Finchley Common

Early encroachments included: Fallows Corner, Brownswell, Woodhouse, Woodside, Cuckhold's Haven, and Cold Harbour.

With expanding importance of the Great North Road (which ran across the Common) a number of inns were established from the end of the 17th century including: The White Lion, The Bald Faced Stag, the Horse Shoe, The Green Man and The Swan.

"Hogs are kept in considerable numbers, but chiefly by the malt-distillers, for whom they are purchased lean, at a large market, held on Finchley Common, and to which they are brought from Shropshire, and other distant counties: great numbers of fatted hogs are also bought for the hog-butcheries about London; and the bacon cured here is but little inferior to that brought from Wilts and Yorkshire.

By the 1840s the market had decreased in importance and was only held on Mondays, and according to Kelly's Directory of 1845 was frequented by butchers from the West End of London.

In May 1743 about a hundred soldiers of the 42nd Highland Regiment (The Black Watch) mutinied after attending a review on the common as they understood that they were soon to be dispatched to perilous duties in the British Caribbean colonies.

Its reputation was such that Sir Gilbert Elliott, Earl of Minto, stated in a letter to his wife that he would not "trust my throat on Finchley Common in the dark", and victims included great men such as Edmund Burke in 1774.

Two known as Everett and Williams went as far as drawing up a legally witnessed contract to the effect that they would split their ill-gotten gains after a year's work in 1725.

The last recognisable highwaymen are George Hurt and Enoch Roberts, who robbed Charles Locke in 1807 which is also the first case in which a member of the patrol (Wiliam Pickering) is mentioned.

[e] Sir John Sinclair, President of the Board of Agriculture during the Napoleonic Wars, made a call for the enclosure of Finchley Common in 1803.

"Let us not be satisfied with the liberation of Egypt, or the subjugation of Malta, but let us subdue Finchley Common; let us conquer Hounslow Heath, let us compel Epping Forest to submit to the yoke of improvement."

The common was placed in the Finchley parish, although Friern Barnet (but not Hornsey) freeholders and copyholders were granted allotments.

[h] The enclosed common with its excellent road connection to London was attractive to agencies that required large expanses of land.

Later landowners were advertising in The Times land which was "well adapted for a cemetery of public building, situated near the high north road".

Enclosure also had an immediate effect upon agriculture, most of the former common lands being in a "high state of cultivation" by 1817, but without careful husbandry, however, the soil became exhausted by the 1830s.