In Anglo-Saxon times, the manor of Enfield was held by Ansgar the Staller (c. 1025-1085), a nobleman and staller to King Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–1066). The name 'Enfield' most likely came from Old EnglishĒanafeld or similar, meaning "open land belonging to a man called Ēana". At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, the manor of Enfield, spelt 'Enfelde', was the property of Geoffrey de Mandeville, a powerful Norman granted large estates by William the Conqueror.[2] A priest is recorded in the Domesday Book as holding about 30 acres of land in Enfield, leading some to believe that a priest may have ministered there at St Andrew's Church in this period, although the earliest written evidence of the parish church in Enfield dates from when the parish of Enfield (dedicated to St Andrew) and St Andrew's Church were endowed to the monastery of Walden Abbey in Essex in 1136.[3] In 1303, by charter of King Edward I, nobleman Humphrey de Bohun and his heirs were granted a licence to hold a weekly market and two annual fairs, one on St Andrew's Day and another in September. The village green became a marketplace, making the town of Enfield (also known today as Enfield Town), at the core of the parish, a market town. The parish was the largest in Middlesex (if one excludes from the parish of Harrow on the Hill its Pinner north-west corner, which broke away in 1766); Enfield measured 12,460 acres in 1831, i.e. 19.5 square miles (51 km2).[4]
Proximity to the megalopolis of London saw Enfield "engulfed" by the capital in the inter-war period of the 20th century.[5]
Notable people, places, and events
The parish church, located on the north side of the marketplace, is dedicated to St Andrew. While some masonry from the thirteenth century remains, the nave, north aisle, choir, and tower constructed of random rubble and flint, date from the late fourteenth century. The clerestory was added in the early sixteenth century, and the south aisle was rebuilt in brick in 1824.[6] Adjacent to the church is the old school building of the Tudor period, Enfield Grammar School, which expanded over the years and became a large comprehensive school in the late 1960s.
Enfield Palace
A sixteenth century manor house, known since the eighteenth century as Enfield Palace, is remembered in the name of the Palace Gardens Shopping Centre (and the hothouses on the site were once truly notable; see below). It was used as a private school from around 1670 until the late nineteenth century. The last remains of it were demolished in 1928 to make way for an extension to Pearson's department store, though a panelled room with an elaborate plaster ceiling and a stone fireplace survive, relocated to a house in Gentleman's Row, a street of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century houses near the town centre.[7]
Enfield Market
The Town, Enfield
In 1303, King Edward I granted a charter to Humphrey de Bohun and his wife to hold a weekly market in Enfield each Monday, and James I granted another in 1617, to a charitable trust, for a Saturday market.[8] The market was still prosperous in the early eighteenth century, but fell into decline soon afterwards. There were sporadic attempts to revive it: an unsuccessful one of 1778 is recorded,[9] and in 1826 a stone Gothic market cross was erected to replace the octagonal wooden market house, demolished sixteen years earlier. In 1858 J. Tuff wrote of the market: "several attempts have been made to revive it, the last of which, about twenty years ago, also proved a failure, It has again fallen into desuetude and will probably never be revived".[10]
However, the trading resumed in the 1870s. In 1904 a new wooden structure was built to replace the stone cross, by now decayed. The market is still in existence, administered by the Old Enfield Charitable trust.[11]
The Enfield Fair
The charter of 1303 also gave the right to hold two annual fairs, one on St Andrew's Day and the other in September.[12] The latter was suppressed in 1869 at the request of local tradesmen, clergy and other prominent citizens, having become, according to the local historian Pete Eyre, "a source of immorality and disorder, and a growing nuisance to the inhabitants".[13]
The New River
The New River, built to supply water to London from Hertfordshire, runs immediately behind the town centre through the Town Park, which is the last remaining public open-space of Enfield Old Park. The Enfield Loop of the New River also passes through the playing fields of Enfield Grammar School, and this is the only stretch of the loop without a public footpath on at least one side of it.
Hothouses
Enfield was the location of some of the earliest successful hothouses, developed by Dr Robert Uvedale (1642–1722), headmaster both of Enfield Grammar School and of the Palace School. He was a Cambridge scholar and renowned horticulturalist; George Simonds Boulger writes of Uvedale in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, Volume 58:
As a horticulturist Uvedale earned a reputation for his skill in cultivating exotics, being one of the earliest possessors of hothouses in England. In an Account of several Gardens near London written by J. Gibson in 1691 (Archæologia, 1794, xii. 188), the writer says: 'Dr. Uvedale of Enfield is a great lover of plants, and, having an extraordinary art in managing them, is become master of the greatest and choicest collection of exotic greens that is perhaps anywhere in this land. His greens take up six or seven houses or roomsteads. His orange-trees and largest myrtles fill up his biggest house, and … those more nice and curious plants that need closer keeping are in warmer rooms, and some of them stoved when he thinks fit. His flowers are choice, his stock numerous, and his culture of them very methodical and curious.'
John Keats
The poet John Keats (1795-1821) attended progressive Clarke's School in Enfield, where he began a translation of the Aeneid. The school's building later became Enfield Town railway station, but was demolished in 1872. The current building was erected in the 1960s. In 1840 the first section of the Northern and Eastern Railway had been opened from Stratford to Broxbourne. The branch line from Water Lane to Enfield Town station was opened in 1849.
Silver Street White House
The White House, Silver Street, Enfield
The White House in Silver Street – now a doctors' surgery – was the home of Joseph Whitaker, publisher and founder of Whitaker's Almanack; he lived there from 1820 until his death in 1895. (Inscription on Blue Plaque on The White House, Silver Street, Enfield.)
In the 2011 census, the Town ward (covering areas north from the Southbury Road) was 82% white (68% British, 10% Other, 3% Irish). The largest non-white group, Black African, claimed 3%. The District is also covered by the Chase, Highlands, Grange, Southbury, Lock, Highway, Turkey Street and Bush Hill Park wards. Of these, the Lock ward had the highest minority proportion, 45.1% of its population.[16]
Highlands ward had the highest male and female life expectancies from 2009 to 2013, 82.5 and 87.2 years respectively. The lowest was 76.7 years in Enfield Lock, and 81.4 years in Chase, respectively.[17]
Enfield Lock is the only ward where most houses were rented, 50.1%. At the opposite end, in Bush Hill Park 78.5% of houses were owned by the household.[18]
Enfield Town is 10.1 miles (16.3 km) north of Charing Cross - the centre point of London - and is about 4 miles (6.4 km) south-west of Cheshunt, 5 miles (8.0 km) south-east of Potters Bar, and 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Barnet.
The Southbury Loop separates from the Enfield Town branch line between Bush Hill Park and Edmonton Green stations, towards Cheshunt. The loop runs through Southbury and Turkey Street stations in Enfield, at which London Overground services between Liverpool Street and Cheshunt call.
Enfield and its clock tower are important locations in the 2016 young adult novel Timekeeper by Tara Sim.
The Enfield poltergeist (a claim of alleged poltergeist activity in Brimsdown, Enfield between 1977 and 1979), was dramatized in the 2016 horror film The Conjuring 2. The story also attracted press coverage in British newspapers, and has been mentioned in books, and television and radio documentaries.
The Barclays Bank in the main town was the site of the first cash machine in the world
^Middlesex, Part 1. Volume 2 of Greater London history sources. Guildhall Library Publications. 2005. p. viii. ISBN9780900422522. Retrieved 19 May 2023. Continued expansion in the years between the first and second world wars engulfed the small towns of outer Middlesex such as Enfield and Hounslow; south of the River Thames, Kingston, Croydon and Bromley were also caught up in the spread of London.
^A P Baggs; Diane K Bolton; Eileen P Scarff; G C Tyack (1976). T F T Baker; R B Pugh (eds.). "Enfield: Manors". A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 5: Hendon, Kingsbury, Great Stanmore, Little Stanmore, Edmonton Enfield, Monken Hadley, South Mimms, Tottenham. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 3 June 2011.
