Northwood is an town in the London Borough of Hillingdon and Hertfordshire, located 14+1/2 miles (23 kilometres) northwest of Charing Cross. Northwood was part of the ancient parish of Ruislip, Middlesex. The majority of the town is situated in the London Borough Of Hillingdon but most of the northen part of the town (Parts of Moor Park and Eastbury ) are situated in Hertfordshire. Northwood shares post towns with parts of Hertfordshire. Since the Middlesex side of the town being incorporated into Greater London in 1965, has been on the Greater London boundary with that county. It has also been within the Metropolitan Police District since 1840. The Northwood Headquarters is on the Hertfordshire side.
The area consists of the elevated settlement of Northwood and Northwood Hills, both of which are served by stations on the Metropolitan line of the London Underground. At the 2011 census, the population of Northwood was 10,949, down from 11,068 in 2008, while the population of Northwood Hills was 11,578, up from 10,833 in 2001.
Northwood adjoins Ruislip Woods National Nature Reserve. The area was used for location filming of the Goods' and Leadbetters' houses and surrounding streets in the BBC TV sitcom The Good Life, standing in for Surbiton.
In the Domesday Book of 1086, the Northwood-embracing parish of Ruislip had immense woodland, sufficient to support one parish with 1,500 pigs per year, and a park for wild beasts (parcus ferarum).
The hamlet of Northwood grew up along the north side of the Rickmansworth-Pinner road which passes across the north-east of the parish. Apart from this road and internal networks in areas of scattered settlement to the east and west, Ruislip had only three ancient roads of any importance of which Ducks Hill Road was the only one in the Northwood hamlet. This followed the course of the modern road from its junction with the Rickmansworth road in the northwest corner of the parish. It then ran south through Ruislip village as Bury Street and continued through the open fields as Down Barns Road (now West End Road) to West End in Northolt.
Northwood had a manorial grange in 1248, which may have occupied the site of the later Northwood Grange. The monks of the Bec Abbey who lived at Manor Farm in Ruislip in the 11th century owned this grange. A few cottages at Northwood are mentioned in the 1565 national survey. Two hundred years later the shape of the hamlet, composed of a few farms and dwellings scattered along the Rickmansworth road, had altered little except for the addition of Holy Trinity church. Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury had 568 acres (230 ha) of Ruislip cleared of forest.
Northwood, however, elevated and separated from the rest of the parish by a belt of woodland, took until the 19th century to form a village - 350 acres (140 ha) in the manor of St. Catherine's were inclosed under the Ruislip Inclosure Act 1769 (9 Geo. 3. c. 67 Pr.) privatizing land which lay west of Ducks Hill Road, including West Wood (now Mad Bess Wood) which was common ground. A further 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) of Ruislip parish were inclosed by the Ruislip Inclosure Act 1804 (44 Geo. 3. c. 45 Pr.). The character of the area in providing for Northwood and Northwood Hills to have the majority of open spaces as opposed to housing land was begun by transfers of open space land to the public as early as 1899. The open nature of the district attracted three hospitals to move or establish in this part of the parish: Mount Vernon Hospital, St. Vincent's Orthopaedic Hospital and Northwood, Pinner and District Hospital.
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