Northern Line southbound
Suggestions (North Finchley)
**Whetstone Stray/Brook Farm Open Space**: Brook Farm, purchased by Finchley UDC in 1912 for recreation, saw its High Road farm buildings demolished in 1914. Whetstone Stray, part of the Baxendale Estate, provided lush grazing for the Pickford’s transport horses. In 1908, the Council bought land from the Baxendale Trustees for allotments, as required by law. The steep mound in the north-east corner was created from the spoil during railway construction. The 16 km Dollis Valley Green Walk was opened by Finchley Council in the 1930s.
**Swan Lane Open Space**: Known as ‘The Pits’ in the 1960s, Swan Lane Open Space, the smallest of Barnet’s ‘Premier Parks’, was created around the 1930s on former gravel pits. The pond, fed by a natural spring, was the site of a tragedy in the early 1920s when children drowned while playing in the disused gravel workings.
**Terrace House and Terrace Cottage**: This early 18th-century house is listed by Historic England as Grade II, but details of its origin have not been found.
**The White House**: Part of Finchley Catholic High School, this circa 1820 battlemented stucco house is listed by Historic England. It features rusticated quoins, incised stonework, banding at the first floor and under the battlements, a battlemented single-storey canted bay to the left with rusticated angles, and a recessed 2-window bay to the right.
**Lodge to Finchley Catholic High School**: This mid-19th century building, listed by Historic England, is described as a two-bay, rusticated stucco building with two storeys, a machicolated parapet, lancet windows with hood moulds, and a heavily moulded “Early-English” doorway.
**Finchley Rink & Rink Cinema**: A Tudor Revival style skating rink opened on the High Road in 1910, but was soon converted into a cinema. The cinema was then converted to commercial use in 1923 and demolished in 1970 to make way for the Metropolitan Police garage.
**Bow Street Riders**: Revived in 1805 to safeguard turnpikes, the Bow Street Horse Patrol was first recorded in Finchley in 1818. Nos 1 & 2 Frederick’s Place/Arlington Cottages housed the patrol in the 1850s. The four PCs covered specific routes on foot or horseback and visited each pub on their route four times a day.
**North Finchley Library**: An early project of the new Borough of Finchley, the North Finchley library was a model of its kind when opened in 1936. A model of the library is located adjacent to Sainsbury’s.
**Nos 32 and 34 Torrington Park**: These early 19th-century listed buildings are described by Historic England as a pair, each with two storeys and a basement, three windows, arranged as a central two-bay block with one-bay links to one-bay side pavilions. The centre block and pavilions have hipped slate roofs, while the links have parapet fronts. The stuccoed front features a ground floor band and sash windows in moulded architraves, some with glazing bars. The doors have six ornamental panels and are part glazed, with patterned fanlights in round moulded architraves. No. 34 has a later full-height square bay projecting from the pavilion end and a step and bridge entrance of modern date over an excavated area.
**Tally Ho Corner**: Ballard’s Lane did not always connect to the High Road, terminating at present-day Victoria Park for centuries. In 1756, a raised way was constructed to join the two roads. A beer house stood at the corner in 1814, and the suburb took off with the creation of the Regent’s Park to Finchley turnpike in the 1820s. Major routes from the City and West End merged here. The name Tally Ho Corner originated in the 1830s from the staging post of 16 horses for a coaching company of the same name.
**Grand Arcade**: Built in the late 1930s as a commercial thoroughfare, the Grand Arcade was the place to be in the 1960s. Its interior is lit by natural light, and its tiled flooring and brass window trim made it a stylish emblem of 1930s Art Deco.
**Grand Hall Cinema 704-8 High Road**: The Grand Hall Cinema, open by 1912 with a seating capacity of 550, was operated by Ashby’s New Halls Ltd. and became part of the National Electric circuit. Taken over by the Denman/Gaumont Theatres chain in 1928, it was enlarged to 1,093 seats. The cinema closed around 1936 as the new Gaumont opened across the road and was demolished in the early 1950s.
**Gaumont Cinema**: Originally destined for a Dominion Cinema, the art deco Gaumont cinema opened on the roundabout site created by the Kingsway road scheme on July 19, 1937. Designed by architect W E Trent, it showed both films and live performances. The auditorium seated 1,390 in the stalls and 725 in the balcony, which slightly overhung the stalls. Nine elaborate light fittings hung from the ceiling, and the lower side walls were panelled in mahogany. The Gaumont’s 53-foot wide proscenium was well-suited for screening CinemaScope films. Half-way up the tower was an elaborate bas-relief carving in Portland stone by artist & designer Newbury A. Trent, depicting the shooting of a film with lights, camera, director, and actors. The cinema closed in 1980 and was demolished in 1987.
**Tram Depot and Kingsway**: Finchley tram depot, created for Metropolitan Electric Tramways at an important intersection of London’s radial and peripheral routes, initially had a capacity for sixty cars on 15 tracks. Hertfordshire County Council also rented space to store their Barnet trams. In 1931, the depot was revamped to accommodate the new, larger Feltham trams. The modernized depot featured labor-saving equipment for cleaning and inspection, with vacuum pipes to remove debris without making a mess. A tram could be processed in just five and a half minutes. Amenities for staff with split shifts included an all-electric canteen, a club room with billiards, and a drying room for wet clothes. A ‘traverser’ moved trams between bays. To eliminate inconvenient tram reversing at Tally Ho corner, Woodhouse Road was extended directly to Ballard’s Lane in 1935, creating Kingsway and forming the large roundabout.
**St Kilda’s war memorial**: The granite cross War Memorial to both world wars outside the United Services Club was unveiled by Viscount Lascelles on 13 November 1925, attended by a large crowd. The inscription reads “One thousand Men of Finchley, husbands, sons and comrades, made the Supreme Sacrifice in World War One in the hour of their Country’s need.” and “At the Going down of the Sun and in the Morning we will Remember them.” The names are not listed. After the ceremony, dignitaries addressed a tightly packed gathering in the St Kilda Hall.
**Woodhouses**: The Woodhouse area of Finchley began with three houses called the Woodhouses sometime before 1655. One of them was called Wood House by 1754. By 1784, it was home to the artist, craftsman, and ornamental plasterer Thomas Collins, around which time a mansion was built there, becoming the centre of an estate created when the common was enclosed. In 1925, it became Woodhouse Grammar School. The original two-storeyed, five-bayed mid-19th-century building with its Ionic portico remains, sandwiched between two wings, one dating from the 1920s. In 1915, Finchley UDC bought part of the Woodhouse estate to create new housing. Ingleway was built in 1921.
**Christ Church’s** foundation stone was laid in 1867 for a new church to replace a corrugated iron church created for the navvies constructing the railways. Designed by John Norton in Gothic style 1867-9, it was built in stages as funds became available; nave 1869, aisles 1874, chancel, side chapel and vestry 1891. Built of coursed Kentish ragstone with ashlar dressings and slate roof, it has a splendid rose window on its west with stained glass of c1870 by Bell and Co. in abstract patterns. A projected bell tower was never built. The aisles have 5 bays with gables and tall arched windows with double lancets, colonnettes and oculi. Unusually, there are five windows across the front of the building. Inside the church are red brick walls with black lozenge patterns. The five bay nave has pointed arched arcading on clustered columns with foliate capitals. One south aisle window, has stained glass of 1868 by W H Constable. Square stone font on octagonal base with corner columns and wooden pyramidal-topped cover of 1921. Hexagonal wooden pulpit. Six light stained glass east window with Te Deum, c1911 by James Powell. Stained glass to south east chapel by A L Moore c1891-2.
**Finchley Lido** was opened by Finchley Borough Council in September 1931. The main pool was heated until World War Two. In 1948 the pool was used for the Olympic Games men’s water polo. In 1938 the War Office built a drill hall at the bottom of the hill for the 61st Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment RA, better known locally as the T.A. centre. The open-air pool was closed in 1992 and replaced by the present complex in May 1996. The T.A. centre was demolished in 2004 for housing.
**Moss Hall**: Moss Hall was built on the edge of Finchley Common. Its name may have come from the Mosse family, one of whom received land in 1463, a condition being he built a mansion house there which existed in the 18th century. Moss Hall fronted the more northerly of the two east-west portions of Nether Street by 1754. Ralph Worsley, Rector 1794-1848, went to live at Moss Hall in Nether Street, which his wife had inherited, whereupon the rectory house in a bad state of repair, was leased. The house had forty acres in 1833, but despite being unsuccessfully offered for sale in 1830, was reduced as parts of the estate were sold off for building houses from 1867 (including Moss Hall Crescent). Moss Hall was demolished in 1927.
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