Looking towards Temple Fortune (1905)
Looking towards Temple Fortune (1905)

Taken north of the Finchley Road/Hoop Lane junction, a year later this scene was filled with housing due to the opening of Golders Green station just to the south

Credit: User unknown/public domain
This image shows the arrival of street lamps on the hill leading up to Temple Fortune from Golders Green.

By 1754 there were about 16 houses with small gardens at Golders Green, most of them on small inclosures from the waste and by 1751 there were two inns at Golders Green: the Hoop, commemorated later by the name Hoop Lane, and the White Swan. The White Swan had tea gardens for summer visitors to Golders Green in 1882.

In the early 19th century, the manorial waste at Golders Green was enclosed for villas. In 1814 Golders Green contained ’many ornamental villas and cottages, surrounded with plantations’, and in 1828 detached houses spread on both sides of the road as far as Brent Bridge. The green was finally enclosed in 1873-4.

At Golders Green, a straggling hamlet in 1901, new houses were built at the corner of Wentworth Road and Hoop Lane in 1905. Two years later the arrival of the Underground started a building boom in houses whose rustic appearance was to set a trend for suburban exteriors over the next three decades. Growth continued until after the First World War: the new Golders Green ward, covering an area with a population of 4,465 in 1911, had 7,518 people by 1921 and 17,837 by 1931.

In 1907, work started on the Ecclesiastical Commissioners’ land south of Golders Green station, and Rodborough and Hodford Roads were laid out, whereupon housing spread south towards Childs Hill. Prominent among those responsible was Sir Edwin Evans, who worked on the Woodstock estate and elsewhere in conjunction with local firms, like those of Ernest Owers and Farrow and Howkins.

At Golders Green cross-roads, near the Underground station, rows of shops were under construction in 1911-12 on a site which in 1904 had been deserted; churches, chapels, a theatre, a cinema, and a large shopping centre followed. The fire brigade opened a sub-stations at Golders Green in 1900.

Many of the new houses at Golders Green were bought by middle-class Jews, who opened their first synagogue in 1922 and became the forerunners of a large Jewish population.


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