Clitterhouse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clitterhouse is an area in the district of London Borough of Barnet between Cricklewood and Brent Cross. (grid reference TQ237868 or street map showing the name. On the Ordnance Survey map of 1873-1874: offset or centred.)
[edit] History
Clitterhouse possibly comes from the word “clite” or clay, and was originally a woodland sub-manor held by John de Langton in 1321. From 1439 it was in the possession of St Bartholomew's Hospital, and continued to be in their possession up to its sale in 1921. By the 1770s it was no longer a manor, but until the late 18th century the farmhouse was a half timber building not untypical of the late medieval and Tudor period. Renters was another manor north of the river Brent and was owned by Geoffrey de Renter and Joan in 1309. Like Clitterhouse the estate passed into the control of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in the medieval period. Unlike Clitterhouse Renters passed into private hands in the 16th century. In the 1550s charcoal was made in the estates woods. Manorial rights had ceased by the 1790s.
From the 1550s local farming switched from wood to hay to supply London’s increasing horse population until in the 1860s the construction of the Midland Railway cut the Clitterhouse estate in two north to south. The land west of the line, Brent railway sidings. From 1876 - 1915 the Brent Gas Works supplied gas to stations from Mill Hill to St Pancras, including the Midland Hotel and the railway workers cottages called Brent Terrace (built around 1897). Clitterhouse became a dairy farm and was rebuilt around this time. Land was sold for a sewage works for Childs Hill (1886 - 1935), and Hendon fever hospital (1890-1929). The southern part of the farm became the Beatty School of Flying and was Handley Page Aerodrome and factory (in Claremont Road) 1917. Here experimental warplanes were tested and commercial flights went to the continent in the 1920s. In 1929 the Aerodrome was forced to closed and it became Laing’s “Golders Green Estate”, the childhood home of Jean Simmons the actress. Shortly after 1926 Hampstead FC (Hendon F.C. from 1946) rented some of the land from Hendon UD finishing Clitterhouse as a farm and the rest of the land became a public open space.
From 1900 much of Renters farm was developed into private housing by the Neeld family (see Hendon Central). Another smaller farm, Brent Farm, (known from the 1750s) was a Mushroom Farm in 1902, of which two of the cottages still stand. Hendon Cottage Hospital opened in 1913 and occupied a corner site on Park Road. Built as a memorial to Edward VII it was extended in 1925 and 1933 and closed in 1987, (demolished 1992). An underground station, Brent, opened in 1923. Until 1965 and the establishment of the London Borough of Brent the area was commonly known as Brent. The construction of the Hendon Way and the North Circular Road from the mid 1920s (opening in 1927) was developed further with a flyover by 1965, and this, with the shopping centre (1976) replacing Hendon Greyhound Stadium (1935 - 1970) the area became known as Brent Cross and the station changed its name to the same. There were a number of factories. Staples Corner took its name from a mattress factory built in 1926 by the Heal family. Other industries included Johnson’s Photographic Works (1916 – 1973). Junction 1 of the M1 opened in 1977.
