The building everyone thinks of when they hear this name isn't actually here.

Colney Hatch

A name with its own history, on a road junction, not a borrowed building.

Colney Hatch was originally the name of a hamlet in the parish of Friern Barnet, first recorded in the early 15th century; 'hatch' probably derives from a hitch-gate of the kind found on forest boundaries, and the hamlet marked the boundary between the parish and the royal hunting ground once known as Enfield Chase. The Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum opened on Friern Barnet Road in 1851, was renamed Friern Mental Hospital in 1937, and became notorious enough that 'Colney Hatch' entered English as a term of abuse associated with madness. Those buildings still stand, redeveloped as housing under the name Princess Park Manor, but they stand under Friern Barnet's address, a mile from here, not this one.

What is actually Colney Hatch's own ground today is Colney Hatch Lane itself, the B550, which runs from Friern Barnet to Muswell Hill, crosses the North Circular Road, and forms the meeting point between the London Boroughs of Barnet and Haringey. No separate parade or high street was found for it beyond that road.

That gap between the name's fame and its actual address is the whole commercial problem here. A search for 'Colney Hatch' can just as easily surface the redeveloped estate a mile away as it can a business genuinely trading on Colney Hatch Lane, so the website's job is to state the road and the service plainly rather than lean on a reputation that belongs to a different building entirely.