Living in Golders Green

Golders Green grew up around its Underground station, which opened in 1907 in open fields and triggered rapid suburban development. Today Golders Green Road and Finchley Road meet near the station, with a busy bus station and a coach stop used by long-distance services to airports and cities around Britain.

The area is best known as the centre of one of London's largest Jewish communities. Golders Green Road is lined with kosher bakeries, delis, restaurants, bookshops and grocers, alongside a growing number of Japanese, Korean and other East Asian restaurants and supermarkets. On Friday evenings and Saturdays, parts of the area are noticeably quieter as many shops close for the Sabbath.

Green space is a major advantage. Golders Hill Park, with its small zoo, flower gardens and café, adjoins Hampstead Heath, and the Heath Extension runs along the edge of Hampstead Garden Suburb, the early twentieth-century planned suburb of Arts and Crafts houses, greens and hedged lanes that borders Golders Green to the north-east.

Trains from Golders Green, on the Edgware side of the Northern line, reach Camden in around ten minutes and the West End and City in around twenty-five. Housing is mainly Edwardian and interwar houses, semi-detached and terraced, plus mansion blocks and purpose-built flats near the station and along Finchley Road. Rents are generally lower than in Hampstead or Belsize Park but higher than in Hendon. Evenings are quiet, with restaurants rather than bars. Golders Green suits families, observant Jewish households, and people who want north London greenery and a reliable tube line in a calm, settled neighbourhood.