History of North Finchley - Tally Ho Corner and The High Road

Tally Ho Corner and The High Road

North End, the old name for the area of North Finchley and Whetstone, was first recorded in 1462. North Finchley did not develop into an urban area until after the enclosure of Finchley Common after 1816. Prior to that, in 1627, Thomas Rawson was allowed to construct a windmill and house which by 1722 had also become an inn, the Windmill. By 1754 the inn was called the Swan with Two Nicks and had ceased as a mill. The site is now a police garage.

Ballards Lane did not always connect with the High Road. For many centuries it terminated near where Victoria Park is today. In 1756 a raised way was constructed from the end of Ballards Lane to the High Road, then the Great North Road, making North Finchley a junction. This suggests that Ballards Lane had already become a link in a route from London via Hendon to the Great North Road. There was a beer house in 1814, licensed to provide gunpowder and shot, near the junction. The name Tally Ho came in the 1830s when a coaching company of the same name based a staging post of 16 horses on the corner. But it was later, with the enclosure of the common after 1816 and the creation of the Finchley Road turnpike along Ballards Lane in the late 1820s, that beginnings of a suburb were sparked.

Charles Jacques built twenty one cottages in Lodge Lane around 1824 and constructed Torrington Cottage as a residence. By the 1830s there were other houses and in 1837 a dissenting chapel, "Cottagers Chapel", which had been converted from the stables of Orchard Cottage.

By 1839 North Finchley had at least five retail outlets including a blacksmith called Elizabeth Humphreys. These were on Lodge Lane rather than on the High Road. Incidentally Lodge Lane was the home of Private John Parr the first British soldier to be killed in World War I, and the actor David Jason.

In 1851 there was a regular 'bus service running from the Torrington to Charing Cross and railway connections had been established with London, first at New Southgate. During the 1850s and 1860s Woodside Lane, Torrington Park, Friern Park, Grove Road, Finsbury Road (now Finchley Park) had all been laid out. In 1872 the Edgware, Highgate and London Railway opened Torrington Park Station which was renamed Woodside Park in 1882. It was during the construction of a railway through Finchley from 1864 that a Reverend Henry Stephens opened a mission for the navvies working on the line. A church had been constructed by 1869 which was formally opened in 1870 as Christ Church. It became a new parish in 1872. By 1874 it was said that there were 350 dwellings within this ecclesiastical parish.

In 1905 the Metropolitan Electric Tramways (the M.E.T.) opened a tramline between Highgate and Whetstone and this was crossed by another from New Southgate to Golders Green from 1909. To facilitate this a tramway depot was opened in Woodberry Grove. Trams combined with motorbus services promoted the development of the retail district we see today. During the 1930s the old Ballards Lane, which terminated where the Embassy Lounge (formerly called the Purple Rain Bar, before that the Cherry Tree and previously the Coach Stop) is today, was replaced by a new road called Kingsway. In 1937 the new plot created by this diversion became the location for the Gaumont Cinema. This was demolished in 1987 to be replaced with the recently opened Arts Depot.