Place Name
This refers to an actual gate that was on the Barnet Road at the old county boundary between Hertfordshire and Middlesex since before the first millennium. It was first recorded sometime around AD975 as Grendeles gatan in an Anglo Saxon charter describing the bounds of the northern part of Hendon, then later as Greensgate in 1574 and exactly 200 years later as Grinsgate. David Mills in A Dictionary of London Place Names notes: “Grendel’s gate [is] an interesting reference to the man-eating monster slain by the hero in the Old English epic poem Beowulf.” The Barnet Council website adds some context: “The story of Beowulf, who kills the monster Grendel, takes place in Denmark, so the Saxons were not suggesting that this was where Grendel lived. Rather, it implies that the place was of modest importance as a small community on the boundary between the people of Hertfordshire and the people of the county of Middlesex.” A great wood once covered Middlesex and Hertfordshire, and until the late 11thCentury it remained as such. At some stage areas of this woodland were cleared by burning, hence the name which meant burnt place. The first part of the name is a reference to the settlement of Barnet that was mentioned sometime after the Domesday Book (1086) as Barneto, it took its contemporary spelling by 1197 before changing again to la Bernet in 1235 and La Barnette in 1248.
