Place Name
Directional, this 4.5 mile long road leads from West Hampstead to Finchley. The road is relatively new. Thought to be named after the birds that nested in the grove or wood that was once here. It was first recorded sometime around 1208 as Finchelee and the more exotic Fincheleya. By 1235 it was recorded as Finchesleg and 1258 as Fincheleye. It comes from two Old English words fine and lēah. The road was laid out by the St John’s Wood estate owner, Walpole Eyre, but not without considerable difficulty. His proposals met with strong opposition from local landowners, Thomas Maryon Wilson and on his death by his son Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson. The Maryon Wilsons’ objections were on the grounds that they wished to preserve the privacy and seclusion of their Hampstead estate, and they saw that the proposed new road was simply a building estate developer’s road thinly disguised as a public turnpike, and would lead to the intrusion of unwanted suburban housing. But six years after Wilson senior mounted his first objection, the Finchley Road Act was passed in 1826 and the road was opened in the 1830s. This was double bad news for Wilson junior who, having taken up his father’s fight on principle, found that he could not develop his Hampstead estate, unlike those of the estates he inherited in Charlton and Woolwich.
