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is a town in
Hertfordshire ,
England , just north of
London . It has a population of about 22,000. The town started life in the early 13th century and remained more or less unchanged until the arrival of the railway in the 1850s.
The origin of the Potters component of the town's name is uncertain but is generally thought to have been derived from evidence of a
Roman pottery that was thought to have been sited locally, or from the family Pottere who lived in the
South Mimms parish. The Bar component is thought to refer to the gates leading from the South Mimms parish and into the
Enfield Chase parish, or possibly from some sort of
Toll on the
Great North Road . The original "Bar" is said to have been at what is now the Green Man pub, or at the current entrance to Movern House.
The Great North Road, the original main road route from
London to the north of England and ending at
Edinburgh in
Scotland , passed through Potters Bar High Street - originally numbered as the
A1 , later the
A1000 . The A1 was built as a major (what was then called "arterial") road, and a crossroads at
Bignells Corner linked the
Barnet -
St Albans Road with the A1. Potters Bar is now also served by junction 24 of the
M25 .
Potters Bar was created an
Urban District of
Middlesex in
1934 . In
1965 the district was transferred to
Hertfordshire while most of the rest of Middlesex became part of
Greater London . In
1974 the urban district was abolished and the area became part of the borough of
Hertsmere .
Potters Bar station is the highest on the railway line between
London 's
King's Cross Railway Station and
York , and the town's name entered national headlines as the site of a
Rail Crash that killed 7 people and injured 76 on
May 10 ,
2002 .
- is a mixed Grant Maintained School in Potters Bar opened in 1954. The school used to be a Manor House which was turned into a school long ago, legend has it there are hidden tunnels under the school which go all around Potters Bar and up to the Train Station.
Potters Bar was the site of a fatal
Train Derailment on May 10 2002. Potters Bar is five miles south of
Hatfield , scene of an earlier fatal train derailment on the same line.
