Finchley N2 East End Road
East End Road was originally the route from the hamlet of Church End Finchley to the old Great North Road when it ran through Muswell Hill. The road has had various names such as Manor Lane (19th century) and Finchley Road (18th century). In the medieval period a triangle of waste, Hunts Green (1437) which streatched from Stanley Road to the Junction of Church Lane. This was the location of first hamlet of East End (1365).
From 1683 until 1700 Richard Cromwell (son of Oliver Cromwell) lodged in the house of Thomas Pengelly, thought to be located where Abbots Gardens are today. The Five Bells (1751) had the reputation as a centre of boxing and a number of champions trained there including: the heavy and medium weight champion Gem Mace. Elmshurst House was home of the Salvin family from 1833 to 1857. They and their friends, including Lord Mansfield of Kenwood, raised the money to build Holy Trinity Church (1847) and school. During the war a V2 Rocket landed in Abbots Gardens. Elmshurst House was demolished in 1939, becoming Elmhurst Crescent and Pulham Avenue after the war.
"Lord” George Sanger, the circus proprietor, used Park Farm on East End Road as winter quarters for his collection of exotic animals in the 1900s. Sanger was the man who invented the three ringed circus. Between Brackenbury Road and Hamilton Road Walter Dickinson founded Finchley’s first manufactory in 1909, the Hill View Works, making cars (now a carpet warehouse). The Order of the Good Shepherd moved to East End house in 1864, in 1873 as a “reformatory” for former female prisoners. Much of the convent was burned down in 1972. Part of the grounds was redeveloped into Bishop Douglas School (1963), and Thomas More Estate (1980). There is a Victorian letterbox on the wall of the convent. Across the road is East Finchley Cemetery was opened by the St Marylebone Burial Board in 1855.
Briar Close may have originally been called Philipe Lane, but it was generally known as Green Lane. Between 1808 and 1835 the lane was the location of a house rented as Finchley’s workhouse and was called Workhouse Lane as a consequence. A bridge over railway, built in the 1860s, was removed in the 1960s and the northern portion of the road is now much overgrown and disused.
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Email this pageLast modified by: Richard Nurse on 13/02/2008