Editing Edgware (section)

===Early economic history===
Industry played a minor role in the economy of Edgware. There was a cattle and pleasure fair from 1760s to 1860s with horse racing between 1834 and 1855.<ref name=ec/> Ribbon development along this part of the A5 road included development in the parish of Edgware to the east of the road, and Little Stanmore to the west of it.<ref name="bh"/>

Gravel pits were probably being worked by 1802 and certainly by 1834, partly at least by the labour of the able-bodied poor as a parish employment, and in 1963 gravel was still being extracted on the eastern side of the parish. In 1831 there were no persons engaged in manufacturing in the parish, and in fact there were no industries until in 1900 the firm of Chas. Wright Ltd., manufacturing engineers, moved from [[Clerkenwell]]: employed for the UK government in [[World War I]] and after this it struck 2,000,000 [[Mons Star|Mons or 1914 Star]]s and [[Victory Medal (United Kingdom)|Victory Medal]]s. Its largest production in [[World War II]] was for the metal parts of respirator filters: making 94½ million between 1937 and 1943. In 1963 the company was chiefly engaged in the manufacture of car registration plates. There were 70 workmen employed, together with an office staff of 30. The firm of A.E.W. Ltd., founded in 1923 and established in Edgware in 1927, at the start of the 1970s employed 50 people and manufactured laboratory and industrial electric ovens and furnaces.<ref name=ec>{{cite web |url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22455 |title=Edgware: Economic and social history |editor1-first=T. F. T. |editor1-last=Baker |editor2-first=J. S. |editor2-last=Cockburn |editor3-first=R. B. |editor3-last=Pugh |author1-first=Diane K. |author1-last=Bolton |author2-first=H. P. F. |author2-last=King |author3-first=Gillian |author3-last=Wyld |author4-first=D. C. |author4-last=Yaxley |publisher=Institute of Historical Research |date=1971 |work=A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 4 |access-date=5 November 2014 }}</ref>

{{blockquote|This place, from its situation within an easy distance of the metropolis, and the excellence of the road to it through an almost uninterrupted succession of elegant villas and agreeable scenery, has become the residence of numerous opulent and respectable families.|[[Samuel Lewis (publisher)|S. Lewis]]|''A Topographical Dictionary of England'', 1848<ref>Lewis, S. (1848). ''A Topographical Dictionary of England''. London: Samuel Lewis, p.145.</ref>}}

Edgware had few residents for its size but saw some prosperous commerce: in 1870, for instance, there were six [[insurance industry|insurance]] agents in the village. The opening of the Great Northern Railway branch in 1867, however, seems to have had little effect on the expansion of the village, and plans to extend the railway met with strong local opposition. A Bill to establish a line from Watford to Edgware, brought before Parliament in 1896 and 1897, was opposed by residents, and it was said that the real harm of the railways was the opening up of building sites 'which are quickly covered with architectural atrocities'. In this time the parish had begun to display a tendency to split into an opulent north and a workaday south, separated by an agricultural [[buffer zone]]. By 1896 several large houses had been built in the Elstree area or along the Elstree&ndash;[[Chipping Barnet|Barnet]] road, while the old village gained the post office, the infants' school, the station, and the Railway Hotel. The southern part of the parish was unable to repel the tide of suburban development, but the threatened distinction was to a large extent averted by the quality of buildings between the two world wars.<ref name=ec/>