IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Totteridge Common, LONDON, N20 8LS

This is the other side of Ellern Mede farm from the long pond.

Just off the A5109.

Along the broad verge of the A5109.

View west along the A5109 to Edgware. The same pond in summer is shown in Image

Along the broad verge of the A5109.

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.

The lake beside Totteridge Common (A5109) is popular with anglers throughout the year despite the, sometimes heavy, traffic passing close behind them.

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." The ponds on Totteridge Common were probably originally dug for gravel extraction. Public footpaths link the Common to the Folly Brook valley to the south and to the Dollis Brook valley to the north. Long Pond is now managed chiefly for angling.

Viewed from a bench on the common, rather oddly placed so that a view of the pond is obscured by reeds, which only grow at this end.