The current issue of the Hornsey Historical Society's Bulletin has a really good review of a local history book about New Southgate. It should be of interest to all Bowes and Bounds residents who have an interest in the origins of this part of north London and why it is like it is. The book is written by Jackie Foster, who grew up in the area.  The review is by Ken Gay, who is a highly regarded local historian and writer – see copy below.

A History of New Southgate

by Jackie Foster, Paperback 103pp, Privately printed, No IBSN.

If you journey north up Bounds Green Road and cross the busy A406 you enter the area which is the prime subject of this book. The author was born here in 1943 at 81 High Road and a personal flavour, regret at the passing of a tight little community, pervades the work. The text was written as a degree thesis for Middlesex Polytechnic (now University) in 1963. After a 27 year delay it was issued in 2010 in an attractive, large paperback format laid out by her designer son, Joel Foster. Its many illustrations range from maps to fine colour views of neighbouring lost period houses and old photographs. A Photo Album section at the end accommodates more historic views.

Helped by David Pam, Graham Dalling and other local historians, archivists and curators, the author's research in the 1980s explored landscape developments in the surrounding area recording the emergence of estates such as Cullands Grove, Michenden, Arnos Grove, Beaver Hall and Bowes Manor which 'yielded a peaceful undulating countryside... around the sleepy hamlets of the Edmonton Hundred.'

The mid-19th century arrival of the residential neighbourhood of New Southgate coincided with opening of the 1851 Middlesex Lunatic Asylum and the village name of Colney Hatch became a word of scorn ( I remember this as a schoolboy). So it became New Southgate with the Great Northern railway station built at the same time next to the asylum renamed appropriately. Owner-occupier houses arrived with lower grade ones and a settlement of under a thousand established. Jerome K. Jerome was among the inhabitants. A Board School arrived in Garfield Road in 1883, shopping parades stretched down the High Road and from 1858 a gas company occupied land next to the railway line with houses provided for its workers and gas holders built are still a feature of the landscape near the A406 today.

In 1911 a cinema was built (replaced by a new one in 1930) and with the break up of surrounding big estates land was purchased to create Arnos, Grovelands and other public parks. In 1931 the building of the North Circular Road altered the landscape as did the extension of the Piccadilly line to Cockfosters with Arnos Grove station opened in 1932. Middle class residents moved out of their Victorian properties into inter-war model estates to the north. These old houses deteriorated as the new occupants could not afford to maintain them properly.

Jackie Foster's most personal chapter is headed 'The Post Second World War Demise' in which she describes how local authority planning decisions led to the rebuilding of the area without adequate consultation with residents whereas refurbishment of the old houses should have been possible. Demolition is illustrated by a poignant 1950s photograph showing 81 High Road, the house where the author was born 'revealing the very bedroom that held my earliest memory'. The High Road was closed and the shopping parades went and a new street pattern laid out isolating residents in enclaves. Empty spaces emerged with a Superstore on the west with a featureless spreading car park.

In her final 'Conclusion' section the author writes: 'In my view, villages and towns which exhibit their history through architecture accreted over a period of time, knit together in a way no newly built town does or can. A community should embody the environment created by its former inhabitants, with each generation owing to those that follow to nurture what has gone before'. It is with these thoughts in mind that I consider the demolition of over half of the old neighbourhood of New Southgate a gross error of judgement in as much as a very significant portion of its early history has been destroyed, along with an undeniably successful community.'

Ken Gay

Details of how to order this and other local history publications are on the website of the Friern Barnet & District Local History Society. See their website and click on Publications: http://www.zyworld.com/friernbarnet/home.htm