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Osidge is a district in the London Borough of Barnet, between Brunswick Park and Southgate, just west of the border with the London Borough of Enfield. It may be loosely defined as the part of postal district N14 that is in Barnet. Osidge has no formal border and is entirely enclosed within the electoral ward of Brunswick Park, East Barnet; however Oak Hill Park forms a natural boundary to the north and Pymmes Brook to the west, with the A111 to the east and the Piccadilly line to the south and/or east.
The two main roads in Osidge are Osidge Lane and Hampden Way, which meet at a junction (now roundabout) called Hampden Square. Around the roundabout are three parades of shops and the Osidge Arms pub. To the south-west is an area of green belt land, crossed by Pymmes Brook and leading down to New Southgate Cemetery; an adjacent road, Whitehouse Way, provided the backdrop to scenes from Mike Leigh's film Secrets and Lies. Nearby school Ashmole Academy was a filming location for Kick-Ass 2.
The name is Anglo-Saxon, probably deriving from 'hawe's ege' referring to the Old English 'hawe' and the boundary (edge) of the Southaw wood. It was first recorded in 1176, in a charter from Henry II to the Abbot of St Albans referring to the abbot's woodland property there, adjacent to the land later known as Enfield Chase. The area was variously named as Huzeog, Hossegge, Huzeseg, Hwzeseg, Ousage, Ouzage, Owsage and Ussage. The land was sold after the Dissolution of the Monasteries and a large house was built and parkland laid out. According to one history, a condition of tenure was that the woods should supply faggots for the burning of heretics. In 1614, the estate passed by marriage to Robert Berkeley, and in 1652 the house became the residence of four generations of the Hadley family. Following the death of John Hadley in 1744 the house was demolished and the estate sold. A new Osidge House was built by 1808 and later occupied by the Lambert and Bosanquet/Bevan families, being purchased by Jacob Bosanquet's nephew Augustus in 1834 and then inherited by his widow, David Bevan's eldest child Louisa. After her death the estate was rented and later purchased by Thomas Lipton.
The 1868-1883 ordnance survey shows Osidge as a small rural estate centred around a manor house, adjacent to the Cockfosters Road (now Chase Side, which formed part of the Middlesex/Hertfordshire county border) and to Blind Lane (now Osidge Lane). Within the parish of East Barnet, in the Hundred of St Albans/Herts, Osidge fell under East Barnet Valley Urban District in 1863, renamed East Barnet Urban District in 1935. The area remained rural well into the 20th century with only a small number of dwellings on its borders until suburbanisation in the early 1930s. Osidge was then given formal status as an electoral ward covering an expanded area bounded by Pymmes Brook, Oakhill and the Southgate border, and in 1965 the district was transferred to the London Borough of Barnet. Osidge was one of several Barnet wards abolished for the 1968 local election, becoming part of the expanded Brunswick Park ward.
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