Editing Clapham (section)

===Clapham in the 20th and 21st centuries===
After the coming of the [[History of rail transport in Great Britain|railways]], Clapham developed as a suburb for commuters into central London.  [[Clapham High Street railway station]] opened in 1862 and the underground [[City and South London Railway]] was extended to the area in 1900.  By 1900 Clapham had fallen from favour with the upper classes. Many of their grand houses had been demolished by the middle of the 20th century, though a number remain around the Common and in the Old Town, as do a substantial number of fine late 18th- and early 19th-century houses. Today's Clapham is an area of varied housing, from the large Queen Anne-, Regency- and Georgian-era homes of the Old Town and Clapham Common, to the grids of Victorian housing in the Abbeville area. As in much of London, the area also includes [[social housing]] on estates dating from the 1930s and 1960s.

In the early 20th century, Clapham was seen as an ordinary commuter suburb, often cited as representing ordinary people: hence the familiar "[[The man on the Clapham omnibus|man on the Clapham omnibus]]". By the 1980s, the area had undergone a further transformation, becoming the centre for the [[gentrification]] of most of the surrounding area. Clapham's relative proximity to traditionally expensive areas of central London led to an increase in the number of middle-class people living in Clapham. Today the area is generally an affluent place, although many of its professional residents live relatively close to significant pockets of social housing.