Britain got online from a room in Bloomsbury
- First UK internet link, 1973
- Kirstein and TCP/IP
- The Old Street cluster
- A fintech capital
How London grew
The short version, in order. Pick a year.
Britain joins the ARPANET
A terminal in Gordon Square became the first computer outside the United States on the ARPANET. Peter Kirstein’s group at UCL routed the link via Norway to the University of Southern California.
Britain plugged into the internet from Bloomsbury
In July 1973 a terminal in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, became the first computer outside the United States connected to the ARPANET. Peter Kirstein’s group at University College London routed the link via Norway to the University of Southern California, and Britain was online.
Kirstein went on to work with Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn on TCP/IP itself, the protocol every page you load still runs on, and is generally called the father of the European internet. The connection he built is the reason this country got a head start on the web, and it happened a few minutes’ walk from Euston.
London has been rewriting its own tech story ever since, from the Old Street cluster to a fintech industry that moves more money online than most countries do offline.
What that means if you trade in London
It means your customers have been buying online for thirty years and their patience is measured in seconds. It also means you are competing for attention against businesses with marketing departments, in a city where a bad website is read as a warning sign rather than a quirk.
The advantage of a small business here is that you can be specific in a way a chain cannot. A page that names your borough, your prices and the person who turns up beats a national competitor’s glossy site for the searches that actually matter to you.
What London businesses ask us for
Say which part of London
London is not one market. Somebody in Peckham is not looking for a plumber in Barnet. Naming your boroughs outperforms claiming the whole city.
Prices in public
London customers price-check by default. Vagueness reads as expensive, and silence loses the enquiry before it starts.
Load fast on 4G
Half your visitors arrive on a phone, often underground on a bad signal. A heavy site is an invisible one.
The tech scene here
London is the third largest technology centre in the world and the only UK city where the sector is genuinely global rather than regional. Fintech is the deepest part of it — Revolut, Wise, Monzo and Starling all sit within a short walk of each other around Shoreditch and the City.
The Old Street cluster began organically in the late 2000s, when small digital firms took cheap space in east London. It was rebranded Tech City in 2011 and, although technology companies can now work from anywhere, Shoreditch, Hoxton and Clerkenwell remain dense with startups, agencies and the places where informal hiring actually happens.
For a small business the implication is uncomfortable but simple: you are competing for attention with organisations that employ people to do nothing but win it.
How well do you know London?
Five quick questions. Get all five right and you win a 10% off discount code for your website. Every answer is somewhere on this page, so have a read if you get stuck.
London quiz · 1 of 5
Where did Britain’s first internet connection run from?
Common questions
The simplest one-page site starts at £15 a month, with the website build included and nothing to pay up front. Every plan and its price is published on the pricing page before you speak to anyone.
Sign-up takes about 3 minutes and the build questionnaire about 5. Most sites are then designed and built within 21 hours, and live within days of the brief being answered.
No setup fee and no hidden extras. Your monthly plan covers the website build and hosting. Done-for-you plans have a 12-month minimum term, then you can cancel any time from your dashboard.
Yes — you can upgrade at any time as your business grows, with no need to start over.