Finchley Common was an area of land in Middlesex, and until 1816 the boundary between the parishes of Finchley, Friern Barnet and Hornsey.
Its use as a common is quite late. Rights to the common were claimed by the inhabitants of Finchley at the beginning of the 15th century, and by the inhabitants of Friern Barnet, and Hornsey by the 16th century. Sale of timber in the 16th century by the Bishop of London, who had manorial rights to the land, led to the clearance of the woods, and after this time legal disputes between the commoners and the bishop were made reference to a "common called Finchley Wood". The earliest known use of the name Finchley Common appeared in reference to refugees escaping from plague London encamped on the common in 1603. Finchley Common occurs in Nicholas Culpeper's Herbal (1652) whereas John Gerard in his Herbal (1596) refers to Finchley Wood (2).
As a place name Finchley Common continued long after the enclosure of 1816. Places, which were said to be Finchley Common, represented much of Finchley’s eastern flank. These included the Torrington public house (in what we would now call North Finchley), and also the White Lion in East Finchley. The last known active use of Finchley Common as a place name is an isolated property advert in The Times in 1897. There are sections of open ground in the London Borough of Haringey and the London Borough of Barnet which are still closely associated with Finchley Common (though no one uses the name), mostly woodland: Coppetts Wood, Coldfall Wood, and the Glebelands.
Coordinates: 51°35′56″N 0°11′13″W / 51.599°N 0.187°W / 51.599; -0.187
Finchley (/ˈfɪntʃli/) is an area of north London, England, in the London Borough of Barnet. Finchley is on high ground, 11 km (6.8 mi) north of Charing Cross. It formed an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex, becoming a municipal borough in 1933, and has been part of Greater London since 1965.
It is predominantly a residential suburb, with three town centres: North Finchley, East Finchley and Finchley Church End (Finchley Central).
Finchley probably means "Finch's clearing" or "finches' clearing" in late Anglo-Saxon; the name was first recorded in the early 13th century. Finchley is not recorded in Domesday Book, but by the 11th century its lands were already held by the Bishop of London. In early medieval period the area was sparsely populated woodland.
Proper farming began in the 12th and 13th centuries and by the 15th and 16th centuries the woods on the eastern side of the parish had been cleared to form Finchley Common. The medieval Great North Road, which ran through the common, was notorious for highwaymen until the early 19th century.
Finchley was a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elected one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election; its best-known MP was Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Although boundary changes meant that she never again attained her large majority of 1959, and was re-elected by a 10-point margin in 1974, she was nonetheless returned by comfortable (9,000) majorities at General Elections throughout her premiership.
The seat was abolished in 1997 and split between the Finchley and Golders Green and Chipping Barnet constituencies.
1918-1945: The Urban Districts of Finchley and Friern Barnet.
1945-1950: The Municipal Borough of Finchley, part of the Municipal Borough of Hornsey, and part of the Urban District of Friern Barnet.
1950-1974: The Municipal Borough of Finchley, and the Urban District of Friern Barnet.
1974-1997: The London Borough of Barnet wards of East Finchley, Finchley, Friern Barnet, St Paul's, and Woodhouse.