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Golders Green
Golders Green
Background
Golders Green remains the center of Jewish middle-class life in London. The Orthodox community is especially strong. The area is architecturally unremarkable with the exception of Hampstead Garden Suburb. The area contains ivory-covered homes and manicured hedges.
Local History
The word Golder is derived from the local family of Godyere and Green refers to the fields, which lay on either side of the road leading to Hampstead. In 1965, Camden makes reference to Golders Green, and variants of the name can be found on contemporary maps.
Golders Green was part of the old parish and manor of Hendon, and was cleared of forests by the mid 18th century. The land was then parceled up into farms. The main habitants were farmers, labourers and occupants of large country homes. The development of the Northern Line in 1905 dramatically changed the face of Golders Green. Trains passed under Hampstead Heath to emerge in the almost untouched Golders Green fields. This led to a boom in property for the area, and the population exploded. House prices remained cheap, however, and the Underground began a campaign to promote suburban living in the area.
Institutions began setting up shop. The more notables ones include the Golders Greens Crematorium, the Hippodrome, which opened in 1914 and is now host to the BBC Radio Concert Orchestra, and the Ivy House, which was the home of renowned ballet dancer Anna Pavlova until her death in 1931. The Ivy House was then sold to the Industrial Orthopaedic Society and was used as an out-patient department of Manor House Hospital. It then passed into the hands of the New College of Speech and Drama in 1955, and became a memorial to Pavlova in 1974. The entire region has now been entirely built over with the exception of the beautiful Golders Hill Park.
Architecture
The area is architecturally unremarkable with the exception of Hampstead Garden Suburb. The area contains ivory-covered homes and manicured hedges.
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