Barnet

From the records: “The town's name, recorded as Barneto in about 1070, Barnet in 1197, and La Barnette in 1248, is derived from Old English bærnet: "the land cleared by burning".”

From the records: “Hendon is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, but the districts of Barnet, Edgware and Finchley were not referred to, possibly because these areas were included in other manors.”

From the records: “Finchley probably means "Finch's clearing" or "finches' clearing" in late Anglo-Saxon; the name was first recorded in the early 13th century.”

From the records: “In 1461 the conflict reached a milestone when the House of York supplanted its rival, the House of Lancaster, as the ruling royal house in England.”

From the records: “Wood Street in Chipping Barnet contains a number of historic buildings including cottages dating from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries that are listed buildings, and wallpaper, thought to date from the 1840s, has been discovered in Claire Cottages situated at the junction of Wood Street and Manor Road.”

From the records: “In 1588 Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to the Lord of the Manor of Barnet to hold a twice yearly horse fair.”

From the records: “By the 17th century, Edgware had a small market selling cattle driven from other parts of England and fattened and sold locally.”

From the records: “In 1740 Sir Jeremy Sambroke erected an obelisk to commemorate the battle about 200 metres (660 ft) south of the junction between the Great North Road and Kitts End Road.”

From the records: “In 1749 the botanist Peter Collinson inherited an estate which is now part of Mill Hill School, here he created a botanical garden.”

From the records: “Of these, Hendon Hall (later a hotel owned by Hand Picked Hotels but now demolished), built in 1756 at the corner of Ashley Lane, was the last remaining and perhaps the best known.”

From the records: “The medieval Great North Road, which ran through the common, was notorious for highwaymen until the early 19th century.”

From the records: “The Edgware, Highgate and London Railway (later the Great Northern Railway) reached Finchley in 1867.”

From the records: “The lexicographer James Murray started work on the first Oxford English Dictionary in 1879, whilst teaching at Mill Hill School.”

From the records: “West Hendon Broadway was served by the Metropolitan Electric Tramways from 1904, which ran from Cricklewood to Edgware on the A5 and later extended northwards to Canons Park and southwards to Acton.”

From the records: “In 1906 Barnett set up the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust Ltd, which purchased 243 acres of land from Eton College for the scheme and appointed Raymond Unwin as its architect.”

From the records: “From 9 to 16 September 1911, the first official UK airmail was flown between Hendon and Windsor as part of the celebrations of the coronation of King George V.”

From the records: “After the First World War, the first RAF "Pageant" was held at Hendon in 1920, and it soon became a regular event, known from 1925 as the Royal Air Force Display, and in 1938 as the Empire Air Day.”

From the records: “The station opened in 1923, built at the junction of the new Watford Way and a road from Brent Street to the Midland Railway station at West Hendon.”

From the records: “The Observatory was opened on 8 October 1929 by the Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson.”

From the records: “West Hendon was devastated by a Luftwaffe bomb in 1941.”

From the records: “The modern borough was created in 1965 under the London Government Act 1963, covering the combined area of the former boroughs of Finchley and Hendon and urban districts of Barnet, East Barnet and Friern Barnet.”

From the records: “Late in 1968, when two of the three runways had been removed, a Blackburn Beverley was flown in to be an exhibit at the new RAF Museum: this was the last aircraft to land at Hendon.”

From the records: “The first example of an American style out-of-town shopping centre was built at Brent Cross in the 1970s.”

From the records: “A recent attraction (2014) is a bronze statue of Spike Milligan sitting on a bench.”

From the records: “In 2015, the residents' association decided to implement a yellow and red card penalty system to discourage neighbours from using noisy lawnmowers and leafblowers.”