Holders Hill
Holders Hill, Barnet
The exclusive northernmost tip of Hendon, separated from Finchley to its east by Dollis Brook
The route that is now Holders Hill Road was in existence by the 14th century and during the following century the land came into the possession All Souls College, Oxford. The hill was called Oldershyll in 1584 and by its present name in 1750.
The undulating and wooded landscape attracted some pretty villas, including Holders Hill House, a cottage orné that stood for most of the 19th century.
The builder CF Hancock put up several properties in the Parson Street and Holders Hill area in the 1870s but other attempts to develop the neighbourhood over the next two decades were largely unsuccessful because transport links were poor.
The Abney Park Cemetery Company converted the 42-acre Dollis Farm into Hendon Park (now Hendon) cemetery in 1899 and soon afterwards Hendon golf club was established on part of Holders Hill Farm.
Demand for housing picked up with communications improvements that culminated in the arrival of the North Circular Road in the late 1920s. Strips of golf course and cemetery land were sold for housebuilding and Holders Hill Road was lined with expensive houses and blocks of private flats. None of these dwellings is architecturally exceptional, so – for the moment at least – this page features a photograph* of the White House, which stands near the northern end of the street called Downage, just to the south-west of Holders Hill. English Heritage calls the White House “an unusually large, early and imaginative example of a traditionally-planned house from the 1930s given moderne features.”
The rebuilt Holders Hill House became Ravensfield college in 1931 and then the Hasmonean school in 1947. A separate girls’ school is located a mile to the west. The school caters primarily for Orthodox Jewish children and has been rated among the best comprehensives in London. The North Hendon Adath Yisroel synagogue moved to its present purpose-built home in the boys’ school’s grounds in 1965.
Holders Hill is extremely popular with wealthier members of the Jewish community and in recent years more luxury flats have been squeezed into every available space on and off the main road.
The political economist Jeremy Bentham did much of his writing at Dollis Farm on Holders Hill Road in the late 18th century. The farmhouse was demolished in 1930.
Postal districts: NW4 and NW7