History of Mill Hill

Mill Hill is a place in the London Borough of Barnet in London, England.

Introduction

Mill Hill was until 1965 a district of the ancient civil parish and manor of Hendon. It became an independent ecclesiastical parish in 1836 measuring 3,570 acres (14 km²), centred on the church of St Pauls (see Buildings below). Farms and other small settlements in Mill Hill date to at least the 10th century. Until the 16th century the area was known variously as Lothersleage, Lothersley, and latterly Lotharlie. By the 14th century there was a route that ran from Hendon through Bittacy Hill up to Highwood Hill, still called The Ridgeway, and, as the writer Ralph Calder points out, the names of prominent local families found in the Black Book (1321) are familiar today as place names. These include Daws, Saunder, Page, and so on. Calder says the first reference to a mill in the area was in the 1350s, and he follows consistently the ownership of a mill from the 1630s until 1754. It may be that 'melnehel' (1374), considered by the Victoria County History, may refer to Holcome Hill, certainly the location of the later mill that Calder examined. The oldest documented use of the name Mill Hill (Myll Hylles), as a place name for the area is much later (1544).

Mill Hill Village

Mill Hill Village as a place name arose in the 20th century to differentiate the area from the more suburbanised Mill Hill Broadway. The area did not have a village centre and was until the late 17th century the northern part of the parish and manor of Hendon. Much of this hamlet was constructed on wasteland either side of the roads from 17th century onwards. The road became increasingly important as an alternative to the Edgware Road as means of travelling north out of London. A number of inns and public houses were opened to serve travellers, many, like the Kings Head and The Angel, have now disappeared. By the end of the 18th century Mill Hill had many more inns than was usual in a settlement of its size. During the second half of the 17th century a number of large houses and estates, such as Littleberries, Ridgeway House, and Belmont House were laid out. The inhabitants of these houses were mostly well off London merchants and traders who required a home in the country, which was suitably close to their business interests. Mill Hill’s population had risen significantly by the 1820s and around what is now High Street there were even a handful of shops. In 1807 Mill Hill School was established for the children of nonconformists at what had been the home, Ridgeway House, of the Nicolls, an important local family, and this was the first of a number of large institutions to exploit the large houses which had already been established. From the 17th century Mill Hill, as with other adjacent areas of Middlesex, was well known for its hay, a crop which required large numbers of migrant workers during the summer. It may have been that the country sports that were played outside the Kings Head at Whitsun, were part of a Whitsun Ale when labour was hired. By 1920 hay ceased to be an important crop, and Mill Hill looked as if it would be swallowed up by the encroaching suburban development. In 1929 Hendon Council purchased more than 50 acres of the Arrandene estate for use as a recreation ground but also in order to retain Mill Hill Village distinct character.

There have been a number of famous and important residents. These include William Wilberforce the abolitionist at Highwood Hill, his friend Stamford Raffles at Hendon Park, who was the founder of Singapore in the 1820s. Peter Collinson, the botanist, lived at Ridgeway House until his death in 1767, and at Sunnyside on Hammers Lane lived James Murray one of the compilers of the New English Dictionary.

Buildings: One the oldest buildings in the village is Rosebank. In 1678 Richard Haley, a local Quaker, had a meetinghouse built, which was active until the early 18th century. It is one of a number of weatherboard cottages, a style that was once common in this part of Middlesex. The Nichol Almshouses, at the top of Milespit hill, are. There is an inscription on the which reads: “These six Almes Houses were erected in ye year of our Lord 1696 a the sole charge of Thomas Nicoll of this Parish Gent.” Mill Hill did not always have an Anglican church. Until the 1820s parishioners had had to go to St Mary’s Hendon to worship, some miles away, but in the 1820s a movement it was clear that the district would require a chapel of ease. William Wilberforce became the central benefactor and in 1827. St Paul’s, which is in the modest Commissioner Gothic, was completed in 1830, and consecrated in 1833. In 1869 Farther Herbert Vaughan (later Cardinal Vaughan), started a missionary college at Holcombe House. The college moved to new buildings, of Lombardo-Venetian style, in 1871. The convert|100|ft|m|sing=on high tower surmounted with a fourteen foot high gilt statue of St Joseph still dominates the landscape. In 1936 the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington established a cemetery in Milespit Hill, where there is a small burial ground for Dutch servicemen and women, and the graves of the American film star Bebe Daniels, best known in the UK for her role in the 1950s radio sitcom "Life with the Lyons", starring alongside her real-life husband Ben Lyon, and Billy Fury, the 1950s pop singer. By the far the largest building is the National Institute for Medical Research. It was constructed between 1937 and 1939, but was not officially opened until 1950. During the war the building was used by Women's Royal Naval Service.

Poets Corner and Daws Lane

This Victorian suburban development was started on land that had belonged to Sir Charles Flower (d1834). In 1878 The Birkbeck Freehold Land Society divided the land into approximately 500 plots laid out in a series of roads, which were named after famous poets, such as Byron, Milton, Shakespeare, and Tennyson. The Baptists had a small iron chapel by 1896 built on the south side of Tennyson Road. Two other streets called Victoria and Albert Roads, formed a second and adjacent block of streets north of Daws lane, where there were a few shops. On the ordnance survey map of 1896 on one tenth of the plots had houses. Daws Farm, more than 37 acres, south of Daws Lane, was bought by Hendon Council in 1923, and opened as a park.

Buildings: In 1895 land was given to the Linen and Woollen Drapers’ Association east of Hammers Lane to build small retirement cottages, which came into use in 1898. In 1927 a further nine acres were acquired. Mill Hill open air swimming pool was opened in 1935, which was closed in 1980. The buildings are now used as a garden centre. Further along is a civil defence building constructed in 1939. It was intended to be used as a cleansing centre in the event that Hendon was suffered a gas attack during World War II. Fortunately it was never needed and is now used as a drill hall for the Sea Cadets, and by the London Borough of Barnet as a local history archive and library.

Frith Manor and Burtonhole

The earliest documentation of Frith Manor starts c1500, as sub manor of Hendon. There was a family called Burton living here by the reign of Henry VIII, and Burtonhole farm is mentioned from at least early 17th century.

Buildings Partingdale manor is a manor in name only, and was built in the early 19th century. Low wood house is c1875. Close by Partingdale Lane is a remains of a Cold War control centre, from which north London was to governed in the event of a nuclear attack on London. It was built to withstand an atomic bomb, but became obsolete as these weapons became increasingly more powerful. It passed into the hands of Barnet Council in 1958, and was used in 2000 as the setting for an episode of the television series Beech is Back. Its future now is unsure although it is listed. The large electricity step down station was built in 1961.

Mill Hill Broadway

As a place name Mill Hill Broadway is a relatively new one, being the renaming of the lower end of what had been Lawrence Street, in the 1910s. The renaming of the Midland Railway station in the 1950s to Mill Hill Broadway and the building of the bus depot consolidated it as a place name. Before the 1860s this end of Mill Hill had only Lawrence and Bunns Farms, and no other buildings.

Two railway companies constructed railway lines through the district in the 1860s. From east to west the first to be constructed ran from Finsbury Park to Edgware, but had no station here until later. The other, running north to south, was an extension of the Midland Line from Bedford to London, with a station being opened in 1868. The mainline service was poor , making commuting difficult and retarded suburban development. There was a row of four Midland Railway cottages, but there was no other development shown on the ordnance survey map of 1896. In 1906 a halt, called the Hale, was put in on the GNR line, and this enabled passengers to be taken to Finsbury Park where they could catch the tube. During the succeeding thirty years land was purchased from the Bunns estate and Lyndhurst and Woodcroft Avenue were built. And by 1910 the shopping district began to develop. But it was the opening of the Barnet Watford by-pass in October 1928, providing very good communications, that made the district ripe for considerable suburban development.

Buildings By the end of the 1930s the area had a fire and ambulance service (1929), and the Broadway Hall (1923), a concert and dance hall built by an estate agent TG Golby, which became the Capital Cinema (1933 - 1955). The Roman Catholic church of the Sacred Heart and Mary the Immaculate (1923), as well as the Union Church (1935) were all established in this period. The proposal to extend the tube from what is now Archway to Edgware and beyond, using the GNR railway it seemed likely that the area was to become an important centre. However the decision not only to extend the tube and to close the Hale to passenger traffic in 1939, combined with post war Green Belt laws, prohibited further development east and north. In 1967 the railway cottages were removed, and the Broadway bus depot was built. The large public housing estate on Grahame Parke (GLC c1970s) and the Watling Estate (LCC c1920/30s) are discussed separately. An object of note in the area is the curious looking London University Observatory (1929).

Mill Hill East

The name Mill Hill East was established during the 1930s, only slightly before the railway was electrified as a part of London Transport's Northern Line. Bittacy House and farm were the main estates until the 1860s. The farm was halfway down opposite Sanders Lane and continued as a farm until 1908, although the buildings and fields continued to be used.

The first developments started in the 1860s. The North Middlesex Gas Company Works (demolished 2000), were established here in 1862. The railway was slow in coming (1867), having been held up by the building of the viaduct across the Dollis. In a triangle formed by Bittacy Hill, the railway and Sanders Lane, a small community evolved in houses built for railway and gas workers along Murray Road, Station Villas and the south side of Sanders Lane. By 1890s either side of the Railway Hotel (present building c1905) there was a couple of shops, including a fishmongers and general stores. This can be regarded as the original centre of Mill Hill East. For spiritual needs there was a Misson Hall, with a chapel school, but no other church in this part of Mill Hill. Apart from the maisonettes built on the north side of Saunders Lane (c1932), there was little change until the 1970s when the area was redeveloped. But centre of the area began to shift by World War Two. This process started in around 1930 when Devonshire Road was developed between Sanders Lane and the top of Holders Hill. By 1938 a new parade of shops had been built at Bittacy Hill to a new location. Holders Hill Circus, popularly "Kelly's" corner, and The Mill public house were built in the mid 1960s, replacing the old corner.

Buildings Mill Hill Barracks (latter Inglis Barracks) was the home of the Middlesex Regiment (Die-Hards) from 1905 to 1961. It was also used by The Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) from around 1943, and the Home Postal Depot (now the British Forces Post Office) from 1962. During the 1960s and 70s a large number of houses were built as married quarters. In 1988 the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb at the barracks killing Lance Corporal Robins. North of the barracks the German firm of Carl Zeiss built an optical works in 1912, which was closed during the First World War, becoming, in 1919, United Kingdom Optical Co Ltd. In 1988 the International Bible Students Association, associated with Watchtower House, took over the site. Bittacy house was demolished in 1950 and Watchtower house was built on the site in 1955 (formally opened 1958). Here the Jehovah Witness periodicals Awake and Watchtower are produced in 25 languages for 55 countries. In 2002 120 million magazines were produced.

External links

* [http://www.stpaulschurchmillhill.co.uk/ St Paul's Church Mill Hill - the church built by William Wilberforce]