Strawberry Vale Brook Coldfall Woods

Bounds Green Brook/Strawberry Vale Brook
The brook rises in this area and flows eastwards
Coppets Brook flows northwards
TQ 28026 90311

Post to the north Coppetts Wood
Post to the east Muswell Hill
Post to the south East Finchley


Suburban area with open space, including cemetaries and woodland

Coldfall Avenue
Coldfall Primary School. Local authority school opened in 1928. The two-storey building, originally took all ages but by the 1950s it was for primary and infant children only

Coldfall Wood,
Coldfall probably means ‘clearing in which charcoal was burned'.
Until the 20th the woodland covered a much wider area but the southern section was felled and excavated for gravel followed by housing. The remainder of the wood was bought in 1930 by Hornsey Council. The area is marked by an ancient wood bank on the western side. The wood is dominated by oak but there is also coppiced Hornbeam and other trees including wild service.
Coppets or Coldfall Wood Brook flows northwards through the wood. A culverted stream emerges from a pipe opposite Ringwood Avenue and another from a culvert opposite Beech Drive. They merge and run in a natural channel and enter a culvert near the sports grounds. Another branch of the stream flows from the area of Fortismere School, south of Creighton Avenue, and joins the other at the sports ground boundary.

Coppets Road
Coppets Wood Hospital this was the specialist infectious diseases department of the Royal Free from the 1960s until 2000.  In 1888 the Hornsey Local Board of Health built a hospital for infectious diseases at what was then called Irish Corner. It was then seen as a model institution. During the Second Wrold War was used as temporary accommodation for patients from St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1948 it joined the NHS and became part of the Northern Group.  By 1954 it had 144 beds. In 1963 it joined the Archway Group and wards were taken over by the Infectious Diseases Department of the Royal Free Hospital.  Most of the Hospital closed in 2000, when services were transferred to the Royal Free Hospital.  All that remained was the 2-bedded High Security Infectious Diseases Unit, which had gained an international reputation in the treatment and care of patients with hazardous infections, such as Lassa fever and rabies.  In 2008 these high security beds also transferred to the Royal Free Hospital in Pond Street and Coppetts Wood Hospital finally closed and is now replaced with housing
Crouch End Vampires Football Club
Hornsey Urban District Sewage Farm Filter Beds
Muswell Hill Sports Ground. This is said to be part of what was Finchley Common and also said to be a reclaimed rubbish tip

Creighton Road
Coppetts Brook rises slightly to the south of the road

St.Pancras and Islington Cemetery.
A vast complex of graves covering 88 acres of Horseshoe Farm acquired by the St Pancras Vestry in 1854; plus 94 of Finchley Common for Islington  in 1877. The boundary fence between the two has been removed but the line can be traced. It was the first municipal cemetery in London and the biggest. It had many 18th re-burials from Islington and from the building of Euston Station.  .  
Crematorium built by Albert Freeman in 1937 with Art Deco styling It replaces a demolished lodge
St Pancras Roman Catholic chapel built by Barnet and Birch in 1896 on the north side of Roman Road. Includes the Melesi Mausoleum of 1914, for an early victim of a car accident
War graves there are over 100 graves from both world wars plus a memorial with the names of others.
Monuments - the Mond Mausoleum by Thomas Arthur Darcy Braddell built in the Grecian style for Ludwig Mond and vast numbers more.

Sources
Coldfall School website
Clunn Face of London
London Encyclopedia
Field Place Names of London
Pevsner and Cherry London North
Coldfall Wood and Muswell Hill Playing Fields website
Wikipedia Coldfall Woods website
Royal Free Hospital web site
Lost Hospitals of London web site
London Borough of Islington Crematorium web site.
Pinching & Dell, Haringey's Hidden Streams

Comments

Anonymous said…
Muswell Hill Playing Fields next to Coldfall Woods was a football pitch in 1958 and next to a Council rubbish tip which was purposely set alight so there were always burning patches. We local children called it The Dump. It was like a cliff edge. Since being levelled you can see how unhealthy the grass is and stony the ground.
Anonymous said…
Love your site.
The Coldfall School served all the hundreds of post-war children from its surrounding soon to be notorious Coldfall Council Estate which is now full of bought up terraced houses as parents want their offspring to get to the famous Fortismere School and people want that postcode

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