The urban-rural fringe includes some elevated woodland on a high gravel and sand ridge along the Hertfordshire border with Greater London.

A legal record of 1422 mentions "Eggeswer", in Middlesex, which, being in Latin, may have been written deliberately using an older form of the spelling.

The Ancient parish formally defined the extent of Edgware for over 800 years, but the district is now sometimes perceived as covering a wider area.

When still unfragmented, the hedge extended from the River Colne (Middlesex's western boundary) to Barnet Gate Wood.

Edgware is part of the HA postcode area, named after nearby Harrow, of the London post town.

The Road was improved by the Edgware-Kilburn turnpike trust in 1711, and a number of the local inns functioned as a stop for coaches.

James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos built a stately home called Cannons in nearby Little Stanmore, around 1713 for £250,000 (equivalent to £47,023,810 in 2023) and was by far the wealthiest resident in the vicinity at that time.

By the 17th century Edgware had a small market selling cattle driven from other parts of England and fattened and sold locally.

The infamous scene of his worst incident, which happened on 4 February 1735, was when five gang members, including Turpin, broke into a farmhouse owned by Joseph Lawrence, called Earlsbury Farm.

Lawrence was at least 70 (so considered fairly old) and yet Turpin et al. beat him with their pistols and tortured him by setting him on a fire whilst naked, before announcing that they would amputate his legs.

Wright Ltd., manufacturing engineers, moved from Clerkenwell: employed for the UK government in World War I and after this it struck 2,000,000 Mons or 1914 Stars and Victory Medals.

Its largest production in World War II was for the metal parts of respirator filters: making 94½ million between 1937 and 1943.

Ltd., founded in 1923 and established in Edgware in 1927, at the start of the 1970s employed 50 people and manufactured laboratory and industrial electric ovens and furnaces.

[17] This place, from its situation within an easy distance of the metropolis, and the excellence of the road to it through an almost uninterrupted succession of elegant villas and agreeable scenery, has become the residence of numerous opulent and respectable families.Edgware had few residents for its size but saw some prosperous commerce: in 1870, for instance, there were six insurance agents in the village.

A Bill to establish a line from Watford to Edgware, brought before Parliament in 1896 and 1897, was opposed by residents, and it was said that the real harm of the railways was the opening up of building sites 'which are quickly covered with architectural atrocities'.

In this time the parish had begun to display a tendency to split into an opulent north and a workaday south, separated by an agricultural buffer zone.

By 1896 several large houses had been built in the Elstree area or along the Elstree–Barnet road, while the old village gained the post office, the infants' school, the station, and the Railway Hotel.

The southern part of the parish was unable to repel the tide of suburban development, but the threatened distinction was to a large extent averted by the quality of buildings between the two world wars.

Following several name changes the cinema was eventually demolished in 2001 and replaced by a large gym, apartments and a Caffè Nero.

[19] Post-war development has been restricted by the Metropolitan Green Belt, sparing urban sprawl into the Scratch Wood and Deacons Hill areas apart from the M1 motorway.

Following a review in 1994, Edgware General Hospital was controversially closed by the Conservative government of John Major in April 1997 despite public opposition.

Eventually a review and lengthy consultations took place with local campaigners and authorities, which resulted in the building of a community hospital.

The A5 Road (originally the Roman Watling Street) runs from central London by way of Edgware and onto Wroxeter in Shropshire.

Throughout the 19th century numbers rose slowly, except for the years between 1851 and 1871; the censuses of 1861 and 1871 show successive declines of 7 percent, attributed in 1871 to migration and to the absence of direct trains to London.

[28] Edgware has a strong Jewish character, and also has significant Hindu and Muslim minorities, mostly of Indian origin.

[36] Local news in Edgware is provided by the weekly printed or online boroughwide Times series.