Osidge is a loosely-defined 1930s suburb in north London, marginally in Barnet. It started as one big house and is now thousands, sloping down to the Pymmes Brook in a generally overlooked manner. It's a product of the extended Piccadilly line, expanding to the west of Southgate station, and is often markedonmaps some way from where it actually began. It's been home to a grocery magnate, a noted meteorologist and a kohl-eyed singer. And yes it rhymes with sausage, before anyone feels the need to ask.
Last year 28 small mosaics were hung around Southgate town centre as part of a heritage-focused Art Trail. The pair outside the former Halifax building society commemorate two local business dynasties, both consequential, whose estates were eventually sold for housing. The brewing Taylors and Walkers lived in a big house at Arnos Grove, beyond the scope of today's post, while Thomas Lipton lived at a smaller big house called Osidge. Thomas was born in the Gorbals in 1848 and after many overseas adventures grew his parents' Glasgow shop into a chain of grocers which expanded into a successful transatlantic trading empire. Americans still buy something they believe to be tea - hot or iced - under the longstanding Lipton brand.
Lipton moved to Osidge in 1892, already a millionaire, upgrading the Georgian house with a new billiard room and enlarging the stables. There'd been a large house here since Tudor times, the first owners charged with supplying wooden faggots for the burning of heretics. It's thought the name Osidge came from hawe's edge, Old English for woodland boundary, and has been recorded over the years as Huzeog, Hossegge, Huzeseg, Hwzeseg, Ousage, Ouzage, Owsage and Ussage. A later occupant was George Hadley, the first scientist to spot that tropical trade winds form a critical global circulation (now known as Hadley cells). Thomas Lipton lived here for almost 40 years, taking the title Baronet of Osidge, and took a keen interest in sport including five unsuccessful attempts to win the Americas Cup. But he died without issue, bequeathing his house to the Queen's Nursing Association whose used it as a home for retired nurses from 1935 to 2014. You can likely guess what happened next.
The original gates to Osidge are now the secure gateway to a luxury residential development called Sir Thomas Lipton, because rhyming with sausage is not a marketing plus. Some get apartments in the main building while others have merely paid to reside in a row of mews houses shoehorned outside. A sweep of trees blocks clear sight from Chase Side so if you want to see Lipton's long white veranda you need to peer over the fence round the corner in Oakdale. But I did manage to spy a distant blue roundel by the front door which turned out to be a Barnet council plaque, now off limits to nigh all local residents. The citation describes Sir Thomas as Philanthropist, Grocer and Yachtsman, so an intriguing mix of Lord Sainsbury, Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath.
The road out front for many years formed the boundary between Hertfordshire and Middlesex, with Osidge very marginally inside the former. The estates I intend to write about are therefore on the western side, formerly in the Home Counties, where the N14 postcode overlaps with the London borough of Barnet. The first post-Piccadillyhouses were built across open fields, a slew of substantial semis steeping down from the ridgetop with excellent views towards Totteridge. They have bay windows, timber gables and crucially parking spaces for those willing to pave over their front gardens. 83 Osidge Lane isn't quite as aspirational as many homes in the avenues behind but is typical in that you can see it plainly slopes downhill.
It's also the first childhood home of Osidge's most famous recent resident who was Amy Winehouse. She relocated a few times before becoming famous but spent the majority of her life in Osidge and attended the local primary school which is of course Osidge Primary. This is a large Thirties establishment, two storeys of traditional brick, where Amy evolved from pretending to be Shirley from Wham to playing Rizzo in a production of Grease The Musical. The school's other musical heavyweights are Dan Gillespie-Sells from The Feeling and Rachel Stevens of S Club 7, not to mention fellow Jewish pupils Rob (Judge) Rinder and Punch editor Alan Coren. There are far less cosy places to grow up.
Amy's local shops, and the retail heart of the neighbourhood, are a pretty decent cluster called Hampden Square. The square's unusual in that the four sides face the centre on the diagonal, three of them long parades and the third a pub inevitably called The Osidge Arms. It's not clear such a coat of arms ever existed and the hospitality offer now leans significantly Turkish anyway. Of the shops at least a third are wellness-related (prioritising hair, physio, nails, massage and aesthetics), while a further contingent exemplify a steady drift from homewares and haberdashery to takeaways and independent restaurants. The former bridalwear shop, for example, recently metamorphosed into an opportunity to Step into the Wild West at Wrangler Burger Southgate.
About twenty years ago Hampden Square got a minor makeover with a new central roundabout and perked-up green wedges edged by very low stone walls. The benches aren't well frequented because sitting by a road junction doesn't always appeal, also they're poorly placed for the bus stops that serve to whisk residents of lower Osidge to not-quite-near-enough stations. Most local buses track further down Osidge Lane to cross the Pymmes Brook by the scout hut. The river's fairly minor here, the channel a couple of metres max as it tracks the greensward between two rows of opposing semis before ducking under the main road into Brunswick Park. Full marks to the 1930s planners who made the stream a prominent feature rather than hiding it away in a backalley culvert.
In 1989 there were official moves to shift the council boundary downhill to this stream, but local residents packed a meeting and successfully argued against on the basis it would divide communities historically linked to Barnet. Thus Osidge still nominally spreads up the shallower slope on the far side of the Pymmes Brook, perhaps as far as the double mini-roundabout. Arguably this area is more rightly called Brunswick Park and the name of the local primary school concurs, but the nextdoor book repository is most definitely Osidge Library. I managed to turn up on the one morning a week it's staffed so was able to gain entrance (this also the case on three afternoons before you assume Barnet's policy is uber-miserly).
I didn't delve inside too far for fear of interrupting a youthful gathering so I don't know if they have the latest Rob Rinder on the shelves, but I do wonder if Amy ever came to storytime.
