A reverse clip saves only the part of your spatial object that is *outside*
the bounds of another object, as opposed to a regular clip which saves the
parts that are *inside* the other object. [Here's][1] how to do it in ArcMap.

The question is: how to do this in R?


Reproducible example (on Linux machines):

    system("wget 'https://github.com/Robinlovelace/Creating-maps-in-R/archive/master.zip' -P /tmp/")
    unzip("/tmp/master.zip", exdir = "/tmp/master")
    uk <- readOGR("/tmp/master/Creating-maps-in-R-master/data/", "ukbord")
    lnd <- readOGR("/tmp/master/Creating-maps-in-R-master/data/", "LondonBoroughs")
    plot(uk)
    plot(lnd, add = T, col = "black")


What I want here to do is to save all of the UK *except* for London. Visually, I want the black shape in the resulting image to be a hole.

![enter image description here][2]


  [1]: http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/82807/performing-a-reverse-clip-in-arcmap
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/I2Peb.png