Making up the eastern edge of Golders Green, this area is home to a welcoming and close-knit middle-class community in the north of London. This particular area certainly wins the prize for being the greenest place in this part of town, due to its incorporation of Hampstead Heath and other public parks including Northway Gardens and Finchley Cemetery. Predominantly suburban, the majority of the Edwardian homes here are large and attractive, safe and very family friendly but with good access to central London via the nearby tube station or well-connected roads. Golders Green also has a large and cohesive Jewish population, as well as numerous locally-minded shops, bars, and boutiques along the high street of Finchley Road, that give the neighbourhood a sense of closeness.

Golders Green’s name gives some good clues about its own history. ‘Golders’ stems from a linguistic mutation of the name ‘Godyere’; a family man who lived in the area back in the Middle Ages. The territory originally served as a public grazing area for livestock. Thus, all was quiet in the Golders Green for a number of centuries, while the animals ate grass and Godyere lived his rural idyll. However, as the Industrial Revolution advanced, Golders Green began to evolve, and a local brick industry thrived, raising the area’s population and developing its infrastructure. Then the persecution of Jewish people across Europe during the 1930s saw thousands of families escape to the neighbourhood for refuge. The overall outcome was the establishment of a close-knit community embedded in middle-class suburban housing developments, just as we know it today.

The neighbourhood is a stone’s throw away from nearby Golders Green crematorium which opened in 1902. This crematorium has seen more than a few famous faces go through its gates including Marc Bolan, Neville Chamberlain, T. S. Eliot, Sigmund Freud, Keith Moon, Anna Pavlova, Ian Dury, and Amy Winehouse. Some have suggested that this has led to a few suggestions that some talented ghosts now wonder the locality.

The biggest issue that this lovely outskirt of Golders Green faces is that of expensive housing. Considering the location, quality and size of the majority of the homes in the area, this isn’t much of a surprise.

The council originally had some big plans to redevelop Golders Green bus and train station but local pushback led to the original project being firmly binned. However, other developments are springing up around the rest of town, including a town centre renovation plan by the council and the creation of a new £12.5 million Kisharon School for children with learning disabilities, which opened in 2020.