View report page

PAST HISTORY.
Edmonton is an ancient town mentioned in the Domesday Book as
"Adelmeton" (or the town of Aldhelm). On some existing milestones the
name is spelt "Edmondton." It is seven miles from London, in the
Enfield Division of the County, Hundred, Petty Sessional Division,
Union and County Court District of Edmonton, Rural Deanery of Enfield,
and Archdeaconery and Diocese of London, in the Northern Metropolitan
Postal District, and was added to the Metropolitan Police District on the
13th October, 1840. The parish adopted the Public Health Act of 1848
on the 21st June, 1859, but by the operation of the Edmonton Local Board
(Division of District) Act, 1881, it was divided into two Urban Sanitary
Districts, Edmonton and Southgate.
Historic Building's.—In response to an enquiry in January
(per the County Council) from His Majesty's Secretary of Works, our Clerk
replied that the historic buildings existing in the district included:—
(1) The cottage, No. 11, Church Street, in which Charles and Mary
Lamb spent the latter part) of their lives, before they were laid to rest in
the churchyard of All Saints', near by.
(2) Bury Hall, once the residence of Bradshaw, who signed the
death warrant of Charles I. This mansion, standing in grounds of about
eight acres, is still in a good state of preservation.
(3) The doctor's house, 7, Church Street, has been a medical man's
house for more than a century, and to Dr. Hammond, the village doctor
of his time, John Keats, the famous poet, was apprenticed, in accordance
with the usual practice of entering the medical profession in those days.
(4) The Elizabethan "Squire's house," in Pymmes Park, now the
Council's property.
(5) Salisbury House, in Bury Street, is said to have been the
residence of the infamous Judge Jefferies, of the time of James II.
The mansion, "Halliwick," built by Sir Hugh Myddleton, the
constructor of the New River, which runs through the grounds was
enlarged and refitted, in 1911, as "The Cripples' Home," an institution
established in Paddington since 1851. Many large houses have within
recent years been dismantled, and their grounds occupied by rows of
smaller ones "The diverting history of John Gilpin," by Cowper, with its
reference to Edmonton as the best place for a pleasant picnic outside
London, must be well-known to all my readers.
RECENT HISTORY.
The district was divided into three Wards—Church Street, Fore
Street and Bury Street—by an order of the Middlesex County Council
in 1903, and is controlled by an Urban District Council of 27 members,
12