The mainly residential districts of neighbouring Bounds Green and Bowes Park form the north-east corner of the London Borough of Haringey with a small part in the south-east corner of the Borough of Enfield.
A rural hamlet
Bounds Green lies one mile north-west of Wood Green and derives from land held by John Le Bounde in the 14th century. It became part of the parish of St.Michael- at-Bowes with a mission church of St.Peter in 1883.
Residential development of Bounds Green was encouraged by the opening of Bowes Park station in 1880 and by New Southgate railway station in 1859.
At the beginning of the 20th century Bounds Green could be described as a rural hamlet. With the creation of the new Bounds Green parish of St.Gabriel in 1906 it became close to being a village but by then was part of the expanding Wood Green urban district.
Once farmland, with a big house and wealthy 19th century residents, it would become the location of a brickworks, glassworks, a cottage hospital, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a university campus and an industrial estate, plus continuing residential development.
‘Salubrious residences’
Bowes Park lying to the east of Bounds Green was developed on the site of the former Bowes Manor estate soon after the opening of Bowes Park railway station in 1880. During the 1880s/90s developers offered plots on the Bowes Park Estate ‘for persons seeking Rural and Salubrious residences’.
During the 19th and 20th centuries its principal shopping street, Myddleton Road, was a popular venue. It faded following the opening of the Wood Green Shopping City and the advent of out of town shopping Malls but is now undergoing some resurgence.
Another residential district, New Southgate, located between the Great Northern railway line and the Bowes Road, had developed by 1900. It was badly damaged in the Second World War and redeveloped by Enfield Council between 1959 and the mid-1970s.
A place of refuge
Today, this area is covered by Montmorency Park, a high-end development of flats and apartments. The name recalls the dog featured in the book Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome whose early years were spent in New Southgate.
The areas described above have a mixed population of which about 50% are from the minority ethnic communities who sought sanctuary during the past century. For example, those Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin in 1972 and those who arrived in the area following the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974.