Burnt Oak

infobox UK place
country = England
map_type = Greater London
region= London
population=
official_name= Burnt Oak
constituency_westminster=
post_town= EDGWARE
postcode_area=HA
postcode_district= HA8
london_borough= Barnet
dial_code= 020
os_grid_reference= TQ205915
latitude= 51.6093
longitude= -0.2588

Burnt Oak is a multi-ethnic suburb in the London Borough of Barnet south of Edgware.

The name Burnt Oak was first used in 1754 and from then until the 1850s referred to no more than a field on the eastern side of the Edgware Road (Watling Street). Nor is there evidence that the name implies anything except that the field had once contained a burnt oak tree. In May 1844 Burnt Oak field was sold to a Mr Essex, and by the 1860s plans were in place to build three residential streets: North Street, East Street, and South Street. The application of the field name to the area seems to have followed from this new estate and was in use by the end of the 19th century.

There were a handful of shops by the 1890s. There was a post office and grocer's run by George and William Plumb, a baker's run by Caller & Poole, as well as James Huggett the greengrocer. A tramway along the Edgware Road to Cricklewood opened in 1905, but the population remained small, by 1921 still only around 1000.

Burnt Oak tube station is a station on the Northern Line of London Underground opened on 27 October 1924. It was first open on weekdays with a small booking hall suitable for a rural area. As it was on farmland south-east of the community in Edgware Road, London Transport constructed a new road, Watling Avenue. In the same year news leaked out that the London County Council was to build a housing estate (Watling Estate), which was ready for its first occupants in April 1927. With this and other private estates the area was provided with a new station by 1928, and the population by 1931 had grown to 21 545. Along both sides of Watling Avenue shops were built. In 1929 Jack Cohen used the name Tesco in Burnt Oak for the first time, and founded the chain of stores. In 1936 Watling Market opened with a hundred covered shops and stalls, and the Co-op opened its "finest department store" at the junction of Stag Lane and Burnt Oak Broadway.