Edgware High Street Eastern side
Edgware High Street 1900s
The Edgware Road was one of the first roads to be constructed by the Romans. The High Street may have had houses by the middle part of the 15th century, and the road functioned not only as a thoroughfare, but also as a boundary between the parishes of Little Stanmore (on the western side) and Edgware (on the eastern side). There was a bridge over Edgware Brook by 1597, by which time the road was called Edgware Highway, and houses lined the road between the bridge and what is now Station Road.
On the eastern side of the road there was an inn called The George (c1454). Like many of the inns in Edgware it served travellers on the main road, but it also functioned as the manorial court. A fair in the back yard of the George and the adjoining field, was held in May, for buying and selling horses and cattle in 1760 but it had petered out by the 1790s. In 1810 the fair was moved further south to a field called Baker’s Croft, which subsequently became known as fair field (where Garret Road, Heming Road, and Elmer Gardens are today). The fair was held in the first week in August and was mostly for fun. There were “rustic competitions”, such as sack races, “wheeling barrows blindfold”, and pulling faces “through a horse collar”. From 1834 until 1855 there was even horse racing. The last fair was in 1904 because the tenants of the field no longer wanted a fair on their land.
Further up the High Street was the Boot and Spur (1753) later known simply as the Boot. Edgware had its own lock up, or cage, from 1767, for confining prisoners to be tried at the court. It was situated close to the Boot Inn in the 1820s. In the late 19th century Charlotte Monk made her living by selling water around the village taken from a well in front of the Boot.
The High Street was first widened to accommodate the tramlines laid in 1904, demolishing a number of houses which later became “The Forum”, a parade of shops built in 1930 on the corner of High Street and Station Road by Charles Wright, a local manufacturer. Further up, a row of shops were built around the same time, including 110 High Street (The Granaries) dated 1904. The street was widened again between July and October 1931, and nearly all the older buildings were demolished (including the Old George Inn). The Boot survived until 1965.
Pictures, Maps, Directories and Films
Other Edgware Pocket Histories
- Edgware High Street Western side
- Edgware Station Road
- Edgwarebury and Broadfields
- Stonegrove
- The Hale
- Brockley Hill
- Burnt Oak
- The Watling Estate
- Orange Hill and Goldbeaters Farm
Email this pageLast modified by: Robin Yeates on 07/06/2007