Where is Sarf London?
Daniel, in a comment on my last post, and an American reader about a year ago to whom I never replied, ask "What or where is 'Sarf London'?" The short answer is that this is the generally accepted phonetic rendering of how people from South London say "South London". Of course, if you don't have a London accent, then the way you'd naturally read the letters S-A-R-F would not sound like it should; I think the correct transcription is "sæːf". (Savage London produce clobber branded "Souwf London", which seems more accurate to me, but Lambeth-born Michael Caine endorses the SARF spelling.)
Sarf London is not exactly geographically co-terminous with South London, if the latter term is taken to mean any part of London south of the river. For example, Sarf London excludes most of Clapham (or "Claum" as it is reputedly called by its gentrifying denizens), a territory colonized by the rich and stupid of North London. But it includes the estates like Winstanley, Surrey Lane and Doddington around Clapham Common, the areas that gave us those archetypal Sarf Londoners The So Solid Crew. I don't know the southern reaches of the Northern Line very well, places like Tooting and Wimbledon, so I'll reserve judgement on them - but I'd like to include them, in order to include Jamie T and To The Tooting Station. And it absolutely doesn't include Richmond, which is basically Surrey as far as I'm concerned.
In the east, I'm not sure where Sarf London shades into Kent. Years of connections through hop- and fruit-picking, caravan holidays, and white flight have blurred the borders there. Blackheath, one of the places in South London that North Londoners are likely to have heard of, has always seemed like an interloper to me.
I suppose, more than a place, Sarf London is a state of mind, a structure of feeling. It is Charlie Chaplin, Michael Caine, Jamie Forman. It's Freddie Forman, Charlie Richardson, Mad Frankie Fraser, the Great Train Robbers. It's Jade Goody, Charley Uchea, Millwall Football Club, Charlton Athletic. It's bear-baiting in Southwark and Christopher Marlowe's death in Deptford. It's Graham Swift's The Last Orders, Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland, Gary Oldman's Nil By Mouth, Hanif Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia. It's Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Saxon Sound System, Kirsty MacColl, Squeeze, speed garage and jungle music. It's Electric Avenue and Deptford High Street, pie and mash shops, the Dog and Bell in Deptford, the Brixton riots and the Battle of Lewisham, Jah Shaka at the Moonshot, Club Multepulciano at the Rivoli Ballroom, and perhaps even the Flying Pickets at the Albany Empire.
Readers, feel free to nominate more truly Sarf London things in the comments below.
Extra links: Transpontine; Slightly Lost in Sarf London; Ed Barrett "The making of London's 'white trash'" (onMichael Collins' The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class); Will Self "Southern Discomfort"; Darcus Howe "Welcome to the Republic of Sarf London; Simon Jenkins "Nuffink wrong wiv accents guv"; Wikipedia "Southern English Dialects"; Cockney English; "Sarf London Lily" (on Lily Allen).
Sarf London is not exactly geographically co-terminous with South London, if the latter term is taken to mean any part of London south of the river. For example, Sarf London excludes most of Clapham (or "Claum" as it is reputedly called by its gentrifying denizens), a territory colonized by the rich and stupid of North London. But it includes the estates like Winstanley, Surrey Lane and Doddington around Clapham Common, the areas that gave us those archetypal Sarf Londoners The So Solid Crew. I don't know the southern reaches of the Northern Line very well, places like Tooting and Wimbledon, so I'll reserve judgement on them - but I'd like to include them, in order to include Jamie T and To The Tooting Station. And it absolutely doesn't include Richmond, which is basically Surrey as far as I'm concerned.
In the east, I'm not sure where Sarf London shades into Kent. Years of connections through hop- and fruit-picking, caravan holidays, and white flight have blurred the borders there. Blackheath, one of the places in South London that North Londoners are likely to have heard of, has always seemed like an interloper to me.
I suppose, more than a place, Sarf London is a state of mind, a structure of feeling. It is Charlie Chaplin, Michael Caine, Jamie Forman. It's Freddie Forman, Charlie Richardson, Mad Frankie Fraser, the Great Train Robbers. It's Jade Goody, Charley Uchea, Millwall Football Club, Charlton Athletic. It's bear-baiting in Southwark and Christopher Marlowe's death in Deptford. It's Graham Swift's The Last Orders, Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland, Gary Oldman's Nil By Mouth, Hanif Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia. It's Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Saxon Sound System, Kirsty MacColl, Squeeze, speed garage and jungle music. It's Electric Avenue and Deptford High Street, pie and mash shops, the Dog and Bell in Deptford, the Brixton riots and the Battle of Lewisham, Jah Shaka at the Moonshot, Club Multepulciano at the Rivoli Ballroom, and perhaps even the Flying Pickets at the Albany Empire.
Readers, feel free to nominate more truly Sarf London things in the comments below.
Extra links: Transpontine; Slightly Lost in Sarf London; Ed Barrett "The making of London's 'white trash'" (on
Comments
Thanks for your SARF clarifications, just one questions, is it because you guys don't go to the dentist, and through a toothless mouth South becomes SARF.. ha ha only joking. You never stop learning!
He should certainly count as a Sarfener.
Whether Sowf/Souf or Sarf is the better spelling depends on which North & South the word comes out of.
Bellingham ex-pat.
Swanley - a bit more borderline. It's historically had stronger connections to London (at least Swanley town has, Swanley Village being more like Eynsford) because of the market gardening, the jam factory, the fruit-picking convoys up and down the A20.
Talking of dogs, I'd add Battersea Dogs Home to list.
To me there is South West London, South London & South East London.
South of the river is fan shaped with the point at Waterloo fanning out roughly to the rim of the London Basin?
South London is Crystal Palace, Streatham, Balham, Tooting, Stockwell, Brixton, and Clapham East.
South West London is Clapham West, Wandsworth.
South East London is Peckham, East Dulwich, Lewisham.
Jade Goody is not to be confused with Sarf London she is Bermondsey, a different kettle of fish. As proved by her move to Essex.
Bermondsey as sui generis - maybe, there's a kind of island mentality. But the Isle of Dogs is the same on the other side of the river - an island unto itself, *and* definitively part of the East End.
The Bermondsey/Essex connection - Barrymore is another example isn't he? Good riddance both of them!
As for Bermondsey alot of my pals live there and they do have that air of being nothing but Bermonsey ,the pub down there called The Blue Anchor lends it's name to much of the area just known as the Blue ,they are a different breed they even have a name for the way they walk called The Bermondsey Bowl .
South London to me is- Kennington Stockwell Tooting Brixton Streatham Clapham Balham Peckham Walworth, Battersea, Crystal Palace, Dulwich Sydenham The Norwoods.
South East London is New Cross Lewisham Deprdord, Greenwich; Woolwich Thamesmead Eltham Brockley Catford.
South West London is Wandsworth Putney Wimbledon Barnes Mortlake Kingston Vale Raynes Park etc