Highwood Hill marks the junction of two ridges, one stretching east to Totteridge and the other south-east through Holcombe Hill to Mill Hill and Bittacy Hill.

“It is no uncommon thing to see 100 loads of hay go up to London on market day and each of the teams bring back a load of dung for dressing the land”, writes John Middleton in his "View of the Agriculture of Middlesex" (1798).

Hay farming, he says, was mixed with sheep farming; pig farming too “purchased fat by the hog­butchers of London”.

Some got rich through hay farming and some built many large mansions along Totteridge Lane, Highwood Hill and The Ridgeway. The landlords of these properties were allowed to enclose fields all over the area and the common lands, where the poor could graze their pigs, cows and geese, became much smaller and fewer, impoverishing those dependent on such land.

Lavish parks were laid out around their mansions, and the residents dammed streams to form ornamental waters and planted trees on the common
pastures - evidence of these trees and pools can be seen today.

Totteridge’s traditional managed hay meadows were created by the rich at great cost to the evicted tenants. By 1815 the small yeoman farmer had almost disappeared.