Holden Road is a road which bends around North Finchley and Woodside Park.
During the nineteenth century, Woodside Farm and its estate was left to Henry Holden, after whom Holden Road is named.
The estate was developed into housing as the Woodside Park Estate. Holden built an assembly room, Woodside Hall, in 1885. In 1950 it was converted to a synagogue. St Barnabas church was established as a tin chapel in 1885 and as a proper church in 1912.
Torrington Park, part of Henry Holden’s Friern Park estate lying east of the Great North Road, was already being built up by 1872, when his land on the western boundary of the parish was misleadingly advertised as ’Torrington Park’, a freehold building estate. Most of the same estate was offered again in 1900 after Holden’s death, by which time most of his land east of Holden Road had been built up. ’Artistic villas’ were under construction in Westbury Road to the south in 1910 and land in Woodside Avenue was offered for good-class housing in 1914. Most of the area was built up by 1920.
Spike Milligan, the comedian, lived in Holden Road.
