Before London had
any kind of corporate government, and long before the London Borough had been
devised as a convenient administrative unit, local services such as they were
had to be provided by the existing historic bodies.
The parish already existed for spiritual purposes and had a form of management
in the form of its vestry and a mechanism for getting local people together,
either in the church or in a nearby vestry hall. It was to the parish that local
administrative responsibility was gradually given Even when new statutory bodies
were set up to deal with lighting, policing, paving, sewerage and so on the
parish remained as the local unit capable of raising its local rate or tax. It
was therefore important that people knew what parish they lived in and where the
boundaries were. From this emerged the need for distinctive markers.
Over time the civil and ecclesiastical duties of parishes diverged, and so far
as markers are concerned we are referring to boundaries of parishes in their
civil manifestation (many were subdivided for ecclesiastical purposes).
Boundaries by no means corresponded with other boundaries in the area, for
example the City of London boundary crossed through the middle of several
parishes. Knowledge of where boundaries were and what they were for was vital.
The attached report is the beginning of an attempt to record ALL London's
surviving boundary markers.