All of these properties were on Colindeep Lane which had in the medieval period been an alternative route out of London (via Hampstead, Golders Green and Hendon) to the Edgware Road.

Colindale Hospital was opened in 1898 as an asylum for the long-term sick of central London, and in 1907 The Government Lymph Establishment for making vaccines was built.

Hendon Tram Depot (site now occupied by Merit House, opposite Oriental City) was in 1910 the scene of the first trials in Britain of a trolleybus.

Land behind the depot was used from 1959 to 1962 by the George Cohen 600 Group for scrapping the vast majority of London's fleet of 1891 trolleybuses.

During the mid 1950s, Colindale was nicknamed "The Red Belt" because of the large number of leading communists who had lived there, including Billy Strachan, Harry Pollitt, Reg Birch, and Peter Kerrigan.

Frigidaire started in a wooden shack in Aerodrome Road, employing 11 people in 1923, and selling the first automatic household fridges in England.

However, by 1923, when the tube railway reached Colindale, land prices had increased and factory expansion was not so easy, so some industries looked elsewhere for premises.

[citation needed] After the tube station opened, development as a London suburb was rapid, and by 1939 much of the western side was semi-detached housing.

A V-1 flying bomb hit Colindale Hospital on 1 July 1944, killing four members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.

Colindale houses many of North London's largest institutions, including the Royal Air Force Museum, Public Health England's Centre for Infections, the Colindale Campus of Barnet and Southgate College (opened August 2016) and the Peel Centre (better known as Hendon Police College).

As a result, Barnet Council designated a 'Colindale Area Action Plan' (AAP) and carried out public consultation events.

[14][15] The 2011 census showed that Colindale was the most ethnically diverse area of Barnet, with 59.9% of the population belonging to a minority background.

[20][21] Colindale is also home to Grahame Park, the largest post-war housing estate in Barnet and also the most deprived part of the borough.

[22] A small brook, a tributary of the River Brent called the Silk Stream, runs north to South.