It is a mainly late-19th-century suburban large neighbourhood centred 5 miles (8 km) northwest of Charing Cross bordered by the arterial road Hendon Way in the west and south-west, Dunstan Road in the north, West Heath and Golders Hill Park which form an arm of Hampstead Heath to the east and the borough boundary as to the short south-east border.

Adjoining Hampstead Heath features, less than a mile from the centre of Child's Hill, the summit of London's third-highest escarpment.

[dubious – discuss] For 2018-2022 it sends to Barnet Council two Conservatives, Shimon Ryde and Peter Zinkin, and one Labour Party councillor, Anne Clarke.

It reaches over 259 feet (79 m) above mean sea level in the east at the top of residential Platts Lane where Hampstead Heath starts.

In 1808 this became one of a line of telegraph stations stretching from the Admiralty to Great Yarmouth, erected as part of Britain's national defences.

In the early 1850s a Colonel Evans speculatively built "The Mead", where brickworks had been,[n 1] renamed Granville Road, the street name today.

Orchard Mead House, on the Finchley Road, later became Quarters/homes for armed/other emergency Services families for a short time before moving into the private sector.

Alexei Sayle's short story Barcelona Plates goes into some detail as its protagonist stays there for a while, noting, amongst many other features, the idiosyncratic design of the building, an amalgamation of suburban houses.