The Prime Meridian

Which part of London is best known throughout the world? The obvious answers I suppose would be Westminster or Buckingham Palace or perhaps its Big Ben or maybe Tower Bridge.

Looking at my street map it struck me that it is probably Greenwich, the home of the Prime Meridian (zero degrees Longitude).

People may not even know where Greenwich is but they may well have heard of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or have seen Longitude marked on a map. The divisions between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres are not particularly marked, certainly you don't tend to group countries by their relationship to the Prime Meridian in the way that you do with the Equator i.e. Northern and Southern Hemisphere. However, the Prime Meridian remains essential for navigation and time keeping (UTC or Coordinated Universal Time remains for all practical purposes the same as GMT).

However, the choice of Greenwich as the Prime Meridian was not supported by everyone, in particular, France.

It was recognised that one meridian had to be chosen for the purposes of standardising Longitude and time measurement. In October 1884 The International Meridian Conference was held in Washington DC where it was decided to adopt Greenwich as the Prime Meridian. One of the main factors in that decision was that a substantial proportion of the world's shipping (and their charts) was already using Greenwich as the Prime Meridian. The Canadian delegate, Sanford Fleming, showed that 72% of shipping was using Greenwich whilst the other 28% were relying any one of ten different meridians. The dominance of Greenwich is, most likely, a reflection of the dominance of Britain in merchant shipping at the time. In the 19th Century, Britain, because of the British Empire, was the single largest sea trading nation in the world. Unsurprisingly, British ships would use the London based meridian as their reference point.

There is a meridian running through Paris and France abstained from voting for Greenwich in the Final Act Resolutions of the International Meridian Conference in 1884. France tried to link the selection of Greenwich to the adoption of the metric system by Britain something which, despite continuing efforts, no one has yet forced Britain to do. France did not immediately recognise the Greenwich Meridian and it was not until 1911 that legislation was passed in France adopting the Greenwich Meridian.

So every time you use a map reference, a satellite navigation device or cross a time zone you linking back both to a small part of South East London and to a larger part of international history and politics.

Postcode of Death

I have always had a strange fascination with maps and can spend stupid amounts of time studying them. I live in London and I love my London Street Atlas. The maps show the sheer scale of the city but also the small details that make life interesting.

Often it is these small details that send my thoughts off on random topics.

Today, it was postcode boundaries that caught my attention and led me to think about religious divisions.

For anyone outside the UK a postcode is an alpha numeric sequence that is used by the postal service to divide up a city into small sections and subsections to make delivering letters easier. For example, the postcode of 10 Downing Street (the Prime Minister's Official Residence) is SW1A 2AA. In London the first letter or letters refer to compass points, so SW1 is South West 1.

It struck me that the postcode boundaries appeared to be laid out to go around cemeteries not through them. The W3 postcode has a little projection to go around the top of North Acton cemetery. Why does this matter? Do the occupants receive much post? I would love to see a someone attempt to deliver a registered letter requiring a signature to someone's Auntie Mabel (1901-1997) in plot 32.

However, looking more closely I began to notice that divisions in life seemed to be reflected even in death. The postcode boundary between W10 and NW10 appears to split the main part of Kensal Green Cemetery from St Mary's RC Cemetery right next to it. A similar divide along religious grounds can be found between E7, West Ham Cemetery and E15, the Jewish Cemetery.

Is there some rule that dead people of different religions or denominations can't share the same postcode?

We live in a society where people are again being defined and judged by their religious beliefs. From those who think all religion is a load of [insert appropriately offensive substance of your choice] to those who think people who don't share their particular religious beliefs are a load of [insert appropriately offensive substance of your choice] and every shade in between. I have nothing against religion per se (for the record I am a lapsed Christian and my partner is a Muslim) but I find it deeply worrying when it becomes the basis for political decisions, choosing your friends or even deciding where you live. I can see the value of religion as a guide to the individual on how to live but when it becomes an excuse to label or judge others, claim moral superiority or to shun sections of society that don't think the same way then any worth religion has is debased. It is not religion that bothers me but the misuse of religion. Particularly where individuals or groups attempt to make the whole of society squeeze into their particular belief system, because they believe it and so it must be right. Can you have belief without dogmatism? I really don't know.