Finchley Things to Do

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A beautiful park, especially in May with the trees in blossom, tulips and other flowers in bloom

there is a cafe, public toilets, bowls club (the premier outdoor green in London, they spend £7,000 a year cutting and rolling the lawn!), tennis courts and a childrens play area... site of Finchley Carnival....

The church itself has an interesting history..... the church's website has more info... including this inscription

Godolphin his race to rest hathe rune
Where grace recordes felycytie
His death is gone his lyff hathe wonne
Eternal perpetuitye
Though William his corppes here dead doethe lye
? ssayeth to him shall never dye

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A group of Spikes friends and family have combined with The Finchley Society to raise funds for the creation of a bronze statue in Finchley. The aim is to raise ?30,000 and to unveil the statue in April 2006.

The life-size statue will show Spike sitting on a bench and turning as if to speak to an imaginary person sharing the bench with him. Many people, young and old, will come to have their photo taken in this unique setting. Sir Paul McCartney, Michael Parkinson and Joanna Lumley are patrons

If you would like to make a donation please send a cheque payable to "The Spike Milligan Statue Fund" to The Secretary, 17 Abbots Gardens, East Finchley, London N2 OJG.

All donations will be acknowledged.

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This statue was erected to mark the victory of combined British and French forces over the Germans at the First Battle of the Marne between 5 and 12 September 1914.

This statue, was made by Emile Guillaume, official name is La Delivrance, but locals know it as the Naked Lady.

It was unveiled by the former war time prime minister, David Lloyd George in 1927, with a crowd of 8,000 in attendance.

It is located here because Lord Rothermere wanted to see it on his drive to see his mum in Totteridge.

I'm not sure if this is a thing to do.... it takes imagination, thinking is a type of doing. In the Ice Age a massive galcier pushed the Thames outhwards to its current course.

This ice was known as the Finchley Lobe an carved the lump of land that Finchley rest upon, imagine a giant river of ice, mountain like and Hampstead as tundra.... global warming?

Further reading:
A History of the County of Middlesex, 1969
Volume I
Edited by J. S. Cockburn & H. P. F. King, K. G. T. Mc Donnell

"Taking the assemblage of deposits as a whole, the sequence of events is tolerably clear. Before the advance of the ice, the Thames, expelled from its Hertfordshire course by the advance of an earlier ice-sheet, flowed through the Finchley depressions from west to east. The second great ice-sheet, which completely covered the country northeast of Middlesex, sent a lobe up the valley, and thus diverted the Thames from this its second course. Small outlying masses of glacial gravel at Dollis Hill and Hanger Hill mark the train of outwash-gravels along the Brent valley which must have been initiated at this time. This signal episode was the second glacial diversion of the Thames from its first course and to it is due the initiation of the Thames valley through London. Few physiographic episodes can have been answerable for human consequences so significant and complex."

London's newest arts venue....

It is situated between West Finchley, Finchley Central and Woodside Park tube stations on the Northern Line. West Finchley and Woodside Park are the closest stations, approximately half a mile away.

Finchley Central has the best bus link, approx a 3 minute journey by the 125, 460, 82.

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The graveyard is mainly inhabited by figures from the 18th Century, including Honest Tom Payne, not to be confused the American revolutionary figure, who kept a famous bookshop before retiring to Finchley....

also Major John Cartwright, a British military figure who was pro-American , and for was called the ?father of reform? for his advocacy of universal manhood suffrage, parliamentary and army reform, and abolition of slavery.

If you really want to learn about Finchley, you can go to this library, upstairs there is a good reference section.... downstairs is the lending library, with dvd and a coffee machine, you'll need a token to use it, as you'll need to borrow a key to use the toilet upstairs

... the children's library often has story telling for children.

The building is modernist in style, a machine for reading? It clashes badly with the medieval church next door... see my other tips