Place Name
First mentioned sometime around 1150 as Taderege and has had various spellings down the subsequent years, featuring in the records as Taterige in 1230, Tatterigg in 1251 and Tatteridge alias Totteridge in 1608. It is thought to come from the name of a man named Tāta who owned the hrycg (the Old English word for a narrow hill or ridge) referring to the high ground near here. But it has also been suggested that the tot meant either a height or a place of worship. The Totteridge Residents’ Association writes: “The ‘ridge’ part is undisputed: Totteridge sits on a crest that rises well above 400 feet. The ridge is the high ground between the valleys of the Dollis Brook and Folly Brook.”
