# The UK beyond London

Follow Hadrian’s Wall across changing terrain, then explore the United Kingdom through projects about Roman Britain, water, language and travel.

https://mariuscomper.uk/en/united-kingdom/

- [Keyless car theft explained: how a relay attack works, and why police in England and Wales recorded 119,365 vehicle thefts in a year](https://mariuscomper.uk/the-key-in-your-hallway/): Police in England and Wales recorded 119,365 vehicle thefts in the year to March 2026, one every 4 minutes 24 seconds. How keyless relay attacks work, why car theft is rising again, and what stops it.
- [Doggerland map: the land under the North Sea, drowned between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago](https://mariuscomper.uk/drowned-doggerland/): Doggerland joined Britain to Denmark and the Netherlands until the sea drowned it. A relief map of today’s sea floor, with 1,873 river channels, lakes and other features mapped beneath it, and the computed shore of any moment since 16,000 years ago. For each North Sea town, it shows how far away the shore was 10,500 years ago.
- [How often it rains in London: all 24,350 days since 1960, wet or dry](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-rain/): At Heathrow it rains, 1 mm or more, on three days in ten: 109 days a year. Paris, measured at Orly, gets the same; New York gets twice the rain on fewer wet days. Every day from 1 January 1960 to 31 August 2026 is one mark on a wall of days, any date can be followed year by year, and with a year of birth the page counts the birthdays it rained on.
- [London’s pubs, counted: what they are called, how near they are, how many are left](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-pubs/): London’s commonest pub name is The Crown, ahead of the Prince of Wales and the Red Lion: 31 of the 3,155 pubs mapped by OpenStreetMap’s volunteers. Half of the city’s postcodes have a mapped pub within 286 m in a straight line, and the official count of pubs and bars fell from 4,835 in 2001 to 3,525 in 2024, with Hackney the only borough that rose. A map of London drawn only from its pubs, with a result and a picture for each of 217 postcode districts.
- [London’s blue plaques, counted: who gets one, and which districts have none](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-blue-plaques/): London’s official blue plaque scheme, run today by English Heritage, has 1,035 plaques: 166 are in W1, and 31 of the 120 London postal districts have none. 152 of the 1,010 plaques to a person honour a woman, and the median wait between death and plaque is 49 years. All 3,942 plaques on record, of every kind, on a map drawn from postcodes, with the plaque nearest any postcode and the words on it.
- [London's protected views: 13 sightlines and the rules on building heights](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-protected-views/): London's planning rules protect thirteen lines of sight to St Paul's, the Palace of Westminster and the Tower; the longest runs 15.6 km from a gap kept in a hedge in Richmond Park. All thirteen, drawn from the government's 2012 Directions, with the height limit under each, the real ground and roofs from laser survey, and a postcode look-up.
- [London below the tide: every postcode measured against the Thames at high water](https://mariuscomper.uk/thames-barrier/): At 10,528 of Greater London's 177,041 postcodes the ground is lower than an ordinary spring high tide at London Bridge (3.9 m above Ordnance Datum). Any postcode set on a tide staff beside the levels of 1928 and 1953, on the city's laser-surveyed relief, and the Thames Barrier's 221 closures counted winter by winter.
- [London postcodes: why each district has the number it has](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-postcodes/): London's postcode numbers are alphabetical: in March 1917 the Post Office gave 1 to each district's main office and numbered the other delivery offices by name, so Hackney is E8 and SE2 is 15 km from SE1. All 120 districts on a map drawn from 110,673 postcodes, each with its own sentence and picture, and the 5,655 lines of the 1917 street list to search.
- [Romania in the British Parliament, 1803–2026: two centuries of debate, counted day by day](https://mariuscomper.uk/romania-in-hansard/en/): From 1803 to today Romania's name appears 24,591 times in the debates of the British Parliament, in 9,209 debates and questions. Measured against everything said, the peak is the Crimean War; by sitting days, 1939; by mentions, 1990. Ceaușescu's state visit of 1978 brought no debate. In Romanian and English.
- [Blue London, Red London: Charles Booth’s poverty map of 1898–9, one colour at a time](https://mariuscomper.uk/blue-london/): In 1898–9 Charles Booth’s investigators coloured London’s streets in seven colours, from black and blue for the poorest to yellow for the wealthy. Choose a colour to see where it was printed, or look up a street. In English and Romanian.
- [Why London’s post boxes and phone boxes are red](https://mariuscomper.uk/londra-rosie/en/): The British pillar box was red in Jersey in 1852, green from 1859 and red again from 1874, London first, and the phone box’s architect wanted it silver. This page follows four London objects, the post box, the phone box, the bus and the Underground logo, year by year from 1852 to 1946 through 18 entries from the record: what the Postal Museum, Historic England and BT Archives say at each change. On the way there is one question: what did Scott write in 1935 about red kiosks in the countryside?
- [Britain and Romania: nearly 2,000 years of links, from Hadrian’s Wall to the 2021 census](https://mariuscomper.uk/britanie-romania/en/): Twelve sourced stops on what Britain and Romania left in each other, from a hoard of nails in Scotland and Dacians on Hadrian’s Wall to jets built in Bucharest; at the end you look up how many Romania-born people live in your area of England or Wales.
- [The life of a London eel: from the Sargasso Sea to the River Wandle, and back](https://mariuscomper.uk/the-london-eel/): There are eels in London's rivers, and every one of them hatched in the Atlantic, thousands of kilometres away, where nobody has ever seen an eel spawn. This page follows one such life, step by step: the transparent leaf adrift, the climb up the tidal Thames, the years in a London river, the body's change and the leaving. At Molesey Weir in 2025, the volunteers' traps caught, on average, one young eel for every four and a half days of trapping.
- [Big Ben’s clock is adjusted with old pennies: the Great Clock of Westminster, and what one coin does to its day](https://mariuscomper.uk/big-ben-pennies/): UK Parliament says one old penny on the Great Clock’s pendulum makes it gain 0.4 seconds a day. Slide the coin along the 4.4-metre rod to see where it speeds the clock, where it does nothing and where it slows it; then let the days run, hear the hour strike in a real recording and make a card of your tray.
- [London church bells: 178 towers, their practice nights, and what the bells sound like](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-bells/): A night map of London's bell towers: pick a night and the towers listing a practice in Dove's Guide light up, tap one to hear its bells, synthesised at the frequencies in the ringers' database, while the order of the ropes changes row by row. Four towers, including St Mary-le-Bow, also have real openly licensed recordings.
- [London's stations keep a diary: 434 Tube, DLR, Overground and Elizabeth line stations, every day since 2019](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-station-diary/): Daily tap counts at 434 London stations, January 2019 to September 2026, wound into rings: one ring per year, one slice per day. Southfields lights up for Wimbledon, Arsenal station follows the fixture list, Ladbroke Grove has no row on Carnival days, and on Christmas Day TfL counts zero Tube journeys. Pick your station and a date of your own.
- [How much for a mile? — London hackney coaches, 1654–1832](https://mariuscomper.uk/hackney-coach/en/): Price ten fares across four dated runs — an Exchange run of 1655, a lawyer's shilling of 1662, two admeasured miles of 1715, a GPO circle of 1832 — then judge who the paper meter served, on two dated proof rails.
- [There is an Iron Age fort under this wood](https://mariuscomper.uk/bryn-mawr/en/): A wooded hill in Powys hides an Iron Age hillfort. Slide from the tree tops to the laser-measured ground: the rampart, ditch, gateway and hollows found in two surveys.
- [The Crystal Palace — the leaf that held a little girl and the glass house that held over six million people (London, 1851)](https://mariuscomper.uk/palatul-de-cristal/en/): In November 1849, a giant waterlily leaf at Chatsworth held an eight-year-old girl. The gardener who weighed it sketched on blotting paper, at Derby, the most extensive building in Europe — and over six million people walked through it. Load the leaf yourself, until it holds Annie. In Romanian and English.
- [Work the morning — London coffeehouses, 1652–1860](https://mariuscomper.uk/coffee-london/en/): Tick twelve slips across three coffeehouse tapes — brokers’ talk at Jonathan’s, ship news at Lloyd’s, the auction hammer at Garraway’s — then judge what emptied the houses, on two dated proof rails.
- [The Great Stink — the summer the Thames became a sewer (London, 1858)](https://mariuscomper.uk/marea-duhoare/en/): June 1858: the Thames sinks, the heat bakes the banks, and Parliament's curtains soak in chloride of lime. Stand at Crossness at high water and open the sluice gates: a tide's worth of London sets off downriver on the ebb. In Romanian and English.
- [The Great Smog](https://mariuscomper.uk/marele-smog/en/): London, 5–9 December 1952: five days of yellow fog in which, at night, you could not see your feet — and three months of dying after the sky cleared. You walk the blind street, lift the lid yourself, and put the influenza alibi to the arithmetic. In Romanian and English.
- [The river under Fleet Street: four maps, one burial](https://mariuscomper.uk/fleet/en/): The Fleet from Hampstead to the Thames: eight beats of the course, a four-map dated slider (1559–1896), twelve acts of the burial, and ten traces to walk.
- [London’s lost Tube stations, and where every station name comes from](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-tube-stations/): All 272 London Underground stations and the 44 that closed or moved, on a map you can drag from 1863 to today. The ghost stations, the one between Angel and Old Street that now heats homes, and where every name comes from.
- [What does your street's name say? Read London like Old English](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-endings/en/): 204 London names parsed into stem and ending: a decoder across Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norman and modern layers, the earliest forms ever written down, and a game of twelve folk traps.
- [Why is chaos called bedlam? The hospital inside the word](https://mariuscomper.uk/bedlam/en/): Bedlem was already a form of Bethlehem when a London priory founded in 1247 started changing what it meant. Ride two tracks — the building crosses London, the word escapes toward chaos — and place seven historical uses on their sense.
- [London, in thirty-three parts](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-boroughs/): Ride a fictional Tube line through all 32 boroughs and the City: what each name meant in Old English, who built it, and the oddities it keeps — from Croydon's Mayday to Stamford Bridge being in Fulham.
- [The Thames frost fairs, 1608–1814, and why the river no longer freezes in London](https://mariuscomper.uk/tamisa-inghetata/en/): Streets of booths, printing presses and taverns on the frozen river, from Evelyn's diary and the accounts of 1814. The cold that froze the Thames came back once, in 1963; with the old bridge gone, the river kept flowing.
- [The Great Fire of London, 1666, hour by hour on a map](https://mariuscomper.uk/londra-in-flacari/en/): The 1666 fire spreads across today's City, day by day, from the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn. The losses were counted carefully; the dead were not.
- [Wales and Wallachia: one word at two ends of Europe](https://mariuscomper.uk/valahul-galez/en/): How Proto-Germanic *walhaz* became the name of the Welsh, the Vlachs, Wallonia and Wallachia — with a map, sources and the limits of certainty.
- [One paragraph, 21 British voices](https://mariuscomper.uk/accent-atlas/en/): 21 speakers across Britain read the same paragraph: pick a town and watch six words change shape in phonetic transcription.
- [Pytheas: rebuilt from the quotations of people who doubted him](https://mariuscomper.uk/pytheas/en/): Pytheas's book on Britain and Thule was lost more than 2,000 years ago. What survives of it comes only from the quotations of the people who argued with him.
- [Hanseatic trade in England: Bergen, the Steelyard, King's Lynn and Boston, c. 1380](https://mariuscomper.uk/hansa/en/): Bergen, London's Steelyard, King's Lynn and Boston: four stops of a 14th-century Hanseatic trade through England. The real cargo, stop by stop, isn't what you'd guess.
- [John Leland: Henry VIII's unfinished commission](https://mariuscomper.uk/john-leland/en/): John Leland spent a decade travelling England and Wales on a royal commission and a thousand questions. He filled 11 notebook Parts. His mind was failing by 1547, and the promised book was never written.
- [Celia Fiennes: 1,551 miles across England, 1698](https://mariuscomper.uk/celia-fiennes/en/): Celia Fiennes travelled for her health, by coach at first and later on her own horses. Her own journal puts her in 39 of England's 40 historic counties, all but Monmouthshire.
- [A Persian in London, 1809-10 — the diary of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan](https://mariuscomper.uk/un-persan-la-londra/en/): The diary of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan, the Persian envoy who conquered — and sharply judged — London in 1810.
- [Can I pack this? UK airport liquid rules, airport by airport](https://mariuscomper.uk/can-i-pack-this/): Heathrow lets a 2-litre container through security. Stansted still stops an ordinary liquid over 100 ml.
- [Can I Bring Food into the UK?](https://mariuscomper.uk/pot-sa-aduc-mancare/en/): Cheese from France: no. Chicken from Romania: yes. What you can actually bring home in your luggage.
- [The Clay That Never Cools](https://mariuscomper.uk/lutul-londrei/en/): In 1900, the Tube was 14°C. After 125 years of braking, 500 GWh of annual heat have saturated the clay mantle, turning the earth into a 30°C radiator.
- [Hadrian's Wall, mile by mile: what survives and where to stop](https://mariuscomper.uk/hadrians-wall/en/): An end-to-end guide to Hadrian's Wall with its measured elevation profile, forts, milecastles, turrets and car-free connections, together with the limits of the available data.
- [When Romania Fed England: the Wheat of Brăila, 1843–1852](https://mariuscomper.uk/graul-brailei/en/): Ten harvests, two free ports and the 9-foot Sulina bar: how Brăila and Galați came to send hundreds of thousands of quarters of wheat to 1840s London.
- [Policy at Your Doorstep · which UK policies meet at this postcode](https://mariuscomper.uk/doorstep/): A UK postcode sits in a council, a health board, a network region and a flood map that do not share a border. Type yours and see which recent policies reach that street.
- [England's 2026 drought: one of the wettest winters, then one of the driest summers in 190 years of rainfall records](https://mariuscomper.uk/uk-water/en/): 190 years of English rainfall: winter 2025–26 among the wettest, summer 2026 among the driest.
- [London Sunset Times 2026–27: When It Gets Dark and the Clocks Go Back](https://mariuscomper.uk/london-sunset-times/): Sunset, sunrise and twilight times for London through 2026–27, the clocks going back on 25 October, and how many of your weekday journeys home start after sunset.
- [Romanian names in England and Wales, 1996–2025](https://mariuscomper.uk/romanian-names-in-england/): Twelve names from Romania’s top-20 lists appear in no baby-name table for England and Wales from 1996 to 2003. In 2020 they were given to 611 babies. What the official tables can and cannot count, tested on Polish names.

## Sources

- [ONS · Countries (December 2025) Boundaries UK BUC](https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/dd098dcb-a373-4de0-aeb4-ddc5ff05e99d/countries-december-2025-boundaries-uk-buc)
- [UK Government · Toponymic guidelines: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/toponymic-guidelines/toponymic-guidelines-for-map-and-other-editors-united-kingdom-of-great-britain-and-northern-ireland--2)
- [ONS · Countries of the UK](https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/ukgeographies/administrativegeography/englandandwales/countriesoftheuk)
- [English Heritage · History of Hadrian’s Wall](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/hadrians-wall/history/)