It is south south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton is mainly residential with a prominent street market and substantial retail sector.
It is a multiethnic community, with a large percentage of its population being of African and Caribbean descent. The district houses the main offices of the London Borough of Lambeth. Brixi is thought to have erected a boundary stone to mark the meeting place of the ancient Brixton hundred of Surrey. The location is unknown but is thought to be at the top of Brixton Hill, at a road known at the time as Bristow or Brixton Causeway, long before any settlement in the area.
Brixton marks the rise from the marshes of North Lambeth up to the hills of Upper Norwood and Streatham. It was only at the end of the 18th century that villages and settlements formed around Brixton, as the original woodland was gradually reduced until the area was covered in farmland and market gardens known for game and strawberries. The area remained undeveloped until the beginning of the 19th century, the main settlements being near Stockwell, Brixton Hill and Coldharbour Lane.
With the opening of Vauxhall Bridge in improved access to Central London led to a process of suburban development. The largest single development, and one of the last in suburban character, was Angell Town, laid out in the s on the east side of Brixton Road, and so named after a family that owned land in Lambeth from the late 17th century until well into the 20th. One of a few surviving Ashby's Mill, Brixtons in London, built in , and surrounded by houses built during Brixton's Victorian era expansion, is to be found just off Brixton Hill.
When the London sewerage system was constructed during the midth century, its designer Sir Joseph Bazalgette incorporated flows from the River Effra, which used to flow through Brixton, into his 'high-level interceptor sewer', also known as the Effra sewer. Brixton was transformed into a middle class suburb between the s and s.
