Whetstone

 

Athenaeum Road.

St Mary Magdalene R.C., 1958 by Wilfred C. Mangan. Dull red brick, with angular window lights, tower; steeply pitched steel-framed roof.

Green Road

De Bohun Primary School.  Compact well designed Middlesex County Council

De Bohun Library and Clinic.  Middlesex County Council 1939 – because Southgate had not adopted the Libraries Act.

A few nice early mid-c19 cottages

Myddleton Park

Oakleigh Road North

368 Whetstone Books

North Middlesex Golf Course. 

Club house is the former Manor House Farm.  Grand stuccoed house. With a pediment to its taller central bay, earlier c19, but much altered.

Sherwood Street

A few nice early mid-c19 cottages

Swan Lane

Open space a stream rises here in wet wesathenr

Sweets Way

Pillar box by A. Handyside & Co. Ltd. Derby & London.  Made at the Britannia Foundry. It has a later EVIIR cypher. Small 15" dia. 1901 - 1904

Totteridge Lane

Totteridge and Whetstone Station.  Opened 1st April 1872. Between High Barnet and Woodside Park on the Northern Line It was opened for main-line trains of the Great Northern Railway on and at first called ‘Totteridge’. It is on the northern side of Totteridge Lane, east of  – which is the traditional boundary between  and  - hence the station is actually in Whetstone. In 1890 the waiting room was built.  In 1940 it became part of the Northern Line and was first used by their trains on 14th April.

Whetstone High Road. Great North Road

This was according to plans of Mr Telford and  The effects of these massive improvements may be seen in the dip which follows Whetstone and

Indifferent interwar shopping parades are punctuated by a tall office block at each end

1197/7 Garage, Bill Thompson private buses, part of premises of Standard Tyre Co., 1977, Cardinal and Majestic Buses

Northway house

Ever Ready house

Barnet House. Borough offices, 1966 by R. Seifert & Partners, twelve and three storeys on a T-plan, with mosaic cladding and tapered stilts in Seifert's 1960s manner.

Turnpike gate at Whetstone at the Griffin Inn.  The gate dated from the days when a determined effort was made to improve this section of the northern road.  Pepys, visiting Barnet Wells in 1660, speaks of there being only one path and that digged up' by the excessive loads carried by the stage waggons.  Plans were foiled by the Whetstone rustics who attacked the Surveyor and his road workers.  New measures were called for and by 1810 the Whetstone and Highgate Turnpike Trust had converted it into the best highway in the kingdom.  Once established it operated until 1863.  It was a convenient point to observe traffic.  In 1830, 90 stage coaches passed through every 24 hours.  This figure 30 would be augmented by the post-chaises, local traffic and waggons.

Beneath the tall sign of the Griffin inn there still stands the worn granite stone block said to be the original whet-stone, that used for the sharpening of swords before the battle of Barnet.  The truth of the story has been vigorously contested but the legend remains

Hand and Tower, coaching inn

Black Bull, coaching inn

Black Swan, coaching inn

Bull and Butcher, coaching inn

Christ Church 1867-9 by Norton. Coursed ragstone, with a big rose window above a narthex; gabled aisles added 1874 1880 end 1891. A spire was intended. Impressive Victorian interior, with red brick walls and tall stone clustered piers and foliated capitals, made rich and dark by much stained glass. The windows are better collectively than individually.  Aisle 1868 by W.H. Constable, rather harsh.  A fine rose window of c.1870, with abstract patterns by Bell & Co. chapel by A. L. Moore, c.1891-2. Six-light window with Te Deum, c. 1911 by James Powell. Brass gas brackets in the chancel. War memorial on wall.

North Finchley United Reformed Church. 1864-5, Decorated Gothic, with tower and spire. Extensions, 1894. Stained glass in transepts brought from New College, Swiss Cottage.

1266-1270, an irregular two- storey group with tiled roofs of differing heights. Ground floors altered for shops.

1264 Behind the brick front range of a late medieval timber-framed rear wing, a rare survival in this area. Close studded walls with arched braces, and a crown-post roof, smoke-blackened at the ends, suggest that at least part of the range was an open hall.

Bank Buildings of c. 1900, ending with a green comer dome.

1331-1337, a brick group, mostly early c19 and c20 in Georgian style

1339, early c18, two bays, red brick, with two-bay extension

St John 1832. The first additional church to be built in the old Parish of Finchley. Small and plain, with the polygonal frets typical of the date. White painted turret, Gothic, with battlements and an ogee dome. Square-headed windows. In 1879 Brooks supplied c13 tracery to the windows, provided a new roof and seating and built a chancel and vestry.  Stained glass window by William Morris & Co., crucifixion, with leafy background.

Whetstone

In 1900 Whetstone was a straggling village with a broad High Street.  Now it is largely urbanised, any rurality that the place possessed having been dissipated by the building of new high office blocks, such as that opposite the Griffin.  On the borders of the old parishes of Friern Barnet and Finchley, it developed along the Great North Road, probably soon after this stretch was made in the c14. But apart from St John's Church and a group of old buildings nearly all the High Road is now of the c20, and of little note.

Early centre North End, on the west side of the present Whetstone;

Baxendale was the head of Pickfords, built a house and had a horse hospital

Club House site of old manor house, Queen Elizabeth was there

Suburb expanded from 1851 when Great Northern Railway opened station, New Southgate.