Just west of Colney Hatch, the later Woodhouse Road by 1754 was joined by Summers Lane, a more southerly route across Finchley Common from the Great North Road. In 1814 the two roads were called North and South Colney Hatch Road respectively.

North Finchley by 1876 had good shops, inns, and many private houses. It was said c.1885 to have "lately sprung into existence". It then had several ’respectable’ shops and residences.

By 1900 roads had been laid out in the Summers Lane area - this became the heart of a rapidly growing suburb which was easily accessible from the City and the west end of London. A strip of land between Woodhouse Road and Summers Lane had been sold by 1909 and Woodgrange Avenue was built on it soon afterwards. By 1909 shop fronts there along the Great North Road were continuous.

Below Summers Lane is a small pocket of woodland called Coppetts Wood, one of the last remnants of the medieval Finchley Wood. Close to Coppetts Wood a sewage farm was established by Finchley in 1885, of which, since the area’s sewage was diverted to Deephams Sewage Treatment Works, Edmonton in 1961, only the manager’s cottage remains.

Between 1882 and 1922 there was a small isolation hospital with 18 beds which was closed when Coppetts Wood Hospital was opened.

After enclosure the eastern end of Summers Lane was developed by Henry Dunger, owner of the Flower Pot brewery in Dunger Place (now Summers Place), from the 1830s until the 1870s.

The area popularly called the Rough Lots, officially called the Glebe Land, was the location (from 1879 until the early 20th century) of John Lawford’s brick works. On a site where Summers Lane meets the High Road a gun battery was placed in World War I as a defence against early German air raids.

Finchley football club, founded in 1874, started playing football on the Glebe Lands in 1932. Ken Aston, late president of the club, was the person who started the system of red and yellow cards use by referees.


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