Site History

The fields here belonged to All Souls College, Oxford from 1442.

The medieval manor of Frith and Newhall lay to the north- east and was divided into Dollis, Frith, and Partingdale Farms by the mid-18th century.

The modern era came early to Bittacy Hill when Mill Hill (later Mill Hill East) station opened on the Great Northern Railway’s suburban line to Edgware and the North Middlesex Gas Company built a gasworks in the 1860s. A pub and a few gasworkers’ cottages appeared nearby but the railway service to London was slow and indirect so commuters were not interested and the surrounding area remained as farmland.

In 1909 the Middlesex regiment moved into the Inglis barracks, which replaced Bittacy Farm. A council estate, including flats, was built at the foot of Bittacy Hill in the mid-1920s.

South of the station, Mill Hill Homesteads bought Devonshire Farm in 1933 and laid out an estate. Further up the hill and over on the Frith manor lands, roads were laid out in the years before and after the Second World War. The barracks later became the base for the British Forces Post Office, which has recently moved to RAF Northolt.

By 2025 it is planned that 2,174 new homes will have been built on the 94- acre site between Bittacy Hill and Frith Lane.