12 Facts About Westminster

1.

Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster.

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2.

Westminster has been the home of England's government since about 1200, and from 1707 the Government of the United Kingdom.

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3.

Westminster is often used as a metonym to refer to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, in the Palace of Westminster.

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4.

Westminster merged with neighbouring Paddington and Marylebone in 1965 to form a larger modern borough, these neighbouring areas, lie north of Oxford Street.

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5.

Westminster rewarded Edric with a bountiful catch when he next dropped his nets.

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6.

The area around Westminster Abbey formed the extra-parochial Close of the Collegiate Church of St Peter.

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7.

Liberty of Westminster, governed by the Westminster Court of Burgesses, included St Martin in the Fields and several other parishes and places.

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8.

Westminster had its own quarter sessions, but the Middlesex sessions had jurisdiction.

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9.

Under local government reforms in 1889, the area fell within the newly created County of London, and the local government of Westminster was further reformed in 1900, when the court of burgesses and the parish vestries were abolished, and replaced by the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster.

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10.

Westminster merged with St Marylebone and Paddington in 1965, but the combined area was allowed to keep the title City of Westminster.

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11.

The parish church, St Margaret's Westminster served the wider community of the parish; the servants of the palace and abbey as well as the rural population and those associated with the high status homes developing on the road from the City.

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12.

Westminster has shed the abject poverty with the clearance of this slum and with drainage improvement, but there is a typical Central London property distinction within the area which is very acute, epitomised by grandiose 21st-century developments, architectural high-point listed buildings and nearby social housing buildings of the Peabody Trust founded by philanthropist George Peabody.

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