Friern Barnet was an ancient parish in the Finsbury division of Ossulstone hundred, in the county of Middlesex.

The area was originally considered to be part of Barnet, most of which was in Hertfordshire. By the 13th century the Middlesex section of Barnet was known as Little Barnet, before becoming Frerenbarnet and then Friern Barnet (sometimes spelt in other ways, such as "Fryern Barnett"). The "Friern" part of the parish’s name derives from the French for "brother" and refers to the medieval lordship of the Brotherhood or Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem.

The opening of railway stations on the Great Northern and Metropolitan Railways, in the mid-19th century, prompted some development.

But Friern Barnet parish remained largely rural until after the First World War. The building of Colney Hatch asylum in 1851 helped to cut off the area to the south, and the location of railways caused the edges of the parish to be built up first.

In 1883 the most populous and prosperous district was that of All Saints’, Whetstone. Most of the population lived in the Freehold, Avenue, and Holly Park districts, which had grown up around Colney Hatch.

The working-class Freehold, so-called in the late 19th century when the original ownership of the land had been forgotten, lay south of Bounds Green brook and east of Colney Hatch Lane. The Avenue was a similar area north-east of Colney Hatch, in the angle between Oakleigh Road South and Friern Barnet Road and separated by the railway from Holly Park, to the west. Relative densities of population were altered by building in the central and northern parts of the parish after 1920. More than ten per cent of the land was still open as late as 1975, most of it in the southern part.

Friern Barnet became part of the London Borough of Barnet in 1965.

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Main source:	Friern Barnet: Introduction | British History Online
	Further citations and sources