up/down to London

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Friday, March 5, 2004 11:44 am +0000 Jonathon Green
<slang at ABECEDARY.NET> wrote:
>
> Nor, and this is where class definitely comes in, is it always 'London.' A
> browse through middlebrow (and middleclass) popular lit., esp. as written
> between the wars by such as Agatha Christie and her bestselling peers,
> London is 'Town'. And one invariably goes 'up' to Town. Or 'pops' or 'runs
> up to Town'. (Of course, the London = Town equation is much older; at
> least 18th century). For London's own East-enders, i.e. the traditional
> working class, the West End is traditionally 'up', as in 'I'm off up
> West', meaning to Piccadilly Circus, Soho, or environs.


Aha.  So I'm now having the suspicion that my earlier claim that it's
always "down to London" may have been my mistaking a conversation about
"town" for one about London".  Perhaps it's usually "up to London" but
"down to town".

There are 1180 "down to town"s versus 563 "up to town"s on google.co.uk
(searching only UK sites), but it's clear that not all those towns are
London.

There are only 39 "down to London town", mostly lyrics.

Now, another Londoner who's moved to Brighton has just been in my office
and insisted it's "down to London" from every direction.

So make of this what you will!

Lynne


Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics

Department of Linguistics and English Language
Arts B133
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9QN
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