London Borough of Haringey - History

History

In the Ice Age, Haringey was at the edge of a huge glacial mass that reached as far south as Muswell Hill. There is evidence of both Stone Age and Bronze Age activity.

Prior to the Romans' arrival, Haringey was part of a large area covering Essex and Middlesex which was home to a Celtic tribe called Trinobantes.

The Romans' presence is evidenced chiefly by the roads they built through the area. Tottenham High Road was part of the main Roman thoroughfare of Ermine Street. There have also been Roman finds in the borough which suggests possible Roman settlement.

In the 5th and 6th centuries the Saxon invasions brought Haering, the chieftain whose name still lives on today in local placenames.

At the time of Domesday, the western part of modern Haringey was within the Manor of Harengheie and part of the Bishop of London's principal Manor of Stepney. The eastern part was within the Manor of Tottenham held by Waltheof II, Earl of Northumbria, the last of the great Anglo-Saxon Earls.

Haringey remained a rural area until the 18th century when large country houses close to London became increasingly common. The coming of the railways from the mid-nineteenth century onwards led to rapid urbanisation; by the turn of the century much of Haringey had been transformed from a rural to an urbanised environment.

The borough in its modern form was founded in 1965, from the former Municipal Borough of Hornsey, the Municipal Borough of Wood Green and the Municipal Borough of Tottenham which had all previously been part of Middlesex. The new borough became part of the new Greater London Council. However, some legacy of the historic municipal divisions survives to the present day, with the relative prosperity of the different parts of the borough still split broadly along the old boundary lines.