Place name
Perhaps surprisingly this isn’t some modern paean to the people but refers to Edward Harvist, an early 17thCentury citizen and brewer of London. When he died in 1610 Harvist “one of His Majesties Gunners,” bequeathed to the Brewers’ Company of London “two closes or parcells of meadows called London Fields” in trust for the highway from Tyburn to Edgware (today’s Edgware Road). The names Harvist Road (since disappeared) and Citizen Road were approved in 1863. Harvist had bought the land sometime around 1601 from a Roger Bellow, another London brewer. By 1806 the estate covered 21 3/4 acres, but by 1849 the Brewers’ Company held just 18 acres, having sold a large portion to the Great Northern Railway for its main line. In the meanwhile the Brewers faced litigation, in 1811, for failing to follow the terms of the will. The estate and its income was later transferred to the Commissioners of the Metropolitan Turnpike Roads North of the Thames under the Metropolitan Roads (Harvist Estate) Act, 1855, to enable building leases to be granted on the east side of Hornsey Road, between Ashburton Grove and Isledon Road, it was mainly built over in the 1860s. The property was transferred again to the Edward Harvist Trust, that today awards small grants to organisations in the boroughs of Camden, Brent, Barnet, Harrow and Westminster, to assist with one-off projects that will benefit their residents
