by Charles Holden, incorporating sculptures by Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and Henry Moore.^[316]
  • Grosvenor House Hotel opens.
  • Oxo Tower in Southwark completed.
  • First Tesco grocery store opens, at Burnt Oak, Edgware.^[317]
  • Foyles bookshop moves to new larger premises in the Foyles Building in Charing Cross Road.
• 1930
  • June: Harmondsworth Aerodrome at Heathrow begins operating.
  • 29 September: Whitehall Theatre opens.
  • 15 October: New Victoria Cinema and variety theatre opens.^[264]
• 1931
  • 6 January: Sadler's Wells Theatre reopens under the management of Lilian Baylis.^[29]
  • 13 March: League of Coloured Peoples founded.^[312]
  • 18 April: The Dorchester hotel opens in Park Lane.
  • 26 April: UK Census: Population: 4,397,003 county; 8,203,942 Greater London.^[318]
  • 5 May: The Vic-Wells Ballet, later to become The Royal Ballet, debuts.^[234]
  • 15 May: Shoppers in Bayswater escape with their lives when a chemical factory explodes.
  • 16 May: London United Tramways introduce the first trolleybuses in London, between Twickenham and Teddington.
  • 23 May: The Zoological Society of London opens Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire.^[29]
  • 19 July: Sudbury Town station on the London Underground Piccadilly line opens as rebuilt by Charles Holden, the first of his iconic modern designs for the network.^[319]
  • 7 September
    • Second Round Table Conference on the constitutional future of India opens in London with Mahatma Gandhi representing the Indian National Congress.
    • Gala Cinema, Tooting opens with a spectacular interior.
  • October: First vehicle (a light truck) off the Ford Dagenham production line.
  • 12 November: The Abbey Road Studios are opened by Sir Edward Elgar.^[29]
  • 21 November: The infamous Red-and-White Party, given by Arthur Jeffress in Maud Allan’s Regent’s Park townhouse in London, marks the end of the "Bright young things" subculture in Britain.^[320]
  • Daily Express Building in Fleet Street constructed.^[12]
• 1932
  • 10 March: Victoria Coach Station opens.
  • 15 March: First radio broadcast from the newly opened Broadcasting House.^[5]
  • 19 July: Replacement Lambeth Bridge opens.
  • Summer: Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, is established as a regular venue.
  • 7 October: The London Philharmonic Orchestra makes its debut, at the Queen's Hall.
  • 27 October: Arrival of the National Hunger March in London leads to several violent clashes with police.^[321]
  • 10 December: Branch railway to Stanmore is opened by the Metropolitan Railway.^[270]
  • The Hoover Building on the Western Avenue in Perivale is designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners in Art Deco style.
  • Courtauld Institute of Art and Jewish Museum London founded.
  • Honourable Company of Master Mariners (formed 25 June 1926) becomes the first City livery company granted this status since 1746.
• 1933
  • January: London Underground diagram designed by Harry Beck introduced to public.^[322]
  • 9 January: George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is published.
  • 1 July: London Passenger Transport Board begins operation, taking over operation of all buses, trams and Underground railways in the Greater London area. Lord Ashfield is chairman and Frank Pick is vice-chairman and chief executive officer.
  • 3 July: Official opening of Chiswick, Twickenham and Hampton Court Bridges over the Thames.
  • 19 July: New Freemasons' Hall (Masonic Peace Memorial) opened in Great Queen Street.
  • Battersea Power Station begins operation.
  • New store for Derry & Toms in Kensington High Street opens.
• 1934
  • 9 March: Herbert Morrison (Labour) becomes Leader of the London County Council.
  • 13 September: Silvertown Way flyover is opened.^[96]
  • Key examples of modern architecture built: Penguin Pool, London Zoo, designed by Berthold Lubetkin and Ove Arup,^[323] and Isokon building, Hampstead, designed by Wells Coates; also, terraced houses in Genesta Road, Plumstead designed by Lubetkin are completed and 35 houses are built as part of a 'Modern Homes' exhibition in Gidea Park.^[85]
  • Harrow Garden Village is completed by Metropolitan Railway Country Estates.
  • P. L. Travers' children's story Mary Poppins is first published.
• 1935
  • January: London County Council launches a green belt scheme.
  • 3 July: The Geological Museum opens in a new building in Exhibition Road, South Kensington.
  • 13 July: Official completion of the London County Council's Becontree estate, the largest housing estate in the world, consisting of some 27,000 new council houses which are home to more than 100,000 people, is marked by opening of Parsloes Park. The first families had moved to the estate which straddles the borders of Dagenham, Barking and Ilford, in 1921.^[324]
  • Further notable examples of modern architecture completed: Hornsey Town Hall, by Reginald Uren; Highpoint I flats, Highgate, by Lubetkin and Arup; and houses in Kerry Avenue, Stanmore.
• 1936
  • 6 June: Beehive, Gatwick Airport (terminal) opens in West Sussex.
  • 7 July: Imperial War Museum opens in adapted buildings of Bethlem Royal Hospital in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, Southwark.
  • 4 October: Battle of Cable Street in the East End between Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists and anti-fascist demonstrators.^[5]
  • 31 October: Jarrow March: 207 miners from Jarrow arrive in London on a protest against unemployment and poverty.^[275]
  • 2 November: BBC launch the world's first regular "high definition" television service,^[5] broadcast from Alexandra Palace.
  • 30 November: The Crystal Palace is destroyed in a fire.^[29]
  • 9 December: A KLM (Netherlands airline) Douglas DC-2 airliner crashes in Purley shortly after takeoff from Croydon Airport, killing 14 (including Juan de la Cierva) with just two survivors.
  • New Peter Jones (department store) opens in Sloane Square.
  • Adelphi Buildings demolished; replacement Art Deco building completed 1938.
  • The Geographers' Map Co.'s first A to Z Atlas and Guide to London and the Suburbs is published.
• 1937
  • 20 April: Granada Cinema, Woolwich, opens.
  • 27 April: National Maritime Museum opens at Greenwich in former Royal Hospital School premises.
  • 6 May: Replacement Chelsea Bridge opens.
  • 12 May: Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey.
  • 28 August: The London Underground Morden–Edgware line is renamed Northern line.
  • 1 September: Earls Court Exhibition Centre opens.
  • 16 December: The musical Me and My Girl opens in the West End Victoria Palace Theatre; the dance number "The Lambeth Walk" becomes popular.^[325]
  • December: The Hawker Hurricane enters service with the Royal Air Force as its first monoplane fighter aircraft with No. 111 Squadron at Northolt.^[326]
  • Dolphin Square flats completed.
  • Senate House (University of London), designed by Charles Holden, completed.
• 1938
  • 6 January: Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud arrives in London having fled from Vienna.^[29]
  • 6 April: City of London by-election, 1938 held.
  • June: London Green Belt placed on a statutory basis by Green Belts (London & Home Counties) Act.^[278]
  • 2 June: The children's zoo at London Zoo is opened by Robert and Ted Kennedy, two of the sons of new United States ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.^[29]
  • 30 June: London Underground 1938 Stock enters public service, on Northern line.^[327]
  • 20 August: Parliament Hill Lido opens.
  • 30 September: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returns to the UK from Munich, at Heston Aerodrome memorably waving the resolution signed the day earlier with Germany, and later in Downing Street giving his famous Peace for our time speech.^[29][328] George VI and Queen Elizabeth appear with Chamberlain on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to celebrate the agreement.
  • 2 December: First Kindertransport from Berlin arrives at Liverpool Street station.
• 1939
  • January/February: Poetry London: a Bi-Monthly of Modern Verse and Criticism, founded and edited by Tambimuttu (with Dylan Thomas and others), is first published.
  • 3 February: The Irish Republican Army bombs two London Underground stations.
  • 25 February: First Anderson shelter built in London.^[29]
  • 9 August: London Passenger Transport Board introduces first AEC Regent III RT bus into service.
  • 27 August: Cabinet War Rooms operational.^[329]
  • Late August: Most paintings evacuated from the National Gallery to Wales.^[330]
  • 1 September: "Operation Pied Piper": 4-day evacuation of children begins.^[331]
  • 3 September: Declaration of war by the United Kingdom on Nazi Germany, beginning World War II.^[29] Shortly after 11.00, Chamberlain announces this news on BBC Radio, speaking from 10 Downing Street. Twenty minutes later, air raid sirens sound in London (a false alarm).
  • Large London County Council estate of flats at White City completed.

1940s–1990s

• 1940
  • 5 February: City of London by-election, 1940 held.
  • 24 August: First air raid of the war on London.
  • 7 September: The Blitz: Bombing of city by the German air force begins, the first of 57 consecutive nights of strategic bombing.^[275][332]
  • September: Replacement Wandsworth Bridge in steel opens across the Thames.
  • Autumn: War Cabinet begins meeting at the disused Down Street tube station.^[329]
  • 13 October: 19 people (mostly Belgian refugees) are killed when a German bomb penetrates Bounds Green station on the Underground which is in use as an air-raid shelter
  • 14 October: At least 64 people are killed when a German bomb penetrates Balham station on the Underground which is in use as an air-raid shelter; a double-decker bus falls into the crater.^[327]
  • 15 October: The Dame Alice Owen's School bombing.
  • 9 November: Church of All Hallows, Twickenham, a partial reconstruction of Christopher Wren's All Hallows Lombard Street (1694), is consecrated.
  • November–March 1942: Tube tunnels built for Central line eastern extension converted into aircraft component factories for Plessey.^[329]
  • 29–30 December: Second Great Fire of London caused by bombing. More than 160 civilians and 14 firemen are killed; Guildhall is among many buildings badly damaged or destroyed. The famous photograph St Paul's Survives is taken this morning.
• 1941
  • 11 January: At least 56 people are killed when a German bomb hits Bank Underground station, leaving a large crater in the road at Bank junction.^[327]
  • 8 March: At least 34 people are killed when a German bomb hits the Café de Paris nightclub.
  • 16–17 April: Serious bomb damage to railway routes across the Thames, the Metropolitan line and the north transept of St Paul's Cathedral; Lord Stamp is amongst those killed.
  • 18 April: Heaviest air-raid of the year on London.^[5]
  • 10–12 May: Bombing guts the Commons Chamber of the Houses of Parliament, the Queen's Hall (causing The Proms to be relocated to the Royal Albert Hall) and the Great Synagogue of London. The intensive period of The Blitz ends, leaving around 25,000 civilians dead in London.
  • Spring: Noël Coward composes the song "London Pride".
  • 15 August: Josef Jakobs, parachuted into England as a German spy, is shot by military firing squad at the Tower of London, the last person to be executed here.
  • Patrick Hamilton's darkly comic novel Hangover Square: a tale of darkest Earl's Court is published.
• 1942
  • 9–12 February: Gordon Cummins murders and mutilates four women in the blackout, for which he will be hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 25 June (during an air raid).
  • 11 August: Traffic admitted onto the new Waterloo Bridge across the Thames.^[29]
• 1943
  • 17 January: Anti-aircraft shrapnel shells kill 23 people and injure 60 during a raid on London by 118 planes; six are reported losses.
  • 20 January: Sandhurst Road School Disaster: A bomb kills 38 children and 6 teachers at a school in Catford.
  • 3 March: Bethnal Green tube station disaster: 173 would-be shelterers crushed to death in a panic.
  • August: John Christie begins his serial killings at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill.
  • The County of London Plan, prepared by J. H. Forshaw and Patrick Abercrombie to guide the London County Council in postwar reconstruction, is published.
• 1944
  • 21–22 January: Start of Operation Steinbock (the "Baby Blitz"), a nocturnal Luftwaffe bombing offensive chiefly targeted at the Greater London area (continues until May). On this attack, few aircraft reach the target area.^[333]
  • 26 February: Last heavy air-raids on London.^[5][8]
  • 13 June: The first V-1 flying bomb attack on London takes place. Eight civilians are killed when one lands in Grove Road, Hackney. The bomb earns the nickname "doodlebug".^[29]
  • 18 June: A V-1 flying bomb hits the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks, killing 121.^[334]
  • July: Deep-level shelters built in 1941–2 are opened to public.^[329]
  • 12 August: The V-1 flying bomb campaign against London by the Germans reaches its 60th day, with more than 6,000 deaths, 17,000 injuries and damage or destruction to around 1 million buildings.
  • 8 September: The first V-2 rocket attack on London takes place, striking in the Chiswick district and resulting in the deaths of three people.^[29]
  • October: "Cleft chin murder": U.S. Army deserter Karl Hulten and 18-year-old Welsh-born waitress Elizabeth Jones go on a 6-day crime spree including the murder of a taxi driver, for which Hulten will be hanged at Pentonville Prison.
  • 25 November: A V-2 rocket destroys the Woolworths store in New Cross Road, killing 168, the highest death toll from one of these weapons. More than 100 people survive with injuries.^[335]
  • Town planner Patrick Abercrombie publishes the Greater London Plan.^[336]
  • Ministry of Works builds the first demonstration temporary prefab houses designed for postwar reconstruction, in Northolt;^[337] another is exhibited in May outside the Tate Gallery.^[85]
• 1945
  • 8 March: A V-2 rocket hits Smithfield Market, killing 110.^[338]
  • 27 March: Last day of V-2 rocket attacks on London. One hits Hughes Mansions, Stepney, killing 134^[339] and the last falls in Orpington with one fatality.^[340]
  • April: Sybil Campbell is appointed a stipendiary magistrate in London, the first woman to become a professional judge in the UK.
  • 15 August: V-J Day: Crowds celebrate the end of World War II.
  • 2 October: London Underground introduces fluorescent lighting of Tube platforms (Piccadilly Circus, westbound Piccadilly line).^[327]
• 1946
  • 1 January: First international flight from London Heathrow Airport. On 31 May it opens fully for civilian use.^[341]
  • 10 January: First United Nations General Assembly convenes at Methodist Central Hall Westminster.^[332] On 17 January the United Nations Security Council holds its first meeting at Church House.
  • 20 February: Royal Opera House in Covent Garden re-opens after the War^[5] with The Royal Ballet (relocated from Sadler's Wells Theatre) performing The Sleeping Beauty.
  • 8 June: London Victory Celebrations.
  • 8 September: Mass squat by homeless families of empty properties in London organised by the Communist Party.^[342]
  • 9 November: Shooting of Margaret Cook in Carnaby Street.
  • 11 November: Stevenage, a village in Hertfordshire, is designated by the government as Britain's first new town to relieve overcrowding and replace bombed homes in London.
  • 4 December: Central line (London Underground) extended from Liverpool Street to Stratford.
  • Development of Churchill Gardens housing estate in Pimlico by Westminster City Council to the design of Powell and Moya begins.
• 1947
  • 5 May: Central line (London Underground) extended from Stratford to Leytonstone.
  • 15 May: London Philharmonic Choir makes its debut, at the Royal Albert Hall.
  • 5 November: Guy the Gorilla arrives at London Zoo.
  • December: The tradition of a Christmas tree donated by Norway for Trafalgar Square begins.
  • Last horse-drawn hackney carriage operates in London.
• 1948
  • 12 January: The London Co-operative Society opens Britain's first supermarket, in Manor Park.^[5] In the same month, Marks & Spencer introduce self-service in the food department of their Wood Green store.^[343]
  • 1 April: London Electricity Board takes up its powers as part of the nationalisation of the electricity supply industry under terms of the Electricity Act 1947.
  • June
    • Austin FX3 taxi launched.
    • Professor Lillian Penson becomes the first woman elected to serve as Vice-Chancellor of a British university, the University of London.
  • 4 July: 1948 Northwood mid-air collision: A Scandinavian Airlines Douglas DC-6 and an Avro York of No. 99 Squadron RAF collide over Northwood and crash killing all 39 people aboard both aircraft.^[344]
  • 29 July–14 August: 1948 Summer Olympics (originally scheduled for 1944) held, based at Wembley Stadium.^[345]
  • 7 November: The Metropolitan Water Board's King George VI Reservoir near Staines in Middlesex is filled and opened.^[346]
  • 21 November: Central line (London Underground) services extended Woodford–Woodford, via the Fairlop Loop, and Greenford–West Ruislip.
  • December: Sloop HMS Wellington (1934) is moored permanently on the Thames alongside Victoria Embankment as headquarters ship of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners.
  • The London County Council begins development of the Harold Hill estate^[85] and Span Developments begin their first housing development, Oaklands in Whitton.
• 1949
  • 26 April: Ealing Comedy film Passport to Pimlico is premièred in London.
  • 10 May: First self-service launderette opens, in Queensway.^[343]
  • 6 July: London Transport Executive open the bus stand at Newbury Park tube station.
  • 27 November: Brumas becomes the first polar bear born at London Zoo.
  • Construction of the Woodberry Down estate by the London County Council begins.
• 1950
  • 30 September: London Transport Executive begins closure of trams in London.
  • 25 December: The Stone of Scone is stolen from Westminster Abbey by a group of four Scottish students.^[29]
  • Cities of London and Westminster (UK Parliament constituency) created, ending the separate City of London constituency which has existed since 1298.
  • Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras flats in St Pancras Way completed^[85] and Pimlico District Heating Undertaking begins operation.
• 1951
  • 6 April: Last trams operate through Kingsway tramway subway.
  • 8 April: Population: 3,348,336 county; 8,346,137 Greater London.^[318]
  • 3 May–30 September: Festival of Britain on the South Bank, including the Royal Festival Hall, Dome of Discovery and Skylon.^[345] Pleasure Gardens and a Fun Fair are opened in Battersea Park and the Lansbury Estate in Poplar is begun this year as a housing showcase.
  • 11 June: London Transport Executive introduces a Circular Tour of London using double-decker buses for the Festival.
  • 15 June: Ealing Comedy film The Lavender Hill Mob released.
  • 15 August: First Miss World beauty pageant as the 'Festival Bikini Contest'.^[347]
  • 4 September: William Girling Reservoir is opened in the Lee Valley Reservoir Chain by the Metropolitan Water Board.^[96]
  • 3 November: Express Dairies open Britain's first full-size supermarket in Streatham Hill.^[348]
  • December: John Wyndham's novel The Day of the Triffids, opening in a post-apocalyptic London, is published.
• 1952
  • April: London Transport Executive opens Stockwell Garage with Europe's largest unsupported roof span at this date.
  • 21 May: Eastcastle Street robbery: a post office van is held up in the West End and £287,000 stolen, Britain's largest postwar robbery up to this date;^[349][350] the robbers are never caught.
  • 5 July: The last of the original trams in London runs; citizens of London turn out in force to say farewell.^[351]
  • 8 October: Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash: a multiple collision claims the lives of 108 people.^[352]
  • 25 November: Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap starts its run at the New Ambassadors Theatre. It will still be running in London sixty years later, having transferred next door to St Martin's Theatre in 1974.^[353]
  • 4–9 December: Great Smog blankets London, causing transport chaos and, it is believed, around 4,000 deaths.^[354]
  • 30 December: Tower Bridge bascules are raised as a London Transport bus crosses.
  • Bankside Power Station commissioned.
• 1953
  • 8 April: 12 killed in Stratford tube crash, the first major accident on the Tube with passenger fatalities.
  • 2 June: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey.^[332]
  • c. June: Kieran Kelly begins his career as the serial killer of at least 16 men (up to 1983), mostly by pushing them under London Underground trains.^[355]
  • Civil Service Club founded.
  • First Italian espresso coffee bar opens in the UK, The Moka in Frith Street, Soho.^[356]
  • 1st century Roman leather bikini briefs found in Queen Street in the City.^[357]
• 1954
  • September: Kidbrooke School in Greenwich opens as Britain's first purpose-built comprehensive school.<ref name=|"Discovering Schools">Berry, George (1970). Discovering Schools. Tring: Shire Publications. ISBN 0-85263-091-3. </ref>
  • 18 September: Marble head of Mithras from London Mithraeum unearthed in Walbrook Square.^[358]
  • 10 December: Tea clipper Cutty Sark (1869) towed into permanent dry dock at Greenwich for preservation.
  • The first UK Wimpy Bar opens at the Lyons Corner House in Coventry Street.^[359]
  • Span Developments begin development of the Cator Estate in Blackheath.^[85]
• 1955
  • 13 July: Ruth Ellis becomes the last woman to be hanged in the UK, at HM Prison Holloway, for shooting dead a lover, David Blakely, outside a pub in Hampstead on 10 April (Easter Sunday).^[360]
  • 2 December: Barnes rail crash: collision due to signal error and consequent fire: 13 killed, 35 injured.
  • 8 December: Ealing Comedy film The Ladykillers released.^[361]
  • 16 December: New terminal at London Airport is opened by The Queen.^[362]
• 1956
  • 24 January: Plans are announced for the construction of thousands of new homes in the Barbican area, devastated by the Luftwaffe during World War II.^[363]
  • 8 February: London Transport introduces the first (experimental) Routemaster double-deck bus into public service, on route 2 At the 9 November Lord Mayor's Show it forms part of the procession, advertised as "London's Bus Of The Future".^[351]
  • 14 March: A memorial to Karl Marx is unveiled at the new site of his grave in Highgate Cemetery by Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain.^[364]
  • 28 March: Crystal Palace transmitting station brought into use.
  • 21 May: 24-hour fire in former Goodge Street deep-level shelter.^[329]
  • 5 July: Parliament passes the Clean Air Act in response to the Great Smog of 1952.^[16]
  • Pollock's Toy Museum established.
• 1957
  • 13 June: Oxford Street bus accident: 8 killed when a double-decker collides with a queue.
  • 4 December: Lewisham rail crash (Southern Region of British Railways): 90 killed in rear-end collision in fog and bridge collapse.
  • Michael Young and Peter Willmott's sociological study Family and Kinship in East London is published.
• 1958
  • 30 January: Dagenham East rail crash (Eastern Region of British Railways): 10 killed in rear-end collision in fog.
  • 21 March: Opening of the London Planetarium, the first in Britain.^[29]
  • 5 May–19 June: London bus crew strike.
  • 9 June: Gatwick Airport opens in West Sussex.^[278]
  • 10 June: City of Westminster installs first regular parking meters, in Grosvenor Square (following an experimental installation in 1956). Double yellow lines also introduced in Metropolitan Police District during year.
  • 26 July: Abolition of the presentation of débutantes to the royal court.^[29]
  • 30 August–5 September: 1958 Notting Hill race riots.^[33]
  • 26 September: Austin FX4 taxi launched.
  • 13 October: Michael Bond's children's story A Bear Called Paddington, introducing the character Paddington Bear, is published.
  • First boutique, His Clothes, to be opened in Carnaby Street, by John Stephen.^[365]
  • New store for Barkers of Kensington, begun in the 1930s, is completed.
• 1959
  • January: Ealing Jazz Club opens.
  • 23 April: London Heliport opens on the Thames in Battersea.
  • 28 May: The Mermaid Theatre opens in the City of London.
  • 30 September
    • Chiswick flyover is opened by Jayne Mansfield.
    • Last flights from Croydon Aerodrome.
  • 12 October: Large-scale diamond robbery in London.
  • 17 October: London County Council opens Park Lane Underpass.
  • 30 October: Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club opens in Soho.
  • 11 November: London Transport introduces the production Routemaster double-deck bus into full public service.
  • Bracken House, the Financial Times headquarters in the City of London, designed by Sir Albert Richardson, is completed.^[366]
  • London County Council completes first portion of Alton Estate in Roehampton, considered a model of post-war public housing.^[85][366]
  • London Pride (beer) first produced at Fuller's Brewery.
  • Colin MacInnes' novel Absolute Beginners is published.
• 1960
  • 18 April: 60,000 protestors stage a demonstration in London against nuclear weapons.^[367]
  • 15 September: The first traffic wardens deployed in London.^[29]
  • September: Metropolitan Water Board's Thames–Lea Valley Aqueduct inaugurated.^[96]
  • Embassy of the United States London Chancery Building, designed by Eero Saarinen, opens in Grosvenor Square on land leased from the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair.
• 1961
  • 6 July: Last judicial execution at HM Prison Pentonville: Edwin Bush (21) hanged by Harry Allen for the stabbing on 3 March of Elsie Batten^[368] in an antique shop in Cecil Court; he is the first British criminal caught through the Identikit facial composite system.
  • 8 September: Last judicial execution in London: Henryk Niemasz hanged at HM Prison Wandsworth by Harry Allen for double murder.^[368]
  • 16 November: Hammersmith flyover opens.
  • December: Demolition of the Euston Arch begins; much of the stone is used for repairs to the Prescott Channel.
• 1962
  • May: Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell are prosecuted and jailed for defacing Islington library books.
  • 8 May: Last trolleybuses in London run.^[351]
  • 6 June: The Beatles play their first session at Abbey Road Studios.^[369]
  • 1 July: A heavy smog develops over London.
  • 12 July: The Rollin' Stones play their first gig, at the Marquee Club in Oxford Street. From February 1963 they get a residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond.
  • 31 July: A crowd assaults a rally of the right-wing Union Movement of Sir Oswald Mosley.^[370]
  • 10 October: The former Anglican church of All Saints in Knightsbridge (1849) is elevated to be the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God and All Saints of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Sourozh.
  • 6 November: New building for Commonwealth Institute opens in Kensington.
  • 2–7 December: Severe smog in London causes numerous deaths.^[5]
  • Queen's Gallery opens.
• 1963
  • 16 May: London Tourist Board established.
  • 31 July: London Government Act 1963 passed.^[33]
  • Nell Dunn's short story collection Up the Junction is published (film 1968).
• 1964
  • 21 January: Strand Underpass opens using part of former Kingsway tramway subway.
  • 2 February: "Hammersmith nudes" murder case: First of six definite prostitute victims of an unknown serial killer, "Jack the Stripper", found.
  • 5 September: Biba opens its first store, in Kensington.
  • 23 December: "Pirate" radio station Radio London begins broadcasting from MV Galaxy anchored outside British territorial waters off Frinton, Essex.
  • December: London Record Society founded as a text publication society.
• 1965
  • 7 January: The Kray Twins are arrested on suspicion of running a protection racket.^[371]
  • 30 January: State funeral procession of Winston Churchill.
  • 11 March: Goldie the Eagle is recaptured 13 days after escaping from London Zoo.^[372]
  • 1 April: Reorganisation of local government in London.
    • The Greater London Council comes into its powers, replacing the London County Council and greatly expanding the metropolitan area of the city.^[5] Labour have an elected majority. The county of Middlesex is abolished as an administrative district with most being incorporated into the GLC area (except Staines and Sunbury transferred to Surrey). London Ambulance Service and Greater London Record Office established.
    • Inner London boroughs created: Camden, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, and Westminster. Inner London Education Authority takes responsibility for schools in these areas.
    • Outer London boroughs created: Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Newham, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames, Sutton, and Waltham Forest.
  • 8 July: Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs escapes from Wandsworth Prison.^[373]
  • 24 July: Freddie Mills, former British boxing champion, is found shot in his car in Soho, dying the next day.^[29]
  • 8 October: Post Office Tower officially opens as a telecommunications hub.^[374]
  • 4 November: Cities of London and Westminster by-election, 1965 held.
  • Mary Quant introduces the miniskirt from her shop Bazaar on the Kings Road in Chelsea.^{[375][376][377]}
• 1966
  • 8 March
    • City University London chartered.^[278]
    • London Free School established.
  • 9 March: Ronnie, one of the Kray twins, shoots George Cornell (an associate of rivals The Richardson Gang) dead at The Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel, a crime for which he is finally convicted in 1969.
  • 27 March: Theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy: Pickles, a mongrel dog, finds the FIFA World Cup Trophy (stolen 7 days earlier from an exhibition) wrapped in newspaper in a south London garden.
  • 15 April: Time magazine uses the phrase "Swinging London".^[378]
  • 9 June: Brunel University chartered at Uxbridge.
  • August: Notting Hill Carnival begins.
  • 12 August: Shepherd's Bush murders: Three policemen are shot dead in Braybrook Street, Shepherd's Bush.
  • 22 October: British spy George Blake escapes from Wormwood Scrubs prison; he is next seen in Moscow.^[379]
  • 23 December: UFO Club (UK underground) opens.
  • 31 December: Thieves steal millions of pounds worth of paintings from Dulwich Art Gallery.
  • Centre Point, a 32-floor office building at St Giles Circus designed by Richard Seifert for property speculator Harry Hyams, is completed. It remains empty for around a decade.^[366]
  • Greater London Council proposes construction of Ringway 1, the inner city "Motorway Box".
  • 1966–January 1970: Introduction of all-figure dialling within the London Director telephone system ends the use of alphabetic exchange names.
• 1967
  • January: The London-set film Blowup is released in the UK.
  • 1 March: Queen Elizabeth Hall opens as a concert venue on the South Bank.
  • 1 April: Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, ceases production.
  • 3 April: Anguillan-born Norwell Roberts becames the first black officer in the Metropolitan Police Service.
  • 13 April: The Conservative Party wins the Greater London Council elections.
  • 5 May: The Kinks' single "Waterloo Sunset" is released.
  • 20 May: In the first all-London FA Cup final, Tottenham Hotspur defeat Chelsea 2-1 at Wembley Stadium.^[380]
  • 9 July: The Southern Region of British Railways operates the last steam locomotives into a London terminus (Waterloo) in regular service.
  • October–November: Unofficial London dock workers' strike.
  • 5 November: Southern Region of British Railways Hither Green rail crash: 49 killed in high-speed derailment.
  • 7 November: St Pancras railway station is made a Grade I listed building, a landmark in the appreciation of Victorian architecture.^[381]
  • 5 December: The Beatles open the Apple Shop.
  • St Christopher's Hospice, the world's first purpose-built secular hospice specialising in palliative care of the terminally ill, is established in South London by Cicely Saunders with the support of Albertine Winner.^[382]
• 1968
  • 3 January: Heston services fully opens on the M4 motorway.^[383]
  • 17 March: Police and protestors clash at an anti-Vietnam War protest outside the Embassy of the United States in Grosvenor Square with many injured and arrested.
  • 18 April: The facing stones of the 1831 London Bridge are sold to American entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch who rebuilds it at Lake Havasu City, Arizona.^[29]
  • 16 May: Ronan Point tower block in Newham partially collapses following a gas explosion; 4 killed.
  • 30 July: Thames Television takes over the weekday independent television franchise for the London area.
  • 2 August: London Weekend Television takes over the weekday independent television franchise for the London area.
  • 1 September: London Transport Board opens first section of Victoria line Tube railway.
  • 30 September: St Katharine Docks closed to shipping.^[384]
  • 14 October: Euston railway station officially reopens after rebuilding.
  • 27 October: Police and protestors clash after an anti-Vietnam War protest outside the Embassy of the United States in Grosvenor Square.^[385]
  • First residence at Thamesmead occupied and Balfron Tower (GLC social housing in Poplar designed by Ernő Goldfinger) completed.
  • Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile consecrated in former King's Weigh House Congregational church of 1891 in Mayfair.
• 1969
  • 24 January: Violent protests by students close the London School of Economics, which does not re-open for three weeks.^[386]
  • 30 January: The Beatles' rooftop concert: The Beatles gave their last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records.^[29]
  • 7 March: The London Underground Victoria line is officially opened throughout by The Queen.^[29]
  • 7 May: Christopher Wren's church of St Mary Aldermanbury (1677) is rededicated at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri.^[387]
  • 21 September: Police evict squatters from the London Street Commune.^[388]
  • Scratchwood services opens on the M1 motorway.
• 1970
  • 1 January: Control of London Transport passes from the London Transport Board to the Greater London Council as its London Transport Executive; London Country Bus Services pass to the National Bus Company.
  • March: Babes in the Wood murders (Epping Forest).
  • July: Westway opens.
  • 18 September: American rock star Jimi Hendrix, 27, dies at St Mary Abbot's Hospital, Kensington, from a suspected drug-induced heart attack.^[389]
  • 6 October: BBC Radio London begins broadcasting.
  • 27 November: The Gay Liberation Front organises its first march in London.
  • c. 23 December: Last ship leaves Surrey Commercial Docks.
  • City of London Polytechnic, North East London Polytechnic and Thames Polytechnic formed by mergers.
  • Whitgift Centre shopping centre and office complex completed in Croydon.
• 1971
  • 1 May: A bomb planted by The Angry Brigade explodes in the Biba Kensington store.^[342]
  • 21 May: Polytechnic of Central London formed by merger of previous institutions, a successor to the 1838 Polytechnic. Also this year, the Polytechnic of North London is founded by merger of the Northern and North-Western polytechnics.
  • 6 June: The London Underground operates its last steam locomotives (used for maintenance trains).
  • 14 June: The first Hard Rock Cafe opens near Hyde Park Corner.
  • 21 October: HMS Belfast (C35) (1939) opens as a museum ship on the Thames.
  • 31 October: A terrorist bomb explodes at the top of the Post Office Tower.^[390]
• 1972
  • 30 May: Five children are killed in an accident on the Big Dipper (Battersea Park).^[391]
  • 1 July: First official national Gay Pride march, origin of Pride London.
  • 8 November: Stock Exchange Tower opens.
  • Brunswick Centre completed in Bloomsbury.
• 1973
  • 3 March: Two Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs explode in London, killing one person and injuring 250 others.
  • 8 March: IRA bombs explode in Whitehall and the Old Bailey, killing one person.
  • 17 March: Rebuilt London Bridge opens.^[392]
  • 26 March: Women admitted to the London Stock Exchange for the first time.^[393]
  • 23 August: IRA bomb found at Baker Street station and defused, the first postwar terrorist targeting of the London Underground.
  • 8 September: The IRA detonates bombs at Victoria Station and in Manchester.^[394]
  • 10 September
    • IRA bombs at King's Cross and Euston railway stations injure 13 people.^[394]
    • The fashion retailer Biba re-opens in the former Derry & Toms store in Kensington High Street.^[395]
  • 12 September: Further IRA bombs explode in Oxford Street and Sloane Square.^[394]
  • 8 October: LBC begins broadcasting, the first independent local radio station.
  • 16 October: Capital Radio begins broadcasting.
  • 20 December: Ealing Broadway rail crash: 10 killed in high-speed derailment.
  • Cromwell Tower, the first tower block on the Barbican Estate in the City and at this date London's tallest residential tower at 42 storeys and 123 metres (404 ft) high, is completed.
  • Trellick Tower, GLC social housing in North Kensington designed by Ernő Goldfinger, is completed.
  • Windsor House built.
• 1974
  • 20 March: Ian Ball fails in his attempt to kidnap Princess Anne and her husband Capt. Mark Phillips in The Mall outside Buckingham Palace.
  • 1 April: Thames Water, set up under the terms of the Water Act 1973, takes over the Metropolitan Water Board and other water suppliers in the Thames catchment, as well as management of the Thames above Teddington Lock from the Thames Conservancy; piers below Staines pass from the Port of London Authority to the Greater London Council.
  • 27 May: London Transport's first woman bus driver, Jill Viner, begins shifts.
  • 15 June: The Red Lion Square disorders see members of the fascist National Front clash with counter-protesters in the West End; 21-year-old Kevin Gateley, a university student, is killed.^[396]
  • 17 June: A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb explodes at the Palace of Westminster, damaging Westminster Hall.^[29]
  • 17 July: An IRA bomb explodes at the White Tower in the Tower of London, killing one person and injuring 41; another bomb explodes outside a government building in south London.^[397]
  • 12 October: The first UK McDonalds opens in Woolwich.^[398]
  • 22 October: An IRA bomb explodes at Brooks's club.^[399]
  • 11 November: New Covent Garden Market opens at Nine Elms.
  • 22 December: A suspected IRA bomb explodes at the home of Conservative Party leader and former Prime Minister Edward Heath.^[400]
  • Sex (boutique) is opened by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood in the King's Road.^[401]
• 1975
  • 28 February: Moorgate tube crash: 43 are killed when a Northern line (Highbury Branch) train accelerates into a dead end tunnel.
  • June: Snow falls at Lord's.
  • 14 August: Heaviest rainfall recorded in London, 17.8 cm (7 in.) in 2 hours at Hampstead.
  • 5 September: A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb explodes at The London Hilton on Park Lane killing two people and injuring 63.^[402]
  • 28 September–3 October: Spaghetti House siege; 9 hostages are taken.^[403]
  • 9 October: An IRA bomb explodes outside Green Park tube station killing one person and injuring 20.^[404]
  • 23 October: Oncologist Gordon Hamilton Fairley is killed by an IRA bomb intended for Sir Hugh Fraser.
  • 18 November: Walton's Restaurant bombing.
  • 6–12 December: Balcombe Street siege: 4 members of the IRA take hostages before surrendering to police.
  • Southwark Towers built.
• 1976
  • 29 January: Twelve Provisional Irish Republican Army bombs explode in the West End.^[405]
  • 13 April: Whitbread cease brewing at Chiswell Street.^[406]
  • 20 August–14 July 1978: Grunwick dispute: An industrial dispute involving trade union recognition at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in Willesden.
  • 25 October: Official opening of the National Theatre on the South Bank.^[407]
  • Brent Cross Shopping Centre opens.
  • First purpose-built (Thai style) Buddhist temple built in Britain, the Wat Buddhapadipa in Wimbledon.^[408]
• 1977
  • 24 February: City of London and Westminster South by-election, 1977 held.
  • 11 April: London Transport's Silver Jubilee Routemaster buses are launched.
  • 5 May: Greater London Council election, 1977: Conservatives secure a substantial majority over Labour.
  • 13 August: Battle of Lewisham: An attempt by the far-right National Front to march from New Cross to Lewisham leads to counter-demonstrations and violent clashes.^[409]
  • 16 September: Glam rock star Marc Bolan is killed in a car crash in Barnes, two weeks before his 30th birthday.
  • 31 October: "Frestonia" attempts to secede from the UK.
  • 16 December: Piccadilly line extended to Heathrow Central tube station.
  • London Hydraulic Power Company closes its last pumping station, in Wapping Wall.
• 1978
  • 20 August: Gunmen open fire on an Israeli El Al airline bus in London.
  • 7 September: Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella as he walks across Waterloo Bridge, probably on orders of his country's intelligence service; he dies 4 days later.^[410]
  • London Borough of Camden low-rise high-density social housing schemes completed on Alexandra Road Estate (by Neave Brown) and Branch Hill (by Gordon Benson and Alan Forsyth).^[85]
  • Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper begins publication.
• 1979
  • 30 March: Airey Neave, World War II veteran and Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman, is killed by an Irish National Liberation Army bomb in the House of Commons car park.^[411]
  • 1 May: The London Underground Jubilee line is inaugurated.^[412]
  • 14 September: The government announces plans to regenerate the London Docklands with housing and commercial developments.
• 1980
  • 28 March: London Transport Museum opens in the former Covent Garden flower market.
  • 30 April–5 May: Iranian Embassy siege, ended by intervention of the Special Air Service.
  • 10 July: Alexandra Palace gutted by fire for the second time in its history.^[16]
  • 16 August: Two nightclubs in Denmark Street gutted by fire, killing 37.^[413]
  • St George's Hospital moves from Hyde Park Corner to Tooting.
  • London Chinatown Community Centre established.
  • Royal Society of Chemistry, with headquarters at Burlington House, formed by merger.
• 1981
  • 18 January: New Cross Fire: Eleven young black people are killed and thirty injured in an arson attack on a house in New Cross.^[414]
  • 29 March: London Marathon first run.^[278]
  • 11 April: 1981 Brixton riot.^[345]
  • 20 April: More than 100 people are arrested and 15 police officers are injured in clashes with black youths in the Finsbury Park, Forest Green and Ealing areas.
  • 7 May: Ken Livingstone becomes leader of the Greater London Council after Labour wins the GLC elections.^[5]
  • 11 June: National Westminster Tower opens.
  • 21 June: Fire at Goodge Street tube station.^[327]
  • 2 July: London Docklands Development Corporation set up.^[415]
  • 29 July: Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer in St Paul's Cathedral.^[332]
  • 4 October: London Transport Executive (GLC) introduces 'Fares Fair' average 32% reduction of public transport fares, declared unlawful 17 December following legal challenge by London Borough of Bexley.
  • 10 October: Chelsea Barracks is bombed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, killing two.^[5]
  • November: Port of London Authority closes the Royal Docks, the last functioning upstream docks, to general trade.
  • Greater London Council public housing stock passed to boroughs.^[85]
  • Whiteleys department store in Bayswater closes.
• 1982
  • 19 January: Billingsgate Fish Market opens on a new site in the Isle of Dogs, having closed at its old site in the City 3 days earlier.
  • 3 March: Barbican Centre opens as an arts and conference venue.^[278]
  • 28 May: Pope John Paul II's visit to the United Kingdom begins. Following arrival from Gatwick Airport at Victoria station he attends Mass at Westminster Cathedral. On 29 May there is an open-air Mass at Wembley Stadium and on 30 May a meeting at Crystal Palace Stadium with the Polish Catholic community.
  • 17 June: The body of Italian banker Roberto Calvi is found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge.
  • 20 July: Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings.
  • 12 October: London Victory Parade of 1982.
  • October: Thames Barrier begins operating (official opening 8 May 1984).
  • Broadgate development in the City begins.
  • Black Audio Film Collective active.
• 1983
  • 14 January: Shooting of Stephen Waldorf: Armed police shoot and severely injure an innocent car passenger in Earl's Court, believing him to be an escaped prisoner.
  • 4 April: Gunmen escape with £7 million from a Security Express van, the biggest cash haul in British history.
  • 16 May: Wheel clamps are first used to combat illegal parking in London.^[5]
  • July–August: London temperatures reach and exceed 30 °C.
  • 22 September: Docklands redevelopment begins with the opening of an Enterprise Zone on the Isle of Dogs.^[5]
  • 7 October: A plan to abolish the Greater London Council is announced.
  • 4 November: Dennis Nilsen is sentenced at the Old Bailey to life imprisonment for the murder of at least 12 young men in a series of killings committed since 1978 in north London.
  • 26 November: Brink's-Mat robbery: £26M-worth of gold bullion and other valuables are stolen from a warehouse at Heathrow International Trading Estate.
  • 17 December: A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) car bomb kills six, three police and three members of the public, and injures 90 outside Harrods.^[416] A second bomb on Christmas Day in Oxford Street explodes without injuries.
  • Mary Donaldson becomes first woman Lord Mayor of London and Sam Beaver King becomes first black mayor of the London Borough of Southwark.
  • Thames Water shuts down the reciprocating stationary steam engines at its Waddon pumping station, the last in Britain to pump drinking water by steam.^[417]
  • Sankofa Film and Video Collective founded.
• 1984
  • 4 April: Churchill War Rooms open as a museum.
  • 17 April: Murder of Yvonne Fletcher: a police officer is shot from the Embassy of Libya in St. James's Square.
  • 29 June: London Transport passes from control of the Greater London Council to London Regional Transport (reporting to the Department of Transport).
  • 23 November: Serious fire in Victoria line tunnel at Oxford Circus tube station.^[327]
  • London Fashion Week begins.
• 1985
  • 6 January: Introduction of Capitalcard, predecessor of the Travelcard, the first season ticket valid on both London Transport and British Rail services.
  • 16 January: The Dorchester Hotel is bought by the Sultan of Brunei.
  • 19 February: Soap opera EastEnders debuts on BBC television.
  • 11 March: Harrods is bought by Mohammed Al Fayed.
  • 6 October: Death of Keith Blakelock: A police constable is brutally murdered in the Broadwater Farm riot on the Broadwater Farm estate of 1967–71 in Tottenham.
• 1986
  • 24 January–5 February 1987: Wapping dispute: Employees of News International strike over the transfer of the company's newspaper production to Wapping with the adoption of new technology. Within a year of the strike's collapse most national newspapers will follow News International's lead in moving from Fleet Street to Docklands.
  • 31 March: Greater London Council abolished. Responsibility for the blue plaque scheme passes to English Heritage.^[418]
  • 12 April: Heathrow Terminal 4 opens.
  • 27 June: Last train from Broad Street station.
  • 27 October: "Big Bang": Deregulation of the London Stock Exchange, leading to substantial changes in the City financial markets.
  • 29 October: M25 motorway (London orbital) completed, creating a new de facto definition of the Greater London area.
  • 18 November: Lloyd's building, designed by Richard Rogers, opens.^[12]
• 1987
  • January: Westminster cemeteries scandal begins.
  • 24 February–23 July: London Daily News published.
  • 30 July: Docklands Light Railway begins operation.^[419]
  • 26 October: London City Airport begins commercial operation.
  • 18 November: King's Cross fire: 31 killed on Underground station escalator.
  • Richmond Riverside, London, designed by Quinlan Terry, completed.
• 1988
  • 16 May: Thameslink north-south cross-London suburban rail services introduced.
  • July: Surrey Quays Shopping Centre opens on the site of the Surrey Commercial Docks in Rotherhithe, leading to a de facto renaming of the surrounding residential area as Surrey Quays.
  • 1 August: A British Army soldier is killed by IRA terrorists at Inglis Barracks in Mill Hill.
  • 12 December: Clapham Junction rail crash: 35 killed in double collision following signalling installation error.
  • Approximate date: Al-Hayat newspaper headquartered in London.^[420]
• 1989
  • 29 June: A replacement sundial column is unveiled at Seven Dials.^[421]
  • 20 August: Marchioness disaster: 51 killed when dredger Bowbelle collides with chartered pleasure boat Marchioness on the Thames near Cannon Street Railway Bridge in the early hours.
  • c. October–December: Gates erected across Downing Street.
  • Design Museum opens in Shad Thames.
  • Hampstead Heath management taken over by Corporation of London.
  • North East London Polytechnic renamed Polytechnic of East London.
  • Truman's Brewery closes.
• 1990
  • 26 January: Last trains use Holborn Viaduct station.
  • 31 March: Poll Tax Riot.^[345]
  • 1 April: Inner London Education Authority abolished.
  • 3 May: London local elections, 1990. In Westminster these give rise to the homes for votes scandal.
  • 20 July: A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes at Stock Exchange Tower.
• 1991
  • 7 February: Downing Street mortar attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
  • 26 August: One Canada Square (the "Canary Wharf tower") opens.
  • Embankment Place office and commercial complex designed by Terry Farrell and Partners above Cannon Street railway station opens.
• 1992
  • 10 April: Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates a truck bomb at the Baltic Exchange in the City, killing three and causing at least £800 million worth of damage.^[5]
  • 9 October: Two suspected IRA bombs explode in London, but there are no injuries.
  • November: University of East London formed from the Polytechnic of East London.
  • 1 December: University of Westminster formed from the Polytechnic of Central London, a successor to the 1838 Polytechnic.
  • 10 December: Eleven people are injured by IRA bombs in Wood Green.
  • 16 December: Four people are injured by IRA bombs in Oxford Street.
  • London Guildhall University formed from the City of London Polytechnic, University of Greenwich formed from Thames Polytechnic and University of North London formed from the Polytechnic of North London.
  • The Ark office block in Hammersmith, designed by Ralph Erskine, completed.^[422]
  • Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum opens, originally at Butler's Wharf.
• 1993
  • 22 April: Murder of Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, leads ultimately to cultural changes to attitudes on racism especially within the police.
  • 24 April: 1993 Bishopsgate bombing: An IRA truck bomb explodes in the City, killing one person and causing £350 million worth of damage.
  • 4 August: Millwall F.C.'s New Den stadium opens in Bermondsey.^[423]
  • Thames Water Ring Main completed.
• 1994
  • 26 February: Clerkenwell cinema fire: 11 die as the result of arson at the Dream City adult cinema.
  • 5 April: The isolated Waterloo & City line passes from control of British Rail Network SouthEast to the London Underground.
  • 14 July: SIS Building, headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service designed by Terry Farrell, opens on the Albert Embankment in Vauxhall.
  • 30 September: London Underground ceases shuttle services on the Aldwych branch, and from Epping to Ongar in Essex.
  • 21 October: Heathrow tunnel collapse: rail tunnel under construction for Heathrow Express fails.
  • 30 October: London Docklands Development Corporation powers in Bermondsey revert to the London Borough of Southwark, the LDDC's first dedesignation.^[415]
  • 14 November: Eurostar train service to Paris Gare du Nord via the Channel Tunnel begins operating, from Waterloo International railway station.
  • Finsbury Park Mosque opens.
• 1995
  • 20 August: BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir London, Europe's first traditional-style purpose-built Hindu temple (and England's largest), is inaugurated in Neasden.^[424]
  • 8 December: Head teacher Philip Lawrence dies after being stabbed while protecting a pupil from a teenage gang outside his school in Maida Vale.
  • 13 December: Race riots break out in Brixton following the death of a black man in police custody.
  • 31 December: London Docklands Development Corporation powers in Beckton revert to the London Borough of Newham.^[415]
  • Blackwell's of Oxford open a bookshop in Charing Cross Road.
• 1996
  • 9 February: 1996 Docklands bombing: A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) truck bomb explodes at Canary Wharf, killing two.
  • 18 February: An IRA bomb explodes on a bus in central London, killing the transporter, Edward O'Brien, and injuring eight other people, including the driver.^[425]
  • 20 December: London Docklands Development Corporation powers in Surrey Docks revert to the London Borough of Southwark.^[415]
• 1997
  • 31 January: London Docklands Development Corporation powers in Limehouse and Wapping revert to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
  • March: London Aquarium opens in former County Hall.
  • May: Shakespeare's Globe, a reconstruction of the Elizabethan Globe Theatre, opens.
  • 6 September: Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in Westminster Abbey.^[345]
  • 19 September: Southall rail crash: 7 killed in collision on Great Western Main Line.
  • 7 October: Royal Victoria Dock Bridge, designed by Lifschutz Davidson, officially opens as a footbridge in Docklands; the option to add a transporter bridge gondola is never adopted.
  • 24 October: Death of Nina Mackay: A 25-year-old WPC is stabbed to death in Stratford, when entering a flat to arrest a man with paranoid schizophrenia.
  • 10 October: London Docklands Development Corporation powers in the Isle of Dogs and Poplar revert to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
  • 24 November: New British Library building in St Pancras opens to readers.^[278]
  • 18 December: London River Services incorporated as a subsidiary of London Regional Transport to take over responsibilities of the Thames Pier Agency.
  • Greater London Record Office renamed London Metropolitan Archives.
• 1998
  • 3 March: Millennium Dome construction begins.
  • 31 March: London Docklands Development Corporation wound up; its remaining powers in the Royal Docks revert to the London Borough of Newham.
  • 7 May: Greater London Authority referendum, 1998.
  • 19 June: Heathrow Express dedicated rail service begins full operation between Paddington station and the airport.
• 1999
  • 17–30 April: David Copeland plants nail bombs targeting black, Bengali and gay communities, killing 3 and injuring more than 100.
  • May: London IMAX cinema opens on South Bank.
  • 21 May: Film Notting Hill released.
  • July
    • Fourth plinth, Trafalgar Square, first occupied, by Mark Wallinger's Ecce Homo.
    • Green Bridge carries Mile End Park over the Mile End Road.
  • 5 October: Ladbroke Grove rail crash: 31 killed in collision on Great Western Main Line.
  • 31 December: Jubilee Line Extension serving Canary Wharf tube station opens.
  • University of Greenwich occupies portions of Old Royal Naval College.
  • Cathedral of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God (Russian Orthodox Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland) opens in Chiswick.^[426]

21st century

• 2000
  • 1 January: Millennium Dome opens on Greenwich Peninsula.
  • 25 February: Murder of Victoria Climbié (aged 8) after torture and neglect by her guardians, her aunt Marie Therese Kouao and Kouao's partner Carl Manning; Brent and Haringey social services departments will be severely criticised for their shortcomings in the case.
  • 8 March: Peckham Library opens; awarded 2000 Stirling Prize.
  • 9 March: London Eye ferris wheel opens to public.
  • 1 May: May Day riot in central London by anti-capitalist protestors. The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, and the Cenotaph in Whitehall are daubed with graffiti.^[427]
  • 4 May: London mayoral election, 2000: Ken Livingstone, standing as an independent, becomes the first directly-elected Mayor of London.
  • 11 May: Croydon Tramlink opens to public.
  • 12 May: Tate Modern art museum opens in former Bankside Power Station.
  • 10 June: Millennium Bridge opens to pedestrians; it is closed after a few days for adaptation due to synchronous lateral excitation.
  • 3 July: Directly elected Greater London Authority formed with Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London. Transport for London created as a functional body of the GLA taking over functions of London Regional Transport, the Public Carriage Office, traffic management and London River Services.
  • 20 July: Rioting breaks out in Brixton following the fatal shooting of Derek Bennett, a 29-year-old black man, by armed police in the area. 27 people are arrested and three police officers are injured.^[428]
  • 7 November: Millennium Dome raid: The theft of £350 million worth of diamonds from the Millennium Dome is foiled by police.^[29]
  • 27 November: Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old schoolboy originally from Nigeria, is stabbed to death on his way home from school in Peckham.^[429]
  • ExCeL London exhibition centre opens at Royal Victoria Dock.
• 2001
  • 3 August: A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes in Ealing Broadway.
  • 21 September: Torso of a 7-year old Nigerian boy, "Adam", believed to be the victim of ritual sacrifice, found in the Thames.
  • 8 November: Handel House Museum in Brook Street opens.
  • Citigroup Centre completed.
  • Conservatoire for Dance and Drama, a national higher education institution, is established, the founding affiliates being the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the London Contemporary Dance School.
• 2002
  • 2 January: Royal National Lifeboat Institution stations inland rescue boats on the Thames in London.
  • May: First Idea Store community centre opens in Bow.
  • June: Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
  • July: City Hall, headquarters of the Greater London Authority designed by Norman Foster, opens beside the Thames in Southwark.
  • 3 July: Decapitation of a statue of Margaret Thatcher: a man decapitates a statue of the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on display at Guildhall Art Gallery.^[430]
  • 1 August: London Metropolitan University formed by merger of London Guildhall University and the University of North London.
  • 2 September: 8 Canada Square begins to be used by HSBC staff.
  • BedZED (Beddington Zero Energy Development), the country's first large-scale zero energy housing development, of 99 homes in Beddington, designed by Bill Dunster, is completed.
• 2003
  • 15 February 2003 anti-war protest: More than 2 million people demonstrate against the Iraq War, the largest demonstration in British history.^[18]
  • 17 February: Congestion Charge introduced.
  • 30 March: Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha Sikh temple opens in Southall.
  • May: Transport for London sets up a Directorate of Traffic Operations to run road traffic management (including London Streets Traffic Control Centre), some functions being transferred from the Metropolitan Police.
  • 31 May: Post Office Railway last carries mail.
  • 10 August: Hottest day recorded in London, 38.1 °C (100.6 °F) in Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
  • 3 October: Baitul Futuh Mosque, Britain's largest, inaugurated at Morden.
• 2004
  • 10 February: London Plan published.
  • 28 April: Landmark Swiss Re office building ("The Gherkin") at 30 St Mary Axe in the City, designed by Norman Foster, opens.^[431]
  • May: BBC Media Village opens in White City.
  • 11 May: University of the Arts London formed from the London Institute.
  • July: London Stock Exchange moves to Paternoster Square.
  • September: Daniel Gonzalez spree killings.
  • 10 November: Temple Bar reinstalled in central London at Paternoster Square.^[12]
  • Pride London established.
• 2005
  • 6 July: Successful London bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics is announced.
  • 7 July 2005 London bombings: 56 killed in four suicide bombings on London Transport.^[345]
  • 21 July: Four attempted bombings on London Transport.
  • 22 July: Death of Jean Charles de Menezes, mistaken for a terrorist suspect, shot dead by Metropolitan Police officers on a train at Stockwell tube station.
  • Summer: Guinness closes its Park Royal brewery.^[432]
  • Cathedral of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God and Holy Royal Martyrs (Russian Orthodox Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland) in Chiswick fully consecrated.^[426]
• 2006
  • 20 January: River Thames whale: a whale is discovered swimming in the Thames in London.
  • 25 September: Young's Ram Brewery in Wandsworth closes.
  • By October: The Daily Telegraph moves its offices from Canada Place in Canary Wharf (Docklands) to Victoria Plaza near Victoria station in central London.
  • 7 December: London Tornado of 2006.
  • Donnybrook Quarter of the East End is completed by Peter Barber Architects.
  • Barkers of Kensington is closed down by its owners, House of Fraser.
• 2007
  • 9 March: Rebuilt Wembley Stadium opens.^[278]
  • 29 June: Two car bombs are uncovered and defused in central London.
  • 11 November: London Overground begins operating.
• 2008
  • 28 March: Heathrow Terminal 5 opens at the airport.
  • April: Willis Building opens in the City.
  • 4 May: London mayoral election, 2008: Boris Johnson (Conservative) defeats Ken Livingstone to become Mayor of London.
  • 30 October: Westfield London shopping centre opens at White City.
• 2009
  • 2 February: February 2009 United Kingdom snowstorm: Transport for London suspends all London buses.
  • 1–2 April: 2009 G-20 London summit protests.
  • 2 April: City hosts 2009 G-20 London summit.
  • 12 October: The Evening Standard becomes a free newspaper in central London.^[433]
  • 9 November: Transport for London officially opens new Surface Transport and Traffic Operations Centre (STTOC, at Palestra, Blackfriars Road), bringing together London Streets Traffic Control Centre (LSTCC), London Buses Command and Control Centre (CentreComm), and the Metropolitan Police Traffic Operation Control Centre (MetroComm).
  • 11 November: London Overground rail franchise begins operation.
• 2010
  • June: The Strata ("The Razor"), a 148-metre, 43-storey, 408-flat skyscraper at Elephant and Castle in Southwark, that incorporates wind turbines into its structure, is completed.^[434]
  • 30 July: Barclays Cycle Hire scheme launched by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London.
  • September: Evelyn Grace Academy, a school in Brixton designed by Zaha Hadid, opens; awarded 2011 Stirling Prize.^[435]
• 2011
  • 26 March: 2011 London anti-cuts protest.
  • 27 March: United Kingdom Census 2011. 22.1% of the London population (1.73M) have a tongue other than English as their first language, Polish being the most widely spoken.
  • 29 April: Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.
  • 29 May: Parish church of St John Baptist at Croydon raised to the honorific status of Croydon Minster.
  • 4 August: Death of Mark Duggan, shot by police in Tottenham Hale, triggers 2011 England riots.
  • 13 September: Westfield Stratford City shopping mall opens at Stratford.
  • 15 October: Occupy London begins.
  • 9 December: Circle line (London Underground) trains cease to run in a complete circle.
  • Heron Tower (110 Bishopsgate) completed.
  • Georgian Orthodox Cathedral Church of the Nativity of Our Lord established in former Agapemonite Ark of the Covenant (later Church of the Good Shepherd) in Upper Clapton.
• 2012
  • 27 February: Transport for London's crew-operated "New Routemaster" hybrid double-decker buses begin to enter public service.
  • 3 May: London Assembly election, 2012 and London mayoral election, 2012 held.
  • 3 June: Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant occurs.
  • 28 June: Emirates Air Line (cable car) opens across Thames between Royal Docks and Greenwich Peninsula.
  • 6 July: The Shard building inaugurated.
  • 27 July: 2012 Summer Olympics begin, based at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford.
  • 29 August: 2012 Summer Paralympics begin.
  • 10 September: Our Greatest Team Parade held.
  • September: New College of the Humanities, a private university-level institution based in Bedford Square, begins tuition.
• 2013
  • 25 October: Lambeth slavery case: 3 women believed to have been held as slaves for the last three decades are rescued from a residence.^[436]
  • 28 October: St. Jude storm.
  • 13 November: Groundbreaking for new Embassy of the United States in London at Nine Elms.
• 2014
  • April–August: 20 Fenchurch Street (the "Walkie-talkie" office block) completed and occupied in the City.
  • July: 122 Leadenhall Street (the "Cheesegrater" office block) opens in the City.
  • Burntwood School, Wandsworth, designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, completed; awarded 2015 Stirling Prize.
  • Cat Emporium (cat café) in business.^[437]
• 2015
  • 2 February: London's population hits a record high of 8.6m and is forecast to reach 11m by 2050.^[438]
  • 1 April: Electrical fire under Kingsway pavement.
  • 2 April: Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary begins.
• 2016
  • 28 January: Lee Tunnel, the first section of the Thames Tideway Scheme, opens.^[439]
  • 23 February: Crossrail renamed Elizabeth line.
  • 9 May: London mayoral election, 2016: Sadiq Khan (Labour) elected Mayor of London.
  • 17 June: Tate Modern Switch House (art gallery extension) on Bankside, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, opens.^[440]
  • 1 November: Metropolitan Police Service returns its headquarters from New Scotland Yard in Broadway to the Curtis Green Building on the original Scotland Yard site.^[441]
  • 24 November (projected): Design Museum reopens in former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington.^[442]
• 2017 – Projected: The Scalpel office block completed in the City.

See also

• History of London
• List of Lord Mayors of London

References

Bibliography

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to History of London.

• British History Online. London
• "London and its Hinterlands: Life in London, 1674–1913". Old Bailey Proceedings Online. University of Sheffield. 
• "Timeline". Exploring 20th Century London. Renaissance London. 
• "London", Historical Directories, UK: University of Leicester .
• Europeana. Items related to London, various dates.
• Digital Public Library of America. Items related to London, various dates
• "Dates and Events – Chronology". Dictionary of Victorian London. Stoke Newington: Lee Jackson.