Fortis Green, Haringey
A leafy and lovely locality situated between Muswell Hill and East Finchley, although many consider it simply the south-western corner of Muswell Hill
What became Fortis Green Road was just a track across Hornsey Common until the early 19th century. Enclosure allowed individual fields to be sold off to speculators and the hamlet began to expand outwards from the village green and the Clissold Arms. Two East Finchley brothers bought one of the fields in 1835 and built a pair of Italianate villas, Springcroft and Colethall (later Uplands). In 1853 an adjacent field was laid out with roads and divided into plots for sale to local builders. The resulting Harwell estate took several decades to complete, leading to an inconsistent but not unpleasing appearance.
Fortis Green now consists of a mixture of late Victorian and early 20th-century semi-detached houses, with a few grand villas in the shady corners. The avenues are tree-lined almost to the point of being wooded. St Luke’s Woodside Hospital and Thames Water’s Fortis Green pumping station (with covered reservoir) are on Woodside Avenue, just north of Highgate Wood.
More than half of the 16- to 74-year-olds in Fortis Green are qualified to degree level or higher, and employment levels are very high.
Fortis Green brought forth two disparate bands in the 1960s. The Davies family, which spawned The Kinks, lived in Denmark Terrace. Brothers Ray and Dave attended what is now Fortismere school and first performed in public at the Clissold Arms (see the image above, with some of the pub’s Kinks memorabilia). Fortis Green is the title of a Dave Davies song. Around the same time as the Kinks emerged, a group of young folk musicians used to convene for rehearsals at a house called ‘Fairport’, and named their band Fairport Convention in its honour. The house stands at the corner of Fortismere Avenue and Fortis Green Road.
Postal districts: N2 and N10
Population: 11,235
If you like Hidden London, please consider sharing your find
