Totteridge Common

Image: © Marathon Taken: 5 Oct 2016

In Nairn's London (1966) Ian Nairn says of Totteridge: "More of a phenomenon than a village. It is a ridge-back, south-west of Barnet, and the views are green in both directions. North Finchley should show up on the southern skyline but doesn't, and the miracle of the green Belt has worked again. The country here is far better than the bedraggled fields further out, sprinkled with pylons and motorways. A strip of green winds along the ridge: wavy sides, big trees, sometimes five yards wide and sometimes fifty. There is a long pond. Behind are the houses of a hundred drawing-room comedies: 1910-ish, big, comfortable and in fact very nice indeed. And this dream goes on for a whole mile. The curtain is always rising on the maid setting the table for tea. Here there is a contract with the landscape and it becomes a marvellous place, unlike anywhere else near London. Signposts for crows would read Barnet 1, Edgware 2." Public footpaths link the Common to the Folly Brook valley to the south and to the Dollis Brook valley to the north.

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