Iam indebted to Diamond Geezer who has unearthed a dataset of London’s populated places from the Ordnance Survey’s Open Names.

Hardly surprising London has no towns, although several exist just beyond the boundary. The Capital comprises three cities: London, the City of London, City of Westminster. There are 25 villages, which don’t include developers pseudo-villages, but I’m more interested as to how Ordnance Survey defines London’s 8 hamlets, and just where they are.

Bopeep, Edgware Bury, Farthing Street, Hockenden, Kevingtown, Nash, Newyears Green, Rowley Green.

Today we’re going to look at one which could have been lifted out of a children’s poem.

Bopeep is close to Chelsfield and just south of the Maypole public house on Hewitts Road, are a separate group of buildings collec¬tively named as Bopeep on some maps, consisting of Hewitts Farm Cottages, Bo-peep Cottages, Keepers Cottage and the Bo-Peep restau¬rant and public house.

The Bo Peep public house was built in the year 1548 during the reign of King Edward VI and is said to have served as a base for wool smugglers. It only adopted its current name in 1972, at the time of its construction it was known as Seagraves Alehouse, later in 1709 becoming the famous nomenclature for English pubs: The White Hart.

NB: A hamlet is a small settlement that has no central place of worship and no meeting point, for example, a village hall. Picture a handful of houses dotted along a road or a crossroads, perhaps separated from other settlements by countryside or farmland.

Bo Peep, Maypole by Malc McDonald (CC BY-SA 2.0). The Bo Peep pub in the village of Maypole, on the outermost fringe of South East London.