For the F in my offbeat alphabetical safari I went to Farnborough, but I also did the fieldwork for four other unsung suburbs. And it would be a shame to waste the research, so let's see if I can convince you they exist.
F is for Freezywater
Yes really. Freezywater is on the very northern edge of London in the borough of Enfield. It sits astride Hertford Road, the old A10, and is the last burst of the capital before you hit Waltham Cross. Drive through Ponders End, Enfield Highway and Enfield Wash and Freezywater is where you end up next. And it definitely exists because a big green sign says so. It feels a bit optimistic to call this intermittent run of shops the Enfield Wash and Freezywater Shopping Centre, but that's upbeat municipal branding for you.
The name supposedly comes from a local duckpond (or perhaps fishpond) which had a tendency to ice over. The agricultural holding here thus became known as Freezywater Farm, and the name then stuck when crops were swapped for housing at the turn of the 20th century. As real estate blunders go, it's a proper own goal.
I was hoping that at least one of the shops would call itself Freezywater Something but no, the minimarkets plumped for Enfield News and Enfield Express instead, and the Turkish restaurant was never going to reference anything chilly. But three civic bastions have gone all out and embraced the Freezywater name, also I spotted the two-word version on a local Cycleway sign.
The Freezywater Primary Care Centre is a clinic run by the local GP practice, and likely at the vanguard of fending off the current measles outbreak. Freezywater St George's is a one-form entry primary school, each of whose classes is named after a saint so children start in St Cecilia and work up to St Paul. And OK the church nextdoor has officially been St George's Enfield since 1896, not St George's Freezywater, but its web address is freezywater.org and I doubt you can confirm local attachment more strongly than that.
It's a hard suburb to delimit, but yes Freezywater definitely exists.
F is for Furzedown
Yes this too. This time we're at the southern end of the borough of Wandsworth in a wodge of avenues separating Tooting from Streatham. Furzedown is definitely one notch up the housing ladder from Freezywater, maybe even two notches, as confirmed by Mayor Sadiq Khan being a longstanding resident. Again the name comes from an old farm.
The most obvious manifestation of Furzedown is at the junction of Thrale Road and Mitcham Lane where a shallow curved sign was added at ground level as part of public realm improvement works in 2018. No lorry's smashed into it yet. The sports pub across the road goes by the name The Furzedown, but was named after the area rather than the area being named after it. It was previously called The Samuel Johnson after the great lexicographer who made regular visits to stay with the Thrale family in their house facing Tooting Bec Common, and before that the Park Tavern.
But the greatest cluster of nominal Furziness is half a mile away in the former grounds of Furzedown House, a large mansion built 300 years ago amid open country. The house escaped demolition by being repurposed as a teacher training college and is now the old block in the middle of Graveney School, which is Amol Rajan's alma mater. Across the road is Furzedown Recreation Ground, a jam-packed oasis of sports pitches where I interrupted early morning hoop practice, sorry. And round the corner is St Paul Furzedown, the area's anaemically-brown parish church, designed by Greenaway and Newberry and celebrating its centenary this summer.
I have reason to believe that the cab company on Moyser Road can't spell because their website calls them Furzedown Cars whereas the sign out front is embarrassingly missing an E. But from the copious number of community-minded Furzedown references elsewhere this is a truly coherent suburb that flies under the radar - comfortable without ever being up-itself - and I suspect the Mayor likes that way.
F is for Friern Barnet
Switching back to north London, this is the one of the multiplicity of Something Barnets (and the only one that was never in Hertfordshire). Picture the road from Whetstone down to Colney Hatch, if you can, because that's where the heart of Friern Barnet always was. The name means 'place cleared by burning', dates back to the 13th century and for a long time was a very rural spot.
This magnificent copper-towered building is Friern Barnet Town Hall, because ridiculously from 1883 to 1965 Friern Barnet was its own distinct local government unit. Only two other Middlesex districts were as lightly populated, that's how relatively obscure it was. The town hall opened in 1941 and if the concave frontage looks very much like Watford's that's because they shared the same architect. Obviously it's all now flats, although Barnet council hung onto it for their education department before flogging it off to Barratt Homes in 2002.
Friern Barnet today is an elusive locality, the name more likely to be found on a map than in real life. There's still a Friern Barnet Lane, also two chunky churches that retain FB as their locality. St John's is the parish seat, an elaborate Gothic Revival building in stone built by the crossroads to serve a growing Victorian population. St James the Great is much older and flintier, and in 2010 was gifted to the Greek Orthodox church due to dwindling attendance. The historic heart of the neighbourhood is now enveloped by Friary Park, so not really Friern, but does have some great statues scattered about.
TfL must believe in Friern Barnet because it's the terminus of the number 43 bus, also written on bus shelters, also Friern Barnet had its own spider map before TfL stopped believing in those. There's also a Friern Barnet & District Local History Society and they look very much invested in the area with a fact-packed website and a monthly programme of talks, should this be your local area. But if you've never heard of Friern Barnet that's because it's a diffuse anachronism bleeding off into Finchley, much like the next place.
F is for Fortis Green
Fortis Green follows a stripe of road on the posh side of Haringey, tucked between Coldfall and Highgate Woods. It was once a distinct linear neighbourhood but the adjacent suburbs have inexorably bled in and now it's really just Muswell Hill West, or perhaps East Finchley East.
It has some really nice throwback cottages but no longer a distinct identity, so let's cut this one here.
