South East England

[3] South East England contains nine legally chartered cities: Brighton and Hove, Canterbury, Chichester, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Portsmouth, Southampton, Southend-on-Sea and Winchester.

It is also the location of a number of internationally known places of interest, such as HMS Victory in Portsmouth, Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, Thorpe Park and RHS Wisley in Surrey, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, Windsor Castle in Berkshire, Leeds Castle, the White Cliffs of Dover and Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, Brighton Palace Pier, and Hammerwood Park in East Sussex, and Wakehurst Place in West Sussex.

Some of the events of the 2012 Summer Olympics were held in the south east, including the rowing at Eton Dorney and part of the cycling road race in the Surrey Hills.

Beecham Research Laboratories at Brockham Park in 1959 discovered meticillin (or methicillin), the first semi-synthetic penicillin (beta-lactamase stable), deriving from their discovery in 1958 of 6-APA, the core constituent; the team, led by Prof George Rolinson, won the Mullard Award in 1971.

Bipyridine compounds (Paraquat-Gramoxone and Diquat) were discovered for herbicide use in 1954 by William Boon at ICI's Plant Protection division at Jealott's Hill, being released onto the market in 1958.

After a plane crashed near his house in Oxford in 1940, Sir Peter Medawar helped the injured pilot, and in the process discovered homograft rejection, leading to organ transplantation using azathioprine.

ThrustSSC, the fastest car in the world in 1997, was built in Aldingbourne, West Sussex, by G-Force Engineering, designed by Ron Ayers, with further work done by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency at Farnborough.

Cities and towns in the region include Aldershot, Ashford, Aylesbury, Basingstoke, Bracknell, Brighton and Hove, Canterbury, Chichester, Crawley, Eastbourne, Farnborough, Gosport, Guildford, Hastings, High Wycombe, Margate, Maidstone, Medway, Milton Keynes, Newport, Oxford, Portsmouth, Ramsgate, Reading, Slough, Southampton, Winchester, Woking and Worthing.Until 1999, there was a south east Standard Statistical Region, which also included the counties of Bedfordshire, Greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire.

East of the A34, north of the M4, at Compton since 1992 is the UK HQ of Baxter Healthcare, part of a global company which is working on a vaccine for H1N1, and next door is the Institute for Animal Health, which also researches H1N1.

BG Group, Prudential plc (the country's biggest life insurer with 7m customers), the Rural Payments Agency, and Guide Dogs for the Blind are in Reading.

Foster Wheeler UK is in Shinfield in the old headquarters of Berkshire County Council, next to the M4; next door is the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on the site of the former Met Office College.

Nearby, on the other side of A5, Loughton is the home of the National House Building Council (NHBC), the National Energy Foundation, and the former Atmosphere Bars and Clubs west of the A5, near Central MK; Leica Geosystems (owned by Hexagon AB, surveying equipment), on the same estate, is opposite the NHBC, and the Parcelforce HQ is nearby; to the south of Loughton is Korg UK (keyboards) and Vox (originally from Kent, makers of amplifiers), just north of the National Bowl, off Watling Street; to the west of Loughton at the Crownhill Ind Est in Shenley Church End, SMC Pneumatics have their European Technical Centre.

DRS mark exam papers by electronic data capture at Linford Wood, south of the A422 and Stantonbury, near Leica Microsystems; Mitsubishi Pencil Company UK (uni-ball) is off the A422 at the B4034 Redbridge Roundabout; H. Bronnley & Co. (soap) is on the site of a factory used to build the GEC-Marconi AI.24 Foxhunter radar in the 1980s.

Just east of the A421, near Wavendon and M1 Junction 13, John Lewis, River Island and Amazon have large logistics warehouses in the Magna Park distribution centre.

Bacardi-Martini and London Camera Exchange are in Winchester and four miles (6.4 km) north-west, Arqiva (broadcasting infrastructure, at the former technical division of the IBA) are based in Crawley, Hampshire.

GE Aviation, on a site which was formerly Folland Aircraft then BAe Aerostructures, has a factory at Hamble-le-Rice which makes composites for airframes and racing cars, using products such as Bismaleimide resin.

[citation needed] Lockheed Martin U.K. is at the Langstone Technology Park[69] off the A3023, near the A27, at Brockhampton, near to Apollo Fire Detectors, Jobsite (owned by dmg::media), and Pains Wessex (a leading manufacturer of maritime distress flares); SSE plc have their main southern HQ on the Southmoor Lane Ind Est next door.

Paradigm Secure Communications (Airbus Defence and Space) control the UK's Ariane-launched Skynet military satellites from former the RAF Oakhanger off the A325 west of Bordon.

Laing O'Rourke is off the A206 in Stone, east of the Dartford Tunnel on Crossways Business Park, where Mazda UK are; in the same building is Forest Laboratories UK (bought by Actavis in 2014), who make Veno's (cough mixture, the brand was bought from Beechams-GSK in 2011), Sudocrem, Otomize (Dexamethasone) and Bisodol (indigestion), made in Dartford; Crosswater (taps and showers) is in Stone, further along the A206 near the Thames Europort.

Brake Bros is on the Eureka Business Park, off the A251 north of M20 junction 9 in Boughton Aluph; nearby is Coty Rimmel UK (perfumes) and Houchin (owned by ITW), who make ground power units for airport aprons.

Further south along the M20, Givaudan UK (flavourings, former Quest International, and previously Proprietary Perfume and Flavours, or PPF International) has a 10-acre large plant in Kennington; next-door is Premier Foods (former RHM before 2007, and opened as Batchelors in 1957) on the A2070 next to the River Great Stour and the railway, east of the M20; the 16-acre site makes Paxo stuffing, Savoury Rice, Pasta n Sauce, Bisto, Cup-a-Soup (introduced in 1972), Vesta curries (launched by Batchelors in 1961), and claims to be the largest dry food manufacturing site in Europe; it now makes Bird's Custard and Angel Delight.

[citation needed] Cummins Power Generation is in Acol, near Manston Airport on the A299, and Pfizer, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world and manufacturer of Anadin, had its European R&D site in Sandwich until 2012, next to the River Stour and A256.

AXA PPP is in Tunbridge Wells, and Lamberts Healthcare (part of Merck), based at High Brooms, are a leading manufacturer of vitamin supplements.

Next door is a large factory of Barry Callebaut UK, a Swiss manufacturer of cocoa (for Nestle and Cadbury), on the Wildmere Road Ind Est, north of the A422 near the M40 junction 11.

The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Diamond Light Source (built by the Wellcome Trust) are on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Chilton and East Hendred.

Allianz Insurance has its UK headquarters in Guildford as do Ericsson, Colgate-Palmolive, Constellation Brands, Electronic Arts (formerly in Chertsey before 2008), Sanofi, the CTC, Surrey Satellite Technology, Avaya and Philips.

[75] Although BP has its international headquarters in central London, most of its UK division (chemicals and energy) with Air BP (aviation fuel) is headquartered at Sunbury-on-Thames, and the UK's third largest company by stock market value; nearby is Kingston Technology Europe (the world's second largest producer of flash memory), just inside the Surrey boundary; ADT is at the end of the M3 in Sunbury, and Chubb is on the other side of the roundabout, and M3.

Del Monte Foods is in Staines-upon-Thames on the side of the A30 and Dalkia is on the A308; British Gas is on the A308 in Pooley Green nearby to the west, with Salesforce at Lotus Park, next to Dow Chemical.

Jones Bootmaker head office is based in Eastbourne; Alfa Laval UK have a manufacturing plant at Birch Road Ind Est, off the A2290 near the A259 roundabout.

The Native American woman Pocahontas is buried at St George's Church, Gravesend in Kent and was the inspiration for the popular Disney animated film of the same name.

Uffington White Horse , a prehistoric hill figure on the Berkshire Downs .
Harwell Science and Innovation Campus seen from the air in September 2015; the JANET academic computer network is headquartered there.
South Foreland Lighthouse on Dover cliffs.
BritNed connects from the Isle of Grain in Medway to the TenneT network in the Netherlands.
England population density and low elevation coastal zones. South East England is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise
View of South East England coast from northern France.
The Litlington White Horse situated in the South Downs .
Population pyramid of the South East in 2020
UK and foreign born population pyramid of the South East in 2021
General Election results in 2017.
How the region voted in the 2016 European referendum
Reading School often gets the highest percentage of Oxbridge acceptances for a state school in England.
Tom Tower of Christ Church, Oxford ; in 1920, the University of Oxford was the first in the UK to award degrees to women.
Redhill with the diesel Class 166 service run by First Great Western to Reading as the line has not got the Third rail electrification fully installed on the North Downs Line
Most main routes in the region are radials from London. Shown here is the A21 . It is one of the major north–south routes connecting London and commuter towns and the coast
Rail transport infrastructure map - UK - South East England
Vodafone HQ north of Newbury; it arrived as Racal-Vodafone in 1983, when Bayer also arrived; Vodafone is the world's second-biggest mobile phone company (the world's largest privately owned) with £40 billion of revenue and 464 million customers, and profits of £11bn; it has around 19M UK customers, and by value makes up about 5% of the FTSE 100.
Horlicks factory in Slough; GSK Slough makes 14,000 tonnes a year.
Jealott's Hill Research Station (pesticides), former ICI Plant Protection Division.
Martin-Baker Mk 9 ejection seat ; Martin-Baker seats have saved around 950 RAF pilots, and around 7600 pilots around the world, and were developed by Sir James Martin (1893–1981) from Northern Ireland.
Argos head office on Avebury Boulevard in Milton Keynes; Argos was established in 1973 from what was the Green Shield Stamps company and shops, and since 2016 has been owned by Sainsbury's, formerly Home Retail Group.
The OU at Milton Keynes.
HQ of Draper Tools.
Ordnance Survey headquarters at Adanac Park.
National Air Traffic Service headquarters at Swanwick.
The AA's headquarters at Fanum House in Basingstoke.
Around 1,000 Minis are made each day in Cowley; BMW bought the plant in 1994 and has made around 3m since 2001; there are 4,500 staff and around ten miles of conveyors; the engines are made at Hams Hall in North Warwickshire .
Williams F1 at Grove, next to the Great Western Main Line and A338, north of Wantage.
Sheilas' Wheels outside the head office of esure in Reigate; esure was started by Peter Wood .
Esso is based in Leatherhead; Esso have around 1,100 petrol stations in the UK - 14% of all stations, and pays around £7bn in UK tax, and own the Brent oil field; the site is also the worldwide base of ExxonMobil Aviation Fuels and Marine.
Virgin Atlantic on Manor Royal in Crawley; Virgin has 12 747s compared to BA's 56, but both have around 18 of the new Airbus 380 ; Gatwick now flies 40 million passengers a year, a world record for a single-runway airport.
BBC Research was based until 2010 in Kingswood Warren near Reigate in Surrey on the A217 , which was responsible for developing stereo and HD TV broadcasts and teletext .
Michael Whyte on Highpark Lad at the British Jumping Derby at Hickstead in June 2011.
The Bat & Ball Inn, Clanfield , the birthplace of cricket.