Bittacy Hill is the name of a part of an old road which led from London to Mill Hill.
Bittacy Hill was also the name for this area before the name Mill Hill East came about in 1935 - just before the railway became part of the Northern Line in 1939.
Bittacy House and Bittacy Farm were the main estates and the farm continued until 1908.
The North Middlesex Gas Company Works were opened in 1862 and continued until 2000 to be replaced by a supermarket.
In 1865 more than a hundred navvies arrived to build a viaduct across the Dollis Brook for the new railway.
In the triangle formed by Bittacy Hill, Saunders Lane and the railway, a small community formed when houses were built for railway and gas workers along Murray Road, Station Villas and the south side of Saunders Lane.
By the 1890s, there were shops, a mission hall and a chapel school. The local council built maisonettes north of Saunders Lane in 1932.
Mill Hill Barracks (Inglis Barracks) was the home of the Middlesex Regiment from 1905 to 1961. It was also used by the British Forces Post Office from 1962. During the 1960s and 1970s a large number of houses were built as married quarters.
North of the barracks the firm Carl Zeiss built an optical works in 1912. Being German-owned, it was closed during the First World War, but reopened around 1919 as the United Kingdom Optical Co Ltd. In 1988 the International Bible Students Association, associated with Watchtower House, took over the site. Bittacy House was demolished in 1950 and Watchtower house was built on the site in 1955.
