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Tufnell Park is an area in north London, England, in the London boroughs of Islington and Camden. The neighbourhood is served by Tufnell Park tube station on the Northern Line.
Tufnell Park Road, a straight of 1.24 kilometres (0.77 mi), was sometimes conjectured by historians to follow the line of a Roman track. There is no evidence of Roman activity in the area and a supposed Roman camp marked on Dent's 1805 parish map has been shown by Museum of London Archaeology excavations to probably be a misidentified medieval moated site. The road has for centuries been an east–west connector between the roads from the hearts of Islington and Camden which converge into a major northern route at Archway market place, across 500 metres of Dartmouth Park district to the north.
North-east of Tufnell Park Road, the housing is closer to Upper Holloway railway station and so is popularly considered to be Upper Holloway district. On all other sides of the road is Tufnell Park based on nearest rail/tube station.
The road which Tufnell Park Road links have been greatly alleviated from sole principal status by diverting in the 20th century the A1 through Edgware where the M1 also runs instead of its old route through High Barnet, converging the route with the straighter A41 road from Marylebone. The A1 road in the east of Tufnell Park is therefore less arterial which reinforces the loss of its old name "the Great North Road", a historical coaching road. It specifically serves vehicles driven between the A1 or M1 and the City of London.
Rising north of here at Mercers Road, Hackney Brook, culverted today, ran south to cross Holloway Road near Tufnell Park Road and then flowed to Lowman Road, where it turned north-east and ran along Gillespie Road to leave the traditional bounds of Islington at Mountgrove Road.
For centuries this northern part of the ancient parish of Islington was part of many square miles renowned for dairy farms which kept the City of London and neighbouring north and west parts supplied with milk. It kept a rural air well into the 19th century in its important role as a base for a number of dairies supplying the capital. In 1753 the area became the property of William Tufnell who was granted the manor of Barnsbury by his father-in-law Sir William Halton. The manor house (now demolished) stood on the site of the large Odeon cinema at the end of Tufnell Park Road where it meets the A1 (Holloway Road).The manor's gateposts survive along the west of Tufnell Park Road. Tufnell petitioned Parliament for authority to develop his estate but the building leases he was granted were left unused; his family had a set of rural estates nationwide.
The Tufnell Park estate passed to his brother George Foster Tufnell, MP for Beverley (died 1798), then to George's son William Tufnell (died 1809), MP for Colchester, who married in 1804 heiress Mary Carleton (daughter of Thomas Carleton of South Carleton d.1829). Both are buried at St Mary's Islington, hence her maiden name appearing as two street names in N7.
The manor then passed to Henry Tufnell (d. 1854), MP for Ipswich and Devonport, Liberal chief whip whose three marriages included two daughters of earls.
The sparse remnants of the freehold passed to Henry Archibald Tufnell (d 1898) who died with no children, and then to Lt Col Edward Tufnell (d. 1909) HM Inspector of Schools, Factory Commissioner, Director Greenwich Hospital.
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