Clapham

Clapham is a south-western suburb of London, lying a mile S. of the Thames. Battersea and Clapham form since 1885 one of the London parliamentary boroughs. Clapham Common is still an open common of 200 acres. Clapham Junction, in Battersea parish, is one of the busiest and most perplexing railway junctions in the world.—Clapham Sect was a name given by Sydney Smith to the Evangelical party in the Church of England; the Rev. Henry Venn was the vicar of Clapham, and some of the most eminent Evangelicals—Zachary Macaulay, Wilberforce, and the Rev. W. Romaine—lived there. Thackeray's Newcomes has made the phrase familiar to a later generation.