Talk:List of churches in London

St. Mary Ardwick, London, London, England

Where was it around 1650?

Too long

This article currently has 445,096 bytes' of wiki-markup, and needs to be split. Is it best to do so by Borough? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:44, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

It's untenable to split every borough into an article. I only see two options, splitting the few boroughs with the most churches or splitting by larger geographic areas (inner/outer, north/south) of London. We should also consider if the article has any unnecessary elements that have bloated its size. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:05, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

The defunct, and certainly the demolished, churches could be hived off. Headhitter (talk) 09:40, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

I think some kind of inner/outer split(s) would be best. I'd rather not lose the defunct and demolished churches myself. Central London officially splits boroughs, but if we took all of the boroughs that form part of it, that would reduce the size a lot. There are two official definitions of Inner London and hence Outer London. Then we could try north, south, west ... Johnbod (talk) 17:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Johnbod Can you explain what you mean by my edit merging cells as messing the denomination column? I only merged cells for Church of England and Roman Catholic and for boroughs alphabetically up to Brent, so there is much more than 1% to be saved here. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:44, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I found it confusing at first glance, & I can't work out how you made it show the denominations properly after they have been removed. We certainly don't need to link to Church of England and other standard denominations hundreds of times, nor should we. But these changes won't solve the problem - you saved 1% of crude byte size doing 6/33 of the boros + City, & covering the 2 largest denominations. We still need splits. I don't really see why "It's untenable to split every borough into an article", as the operation is pretty simple, but we don't need to go that far. Central London, plus north, south, west & east should get 5 articles all under 100kb, though possibly Central London would be too big, in which case the City could get its own article, or even City + Westminster. The current (2011) List of sub-regions used in the London Plan (compass points + "Central") are probably the way to go. Johnbod (talk) 02:09, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Removing more than 5% by simply merging cells is a good step, and it would still be good regardless of the article's size. I meant to say that I only merged denomination cells for those few boroughs. The biggest article if we were to split them by borough would be Bromley at up to 40,000 bytes which is reasonable for an article, but there are several which would not be more than 5,000 bytes. Overall I support splitting the article but I am against an article for Outer London. Inner London could work but I think that article would still be too big. There's also two separate definitions of Inner/Outer London. We could possibly split out only City of London, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Camden, Enfield, Richmond and Westminster, and leave the rest in this article. I think splitting them by North-East-South-West-Central would create confusion as to what constitutes North and South London (ie everything north/south of the Thames), and that these boundaries seem to change every few years. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:36, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

You don't seem to be adressing what I actually proposed above. Of course we need to spell out on all pages what the others cover, & maybe keep the present title for a kind of disam page. Are you suggesting individual pages for "City of London, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Camden, Enfield, Richmond and Westminster, and leave the rest in this article"? Is that just based on size? It seems odd and random, & likely to increase confusion. I think Londoners are perfectly familiar with broad ideas of North-East-South-West-Central London, even if they couldn't define them exactly. Very many of our London articles use these terms. Plus of course non-Londoners will tend to have no idea where Barnet or Enfield actually are, whereas anyone can conceptualize North-East-South-West-Central London, even if they don't know London. Johnbod (talk) 03:25, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Londoners can define those in significantly different ways. North London can be defined very narrowly as part of the five divisions you mention, but it can also mean the entire city north of the Thames River. I don't think we need to "spell out" on all pages what the others cover.

Yes that is what I am suggesting, it is based on their sizes, and I'm also not completely satisfied with it either for the same reasons you are. While our readers may not be able to define those areas exactly, what I find more troubling is that we are unable to define them as well. For the remaining article, what you're thinking of is an index page, and we certainly would retain that. If all the sections were a reasonable length I would have already split them into their own articles, but since they're not I'm just not sure what exactly to do. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:04, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I'm not satisfied with that at all. Even most Londoners know London by "village" names, and roughly where they are, rather than the boroughs they are in, whose boundaries are only known to the very local, and often not to them. It is not the case that "we are unable to define them as well" - we just list them per the plan, perhaps including the map. Johnbod (talk) 14:15, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I've already said how splitting up London in that way is ambiguous, but the statistical government divisions that you are quoting are changed every few years. Having a main list and splitting out the largest sections is a normal way of splitting lists, although I would rather everything was split out in some way. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:22, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

We should see what other editors think. I've posted at the wikiprojects listed at top. Everyone seems to accept splits are necessary. Suggestions are:

• A) Every borough its own article (Andy Mabbett}
• B) The defunct, and certainly the demolished, churches could be hived off. (Headhitter)
• C) Split out the larger sections and leave the rest in the article (such as City of London, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Camden, Enfield, Richmond and Westminster). (Onetwothreeip)
• D) 5-way split per the current official (2011) List of sub-regions used in the London Plan: Central London, plus north, south, west & east, then further if necessary (eg City and/or Westminster). (Johnbod).
• E) Split by denominations, at least CofE & RC, + Free Churches (Martin of Sheffield).

Johnbod (talk) 02:25, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Comments

• D - Johnbod (talk) 02:49, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
• A seems the most logical to me. We already have (to use the example of one London borough) Parks and open spaces in the London Borough of Bexley, Grade I and II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Bexley, List of people from the London Borough of Bexley, List of public art in the London Borough of Bexley, List of schools in the London Borough of Bexley, I don't see how churches are any different. Jdcooper (talk) 12:37, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
• I think C is basically a realistic form of A, but I also like B and I hadn't thought about it. The problem with the London Plan zones is that these are very likely to change and they are only one version of ways to split London into a few areas. There are many official splits of London made for different purposes and different levels of government. The problem with splitting every borough is that some of the new articles would be very small. I may split just the largest sections, and I wouldn't be opposed to anybody splitting further sections. Onetwothreeip (talk) 12:46, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Thinking about it, C is also how the List of blue plaques by London borough works, and it's pretty fine. I could support that if people are against individual borough articles for every borough. Jdcooper (talk) 17:02, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
    • That only splits out Westminster, Kens. & Chelsea, & Camden to get down to 103 kbytes. Something a lot more drastic would be needed here I think. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
      • I don't think they're suggesting only splitting out those boroughs in particular. They're saying that this is an example of removing the largest sections. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:33, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
• One way of removing the massive over-linking is to split by denominations. Keep this page as a master list of denominations within London, then create List of Anglican churches in London, List of Roman Catholic churches in London etc. You might want to combine the Free Churches into a single list, or else separate off Methodist, URC, Baptist etc. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:25, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

I'll call that E then, & add above. Johnbod (talk) 16:19, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

• C. The City section is split and a link is included in the main article, with a minimal change of appearance. It took out about 54k bytes out of the original article. JohnThorne (talk) 19:45, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Further splits of some big sections (connected by links in main article) reduce the article size to less than 250k bytes without significant changes in the appearance. JohnThorne (talk) 18:10, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

• One of the reasons the number of bytes is so large is because of all the wiki markup of the tables and the map. The actual content is not that massive, fairly minimal as a whole. So saying the article is too long is probably based on the wrong premise in the first place. Unless there is some sort of technical issue with article being over a certain number of bytes. Sionk (talk) 12:44, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Which there certainly is - see Wikipedia:Article size! This was until the recent changes the 8th biggest article on en:wp by bytes', and still needs to go down by at least 50%. I can't think the transcluded maps & images are many of these at all. I think in general people would prefer to keep functionality such as sortability, and references etc, rather than just a stripped-down version. Johnbod (talk) 13:12, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

It's important to note that the technical limitations apply to transcluded content too. Otherwise the split is for nothing, since the page still has to load all the same content. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:14, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

The transclusions are placed to assure the consistency of the content before and after the splits. When the changes are reviewed to be acceptable, the links can be removed. JohnThorne (talk) 23:39, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

• User:JohnThorne, Please wait uintil there is consensus for these changes, which there certainly is not yet! Johnbod (talk) 01:55, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I think it's clear that there is general support for splitting sections per boroughs. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:10, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Hardly! One person has supported A, apart from the original tentative suggestion. Two people have supported completely different approaches, and three the Swiss cheese approach (C). Plus one for D. So no. Johnbod (talk) 02:27, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing, Jdcooper, JohnThorne and myself all support splitting the sections that have been split. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:00, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

• I think the split off sections should be replaced by a short paragraph overview of what the reader can expect to find details of by clicking through, rather than just a link..

Jdcooper (talk) 19:45, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Jdcooper and I would support both A and B. Headhitter (talk) 13:09, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

B would be a big no-no for me. It would be recentist in the extreme to 'hive off' churches that are now defunct/demolished. I'm not 100% sure what 'hived off' means in this context, but we don't have separate list articles for dead people, for example. There are many prominent churchers that have been destroyed by war, or redevelopment, or have been re-purposed. Once notable always notable. Sionk (talk) 03:42, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

• Coming to this rather late because I've just spotted it – apologies. The approach I have taken in writing church/place of worship articles across Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Hampshire is to arrange them by borough/district, then split by "Current" and "Former" if necessary. Several years ago I started doing the required research (a series of large, very detailed spreadsheets, FWIW) for various London boroughs, on the assumption that I might "move" northwards into London with the series of lists (instead, I moved eastwards into Kent), and found that even in the geographically largest boroughs, and even if all registered places of worship were taken into account, the lists would not be unmanageably large. (Counting both open and closed places of worship, with stats as of 2013, my spreadsheets have 165 for Bromley, 203 for Croydon and 90 for Sutton). An advantage of doing it by boroughs is that the official Worship Register, which is as close as we get to a defintive list of (non-Anglican) places of worship, uses London borough as its geographical identifier. What Jdcooper says above is also relevant. I would suggest "A". Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 19:31, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Text issue

"With regard to Anglican churches, as opposed to Catholic churches, nonconformist chapels or meeting houses, the designs of the Wren office provided a new standard for British church architecture ever since,..." is pretty misleading, as it implies that "British church architecture ever since" has been heavily influenced by Wren, which is certainly not true, nor what the ref says. In fact Wren's influence in terms of architectural style lasted only a century or so, before being swamped by a flood of Gothic Revival churches, like most in the list. The same broadly goes for the internal arrangements for purposes of worship. Johnbod (talk) 02:22, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

References and external links

I don't think we need one reference for each church when there must be sources out there that list multiple churches. Are there any such sources that people are aware of? This would reduce the unnecessary size of the article immensely. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:02, 13 July 2019 (UTC)