It adjoins green spaces Queen's Wood to the west and Alexandra Park to the north, and lies in the valley of the now-culverted River Moselle.

Originally a village, it grew up along Hornsey High Street- at the eastern end of which is the churchyard and tower of the former St Mary's parish church, which was first mentioned in 1291.

[full citation needed] North of Hornsey High Street, and immediately to its south, some of the area is public sector housing, surrounded by the late-Victorian terraces developed by builders such as John Farrer.

[2] Between the western end of the High Street and the bottom of Muswell Hill, the character of the area changes; most being part of the Warner Estate built up with large late-Victorian houses.

Two parcels of land at the eastern and southern ends were purchased in 1891 by the Borough of Hornsey at the instigation of Henry Reader Williams and opened in 1896 as the Middle Lane Pleasure Grounds.

Although the eastern boundary of the parish was Green Lanes, it is alleged by some that these are now restricted by Alexandra Park and the Great Northern Railway respectively.

A recent version of those boundaries was provided by local opinion as expressed in a small residents' survey undertaken as part of the application for the Crouch End Neighbourhood Forum.

The village grew dramatically after about 1860 and eventually merged with the separate settlement at Crouch End (first mentioned in 1465),[11] to form an urban area in the middle of the parish.

Its parish ranked sixth in size, of more than forty in Ossulstone, the largest hundred in Middlesex and was a scattered semi-rural community of 2,716 people in 1801.

[12] By 1901 the population had risen about eightfold in forty years, reaching 87,626, by which time new localities/districts, mainly Crouch End and Muswell Hill, were popularly becoming considered distinct from Hornsey.

[13] In the 1840s the parish had 5,937 residents, slightly reduced by the loss of Finsbury Park but comprised 2,362 acres (9.56 km2) taking in besides its own village, the established hamlets of Muswell Hill, Crouch End, Stroud Green, and part of Highgate.

[14] In the later eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, Hornsey became an increasingly popular area for wealthy merchants wanting a comfortable home close to London.

[15] Development of a generally much more middle-class nature continued throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras with the final gaps being filled during interwar period.

The tower of the original parish church still stands in its ancient graveyard in Hornsey High Street, at the centre of the old village.

Other notable places are the former Hornsey Town Hall in Crouch End, and Highpoint and Cromwell House in Highgate.

[16] A small group of residents wished Haringey Council to purchase the site and install arts and crafts studios, with a gallery, primarily for local artists.

For 1978 to 2002 in the borough, having in its initial 13 years no wards mentioning Hornsey, three wards bearing the name existed and so popularised it among bordering, competing areas with newer names, strongly reflecting their historic, shared identity: In the 1840's a section of a major new railway line from London to the north, the Great Northern Railway (Great Britain), was constructed right through Hornsey near to the centre of the village, and a station - the first out of London on the line - was built to serve it on Tottenham Lane, opened on 8th August 1850.

This tradition contines: two major maintenance depots for the new electric trains running from Finsbury Park to Brighton have been constructed beside the main line.

Local commuter and regional services are provided from Hornsey railway station by Great Northern into Central London ending in Moorgate and towards Hertfordshire.

In Jonathan Coe's 1987 debut novel The Accidental Woman, the protagonist Maria shares a flat in Hornsey with two other women for several years.