Tottenham is centred 6 mi (10 km) north-northeast of Charing Cross,[4] bordering Edmonton to the north, Walthamstow, across the River Lea, to the east, and Stamford Hill to the south, with Wood Green and Harringay to the west.

The area rapidly expanded in the late 19th century, becoming a working-class suburb of London following the advent of the railway and mass development of housing for the lower-middle and working classes.

Following the Second World War, the area saw large-scale development of council housing, including tower blocks.

[5][6] It is not related to Tottenham Court Road in Central London, though the two names share a similar-sounding root.

A humorous poem entitled the Tournament of Tottenham, written around 1400, describes a mock battle between peasants vying for the reeve's daughter.

A major tributary of the Lea, the River Moselle, also crosses the borough from west to east, and often caused serious flooding until it was mostly covered in the 19th century.

[9] The area became noted for its large Quaker population[10] and its schools (including Rowland Hill[11] at Bruce Castle[12]).

In late 1870s, the Great Eastern Railway introduced special workman's trains and fares on its newly opened Enfield and Walthamstow branch lines.

Tottenham's low-lying fields and market gardens were then rapidly transformed into cheap housing for the lower middle and working classes, who were able to commute cheaply to inner London.

[13] Two armed robbers, Latvian Jews of Russian extraction, held up the wages clerk of rubber works in Chestnut Road.

On the opposite bank of the river, they hijacked a Walthamstow Corporation tramcar, hotly pursued by the police on another tram.

After firing their weapons and killing two people, Ralph Joscelyne, aged 10, and PC William Tyler, they were eventually cornered by the police and shot themselves rather than be captured.

Wartime shortages led to the creation of Tottenham Pudding, a mixture of household waste food which was converted into feeding stuff for pigs and poultry.

Jarrett was a resident of Tottenham who lived about one mile (two kilometres) from the estate, who died of heart failure during a police search of her home.

[17][18][19][clarification needed] Attacks were carried out on two police cars, a bus, a Post Office and several local shops from 8:00 pm onwards on 6 August 2011.

Later in the evening, the riot spread, with an Aldi supermarket and a branch of Allied Carpets also destroyed by fire, and widespread looting in nearby Wood Green shopping centre and the retail park at Tottenham Hale.

Twenty-six shared ownership flats in the Union Point development above the Carpetright store—built in the landmark Cooperative department store building—were also destroyed by fire.

The triggering event was when a group of over one hundred local Tottenham residents set out to undertake a protest march against the killing of Mark Duggan, who was shot by police officers assigned to Operation Trident earlier in the week.

On 17 August 2011, the Prince of Wales and his wife Duchess of Cornwall visited an emergency center to meet victims of the riots.

The administrative area developed from a parish in Middlesex into an urban sanitary district in 1875, after a local board of health had been established in 1850.

Many think of Tottenham today as most of the area covered by the N17 post code, sometimes using the phrase 'Tottenham Proper' to describe it and to distinguish it from the other parts of the old borough.

[48] Originally "a peculiar local invention"[49] of north London, the cake was later mass-produced by bakery chains such as Percy Ingle and Greggs.