South Woodford

Coordinates: 51°35′36″N 0°01′33″E / 51.593453°N 0.025717°E / 51.593453; 0.025717

South Woodford is a suburb of Woodford in North East London situated 8.9 miles (14.3 km) north-east of Charing Cross. South Woodford, Woodford Green, Woodford Bridge and Woodford Wells form the area known as Woodford which has its origins dating back at least to the Saxon period. It was part of Essex until 1965.

Amenities

South Woodford's retail and business area is centred on George Lane — the main high street for the district — and Woodford Green High Road. There are a number of well-known chain store shops, such as Boots and Marks & Spencer, and a good selection of smaller shops, restaurants, cafes, and a crown post office, including a Royal Mail sorting office.

There is an Odeon cinema in the High Road, which is one of the oldest buildings in South Woodford and the only cinema in the area. It has a listed building status which protects it as a cinema and does not allow for major internal structural changes. Next door is The George Pub, another one of the oldest buildings in the area, having originally been a stopping point for stage coaches, with several different bars including a saloon bar. The George once had a fine dining area on the first floor and then later a pizzeria in the basement, with a large spiral staircase between the floors. Other amenities include a number of green areas, many of which form part of Epping Forest.

Central line

The Central line is a London Underground line that runs through central London, from Ealing and Ruislip in the west to Epping, Essex in the north-east. Coloured red on the tube map, the line serves 49 stations, 20 of which are below ground, in 46 miles (74 km). It is the longest tube line. It is also one of only two lines on the London Underground network to cross the Greater London boundary, the other being the Metropolitan. One of London's deep-level tube railways, the trains are smaller than those on British main lines.

The line was opened as the Central London Railway in 1900, crossing central London on an east-west axis, as the third deep-level tube line to be built after electric trains made them possible. It was later extended to the western suburb of Ealing. After the Second World War, the line was expanded considerably into the recently constructed suburbs, taking over steam-hauled outer suburban routes to the borders of London and beyond to the east. This realised plans that had been delayed by the war, when construction stopped and the unused tunnels were used as air-raid shelters and factories. However, suburban growth proved to be less than expected, and of the planned expansions one (to Denham) was cut short due to its location in the Metropolitan Green Belt and another (to Ongar) ultimately closed in 1994 due to low traffic. The Central line has mostly been operated by automatic train operation since a major refurbishment in the 1990s, although all trains still carry drivers. Many of its stations are of historic interest, from turn-of-the-century Central London Railway buildings in west London to post-war modernist designs on the West Ruislip and Hainault branches, as well as Victorian ECR and GER buildings east of Stratford, from when the line to Epping was a rural branch line.

South

South is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. It is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. South is the polar opposite of north and is perpendicular to east and west.

Etymology

The word south comes from Old English sūþ, from earlier Proto-Germanic *sunþaz ("south"), possibly related to the same Proto-Indo-European root that the word sun derived from.

Navigation

By convention, the bottom side of a map is south, although reversed maps exist that defy this convention. To go south using a compass for navigation, set a bearing or azimuth of 180°. Alternatively, in the Northern Hemisphere outside the tropics, the Sun will be roughly in the south at midday.

South Pole

True south is the direction towards the southern end of the axis about which the earth rotates, called the South Pole. The South Pole is located in Antarctica. Magnetic south is the direction towards the south magnetic pole, some distance away from the south geographic pole.

Roald Amundsen, from Norway, was the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911, after Ernest Shackleton from the UK was forced to turn back some distance short.