Bounds Green Brook - Colney Hatch

Bounds Green Brook
Bounds Green Brook flows eastwards. The stream had begun as Strawberry Vale Brook. It is met by Pages Lane Brook from the south, and by another stream flowing north from the golf course
TQ 28074 91264

Suburban area adjacent to the North Circular Road with the old mental hospital converted to housing

Post to the west Coppetts Wood
Post to the south Muswell Hill
Post to the east Bounds Green

Bobby Moore Way
Powerleague Barnet – basically football

Cromwell Road
Alexandra Arms. Closed and now flats.
Pillar box by A. Handyside & Co. Ltd. Derby & London.  At Britannia Foundry Later E VII R cypher made 1901 – 1904. Now gone.
Friern Barnet Sewage Works. Closed in 1963

Friern Bridge Retail Park
Warehouse retail units and Tesco

Princess Park Manor
The Asylum was on the area of Hollick Wood. 
Friern Hospital – this square covers only the southern half.
Friern Hospital This mental hospital operated between 1851 and 1993 and was built to ease pressure on the first Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell. It was intended that theMiddlesex County Pauper Lunatic Asylum - Colney Hatch Asylum would have a catchment from east London.  The foundation stone was laid by the Prince Consort in 1849 and at £240 per bed it was the most expensive asylum ever built.  S W Daukes won the competition with a design in the style of an Italian monastery.  and George Myers won the contract to build it. The estate had its own water supply and its own farm of 75 acres, on patients which were employed.  It also had its own cemetery, chapel and railway sidings. In 1899 control of the Asylum passed from the Middlesex Justices of the Peace to the London County Council and Lowen's Farm and Hollick Wood had been added to the site. In 1903 a temporary wooden block built in 1896 burned down.  Fifty one people died in what would be called the worst disaster in English asylum history. By 1929 the grounds had been extended to 165 acres, when 7 acres of land were cut off by the new North Circular Road and assigned to the LCC as a playground. In 1930 the Asylum was renamed the Colney Hatch Mental Hospital, when the Mental Health Act of that year expunged the term 'asylum' from official use. In it was renamed Friern Mental Hospital, to remove old associations.   During the Second Wrold War twelve wards were given up to the Emergency Medical Service for civilian war casualties.  In 1941 five villas were destroyed by bombs. In 1948 the Hospital became part of the NHS. In 1989 it was decided that the Hospital should close as part of the 'Care in the Community' policy instigated by the government. Despite great public protest in 1993 the building and the land surrounding it was sold to a property developer and The Hospital has become 'Princess Park Manor' - a luxury gated community
Friern Village – built on the hospital farmland and is now, a private housing development of over 730 dwellings.
Hospital gas works, next to the railway with its own siding from the line.

George Crescent
Estate built by Friern Barnet UDC in 1952.  Low terraces spaciously laid out – including portholes as a fashionable motif. Plenty of trees and open grass areas.

Muswell Hill Golf Course
Brook runs northwards across the course and once formed the boundary of the sewage works which lay in the northern section.
The course covers all that remains of the fields Tottenham   Wood   Farm., Thomas Rhodes was the last occupant. Opened in 1894 it claims to have been the first club in north London.

Pinkham Way
Length of the North Circular called after Sir Charles Pinkham of Middlesex County Council, builder and developer.
Friern Bridge carries a service road to the Friern Retail Park
Roundabout on the junction with Colney Hatch Lane replaced by a flyover in 1972
Bounds Green Brook runs in a culvert alongside the road, but has been landscaped in the area of the Friern Retail Park.   Before the North Circular was built here in the 1930s the brook was south west of the current road line and was the boundary of both the parish and Bounds Green Farm. It then went under the railway line in a tunnel but the North Circular has been upgraded again since and the brook runs in a culvert under it.
The railway line runs over it and the road built through the railway embankment. Undertaken by Macalpines in 1930.

Sydney Road
Bus Garage.  Opened in 1925. Had an access ramp from Hampden Road.
Hollickwood Primary School

Sources

GLIAS Newsletter
Power League Barnet web site
Friern Bridge Retail Park web site
London Borough of Barnet web site
Lost Hospital of London web site
History of Middlesex web site
London Encyclopaedia
Stevenson, Middlex
Walford Village London
Pevsner and Cherry London North
London Railway Record
Glazier London Transport Garages
Hollickwood School web site
Muswell Hill Golf Club web site

Comments

Steve Bird said…
The 1982 film "Britannia Hospital" was filmed at Friern Hospital.

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