- or "the Green" as it is known to some of its residents - is a place in the
London Borough Of Haringey . It is a suburban development situated 6.1 miles (9.8 km) north of
Charing Cross .
In the latter half of the
19th Century and before urbanisation it was part of
Tottenham and covered by
Woodland called Tottenham Wood, hence the name of the area, Tottenham Wood Green. Most of Wood Green is in the
Hornsey And Wood Green parliamentary constituency.
In
1894 Wood Green was created as an
Urban District , and later a
Municipal Borough , of
Middlesex . In
1965 , under the
London Government Act 1963 , the Municipal Borough of Wood Green was abolished and its area merged with that of the
Municipal Borough Of Tottenham and the
Municipal Borough Of Hornsey to form the present-day London Borough of Haringey.
It is an important local retail hub, with two cinemas, bars and a shopping centre - Shopping City - close to the
Tube Station . The High Street, the main shopping spine, stretches from the Wood Green tube station to the next stop on the
Piccadilly Line ,
Turnpike Lane .
Wood Green Crown Court is a short distance along
Lordship Lane .
Historically, Wood Green played a leading role in the development of both public service and commercial television in the UK. On
2 November 1936 , the
BBC opened its TV service at
Alexandra Palace (a.k.a. Ally Pally) and in 1955 with the opening of Lew Grade's London weekend franchise Associated Television (
ATV ), the Wood Green Empire in Lymington Avenue was home to variety programmes on Independent Television (
ITV ), one of which was the 'Arthur Haynes Show', starring the host himself and his straight man
Nicholas Parsons . Sadly, the Wood Green Empire no longer exists (it has been replaced by a shopping precinct) and all that is left of the halcyon days of BBC TV in Wood Green, is the familiar TV mast on Alexandra Palace. The ATV operations moved to Elstree and Borehamwood (now BBC studios) and the BBC News department, which was the only unit remaining at Ally Pally after BBC TV Centre was opened in the 1950's, moved to
White City , west London in the early 1970's. Ally Pally was used for the production of joint BBC/
Open University (OU) programmes for a while, but all OU programmes are now produced in
Milton Keynes where the OU's headquarters are located.
Primary:
- Earlham Primary
- Lordship Lane Primary
- Nightingale Primary
- Noel Park Primary
- St.Michael's CoE Primary
- St.Pauls RC Primary
Secondary:
Until the
1960s , a
Railway Line of the former
Great Eastern Railway network crossed the Wood Green High Road, at a station called
Noel Park , providing connections to
Stratford and
North Woolwich .
On
January 7 2003 , British police announced details of the discovery of traces of the toxin
Ricin in a flat in Palmers Green near Wood Green but often mistakenly attributed in the media as being located in Wood Green in the wake of the arrest of 6 terrorist suspects. A massive search for their accomplices followed.
However it was later revealed more accurate tests showed that no ricin was in fact present in the flat, see
Ricin-related Arrests In Britain .
