London, England
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 The London Regional Conference, 2009.
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London has for many hundreds of years been the biggest city, and the capital, of England. It is organised into 32 boroughs, plus the original City of London in the centre. It includes a royal palace - Buckingham Palace - and now straddles the River Thames for many miles on both banks. The original City of London is a comparatively small area, mostly taken up with commercial office space, and has very few actual inhabitants. Immediately to the west of this is Westminster, which includes the Parliamentary buildings. There is a Haziratu'l-Quds in the City of Westminster. The Guardian's grave is some distance away, in the borough of Barnet, in north London.
In the time of 'Abdu'l-Bahá[edit]
London was the centre of early Bahá'í activity at the end of the 1800s, and it was one of the cities 'Abdu'l-Bahá determined to visit in the early 1900s. Accordingly, He visited London from 4 September 1911 until 3 October 1911, leaving it only to visit smaller places in Surrey and to stay at Major Tudor Pole's house in Bristol. While in London, He stayed at 97, Cadogan Gardens, which was the home of Lady Blomfield.
In the time of the Guardian[edit]
In 1957, the Guardian and Ruhiyyih Khanum were in London to buy furniture for the World Centre buildings, when he fell ill. His illness developed into pneumonia, and he passed away while still in the city. He was buried at the New Southgate Cemetery in north London.
The Bahá'í World Congress[edit]
The World Congress of 1963 was to be held in Baghdad, Iraq, but as this was eventually considered unsafe, it was moved to the Royal Albert Hall in London. Around 6,000 Bahá'ís attended. This was immediately after the election of the first Universal House of Justice, and the House held one of its first meetings in the Bahá'í Centre, at 27, Rutland Gate, London S.W.7.
More recent development of the Faith in London[edit]
As the number of Bahá'ís in Britain has increased, so more of the London boroughs have gained Local Spiritual Assemblies. By the early years of the twenty-first century, virtually every borough had its own Assembly. The exception will continue for some time to be the "City of London" itself, with its negligible population, mostly caretakers of large buildings!
When the Universal House of Justice asked National Spiritual Assemblies to divide their territories into "clusters", London was divided into six or seven separate clusters. Additionally, the most easterly boroughs of Bexley and Bromley were clustered with adjacent parts of Kent. After a while, it was realised that all across the United Kingdom, the cluster areas were too small, and there was a re-clustering. The whole of (Greater) London now became one cluster. London followed Greater Manchester, and became the second cluster in the United Kingdom to have an Intensive Programme of Growth, approximately one week afterwards. By 2018, London was quoted as having over one hundred core activities.
