Pinner

Pinner is an area in Greater London, in the borough of Harrow, lying 12 miles (19 km) northwest from Charing Cross. It is within the bounds of the historic county of Middlesex, and located close to the border with the borough of Hillingdon. The population of Pinner, which includes Pinner Green, Hatch End and Pinnerwood, was 31,130 as of 2011.[2]

For other uses, see Pinner (disambiguation).

Pinner
Pinner High Street
Pinner Location within Greater London
Population	31,130 (2011 Census[1]
OS grid reference	TQ115895
• Charing Cross	12.2 miles (19.6 km) SE
London borough	Harrow
Ceremonial county	Greater London
Region	London
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	PINNER
Postcode district	HA5
Dialling code	020
Police	Metropolitan
Fire	London
Ambulance	London
UK Parliament	Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner
London Assembly	Brent and Harrow

History

High Street, pictured June 1991

Pinner was originally a hamlet, first recorded in 1231 as Pinnora,[3] although the already archaic -ora (meaning 'hill') suggests its origins lie no later than c.900.[4] The name Pinn is shared with the River Pinn, which runs through the middle of Pinner.

The oldest part of the town lies around the fourteenth-century parish church of St. John the Baptist,[5] at the junction of the present day Grange Gardens, The High Street and Church Lane. The earliest surviving private dwelling, East End Farm Cottage, dates from the late fifteenth century.[6]

The village expanded rapidly between 1923 and 1939 when a series of garden estates, including the architecturally significant Pinnerwood estate conservation area – encouraged by the Metropolitan Railway – grew around its historic core.[7] It was largely from this time onwards that the area (including Hatch End, which forms the northeastern part of Pinner) assumed much of its present-day suburban character. The area is now continuous with neighbouring suburban districts including Rayners Lane and Eastcote.

Pinner contains a large number of homes built in the 1930s Art Deco style, the most grand of which is the Grade II listed Elm Park Court at the junction of West End Lane and Elm Park Road.

Pinner has had an annual street fair held in May since 1336, when it was granted by Royal Charter by Edward III;.[8] Pinner is one of few places in the United Kingdom that still holds an annual fair.

Governance

Harrow Council has been governed by the Labour Party since 2014. Pinner has two wards, Pinner and Pinner South, each represented by three councillors. Pinner is in the Brent and Harrow constituency for the London Assembly which has been represented since 2008 by Navin Shah (Labour). Since the 2010 general election, Pinner has been part of the Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner parliamentary constituency, most recently represented by Nick Hurd (Conservative).[9]

Demography

The lake at Pinner Memorial Park

Pinner is both a religiously and culturally mixed area, with the ethnic minority population having grown significantly since the 1970s.[10] Pinner ward nonetheless had the highest concentration of people describing themselves as white in the London Borough of Harrow, at 62 per cent of the population in 2011. In 2013 the Pinner South ward had the next highest proportion of white people at 59.4 per cent.[11] Various churches and a synagogue serve the religious needs of the community.

Parish Church

Pinner's St John the Baptist parish church was consecrated in 1321, but built on the site of an earlier Christian place of worship. The west tower and south porch date from the 15th century.[12]

Transport

George V Avenue dual carriageway, which cuts through Pinner Park

Rail

Pinner Underground station is on the Metropolitan line in zone 5.

Hatch End is a national rail station.

Buses

Route	Start	End	Operator
183	Golders Green	Pinner	London Sovereign
H11	Harrow	Mount Vernon Hospital	London Sovereign
H12	South Harrow	Stanmore	London Sovereign
H13	Ruislip Lido	Northwood Hills	Metroline
398[13]	Ruislip	Wood End, Northolt	London United Busways

Neighbouring communities

Pinner includes Pinner Village at its centre, along with the localities of Pinner Green and Pinnerwood Park Conservation Area[14] to the north. To the north east is the larger area of Hatch End, served by Hatch End railway station (originally opened as Pinner).

In popular culture

The Pinner fair held in Pinner High Street features in John Betjeman's 1973 BBC film, Metro-Land.[15] The BBC sitcom May to December was set in Pinner, and its exterior shots were recorded in the High Street.[16] During the 1990s the children's TV series of Aquila was filmed in and around Pinner, particularly at the local Cannon Lane School. Chucklevision, the Children's TV series based on the Chuckle Brothers also filmed in Pinner. The film Nowhere Boy had a number of scenes filmed in Pinner, including outside the Queens Head Pub, Pinner High street,[17] and on Woodhall Gate, which stood in for John Lennon's childhood home. Pinner has also been used for the BBC sitcom My Hero and the Channel 4 sitcom The Inbetweeners.[18] Filming for the movie The Theory of Everything took place outside the St John the Baptist Church on Pinner High Street. The 2012 film May I Kill U?, written and directed by Stuart Urban and starring Kevin Bishop, was also filmed in Pinner.[19]

Episode 5 of Season 3 of the British black comedy-drama spy thriller television series Killing Eve is titled ‘Are you from Pinner?’[20]

Literature

Edward Lear makes reference to Pinner[21] in More Nonsense Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, etc:

There was an old person of Pinner,
As thin as a lath, if not thinner;
They dressed him in white,
And roll'd him up tight,
That elastic old person of Pinner.

H. G. Wells mentions Pinner in War of the Worlds:

He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at Stanmore, who had come in the small hours from a dangerous case at Pinner, and heard at some railway station on his way of the Martian advance.

Sport and leisure

Pinner has a rugby union team, Pinner and Grammarians RFC, a member club of the Rugby Football Union. It is the most junior team to have supplied a President to the RFU.[22] Pinner also has a cricket team, Pinner Cricket Club,[23] and a youth football club, Pinner United FC.[24] The area also has a golf course, Pinner Golf course.[25]

In addition to numerous restaurants and a number of public houses, Pinner has an amateur theatre group, Pinner Players, who have been performing in the area since 1936 and currently stage productions at Pinner Village Hall[26] off Chapel Lane.[27]

Notable people

• Ronnie Barker and David Suchet were both one-time owners of 17th-century Elmdene in Church Lane.[28]
• Samuel and Isabella Beeton lived on the Woodridings estate between 1856 and 1862, during which time Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management was published.[29]
• Derek Bell, motor racing driver, was born in Pinner.
• Rhodes Boyson lived in Pinner.
• Leslie Bricusse, best known for his partnership with Anthony Newley, was born in Pinner.
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote Eugene Aram at Pinner Wood House in 1832.[30]
• Ivy Compton-Burnett was born in the village in 1884.[31]
• Daniel Dancer, the famed miser, was born in Pinner, then a rural area in the county of Middlesex, in 1716.
• Charlie Dore, singer, was born here.
• Jo Durden-Smith was born here in 1941.[32]
• Daniel Finkelstein was a Pinner resident and created Baron Finkelstein of Pinner, in 2013.[33]
• W. S. Gilbert, though he did not live in Pinner, was a magistrate there from 1893 onwards.[34]
• Martin Gould, professional snooker player.
• Tony Hatch, composer of the Petula Clark hit "Downtown" and many other television themes, including the Neighbours theme, was born here.
• Bob Holness, the former host of quiz show Blockbusters, lived here.[35]
• Peter Jacobs, Olympic fencer, was born here in 1938.
• Elton John was educated at Pinner Wood Junior School, Reddiford School and Pinner County Grammar School.[36]
• Norman Kember is a longtime resident of the town.[37]
• Brian Lane (1917–1942) grew up in the village.
• Simon LeBon, vocalist of post-punk rock band Duran Duran, grew up locally and attended the Pinner County Grammar School.
• Caroline Alice Lejeune, film critic, lived here with her husband Edward Roffe Thompson, a journalist.
• Jane March grew up here before moving to the United States.
• Agnes Marshall, whom most credit with the invention of edible ice cream cones, had a country home there and died there in 1905.
• Patrick Moore, the television presenter and astronomer, was born in Pinner in 1923, before moving with his parents to Bognor Regis when he was six months old.[38]
• Horatia Nelson, daughter of Lord Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton, lived in Pinner from 1860 until her death in 1881.[29]
• Henry James Pye (poet laureate) retired to East End House in 1811.[3]
• William Heath Robinson, who lived in Moss Lane between 1913 and 1918[39], has a museum dedicated to him at West House in Pinner Memorial Park.
• Michael Rosen, who writes children's books such as We're Going on a Bear Hunt, lived in Pinner from the time he was born in 1946, until 1962.[40]
• Chris Roycroft-Davis is a resident.
• David Sutch, who lived in nearby South Harrow, is buried in Pinner New Cemetery.[41]
• Gordon Waller of Peter and Gordon lived with his family in the house called Elton, Elm Park Road, and went to St John's prep school before boarding at Westminster School.
• Molly Weir, best known for her role as the long-running character Hazel the McWitch in the BBC TV series Rentaghost, lived in Pinner until her death in 2004.[42]
• Bruce Welch, guitarist in The Shadows, lived in Pinner.

See also

• Pinner House
• Pinner Underground Station

Notes

1. Pinner is made up of 3 wards in the London Borough of Harrow: Hatch End, Pinner, and Pinner South. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 9 June 2014.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 9 June 2014.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
3. Clarke, A History of Pinner, p.11
4. Clarke, A History of Pinner, p.1
5. Clarke, A History of Pinner, p.34. The church was originally a chapel of ease to St Mary's Church in Harrow, and was first mentioned in 1234. It was rebuilt in the early fourteenth-century, and rededicated in 1321. The parish became independent of St Mary's in 1766, when the first perpetual curate was appointed; not until the Wilberforce Act of 1868 did it appoint its first vicar, one William Hind.
6. Clarke, A History of Pinner, p.18
7. Clarke, A History of Pinner, pp.176–184
8. Clarke, A History of Pinner, p.25
9. www.statistics.gov.uk. Retrieved 14 August 2008.
10. Muir, Hugh (8 July 2016). "Black flight: how England's suburbs are changing colour". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
11. "A look at Harrow's wards: 2011 Census second release". Harrow Council. February 2013. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
12. Weinreb, Ben and Hibbert, Christopher (1992). The London Encyclopaedia (reprint ed.). Macmillan. p. 745.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
13. Route 398 serves stops in Pinner near its southern border, but not the town centre itself.
14. "Harrow - Pinnerwood Park Estate Conservation Area Appraisal 29 October 2008" (PDF). Harrow Council. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
15. The Best of Betjeman (2000 ed.). Penguin Books. 2000. p. 228.
16. Campbell, Mark (28 August 1999). "Torquay: the horrible truth". The Independent. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
17. Film London. "December 2009 – Pinner High Street". Film London. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
18. "Pinner Guide". AllInLondon.co.uk. Retrieved 14 March 2012.
19. addictedtoeddieblogspot. "October 2013". addictedtoeddieblogspot. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
20. Harrington, Delia (10 May 2020). "Killing Eve Season 3 Episode 5 Review: Are You From Pinner?". Den of Geek. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
21. Lear, Edward (1872). More Nonsense Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, etc. London: R J Bush.
22. "Rugby Football History". www.rugbyfootballhistory.com.
23. "Pinner Cricket Club home page". pinnercc.hitssports.com.
24. "Pinner United FC". pinner-utd-fc.
25. "PINNER HILL GOLF CLUB LTD". www.pinnerhillgc.co.uk.
26. "Pinner Village Hall: Available to hire for all occasions". www.pinnervillagehall.org.uk.
27. "Pinner Players Theatre Company". Pinner Players Theatre Company.
28. Pinner Local History. Retrieved 12 August 2008
29. Clarke, A History of Pinner, p.155
30. Pinner Local History Society. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
31. Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12 August 2008.
32. Obituary of Jo Durden-Smith, The Independent, 5 June 2007. Retrieved 14 August 2008.
33. The Lord Finkelstein, OBE, Debrett's. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
34. Views of W. S. Gilbert Archived 25 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 12 August 2008.
35. BBC Kent: Profile of Bob Holness. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
36. Elton John official website Archived 15 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 12 August 2008.
37. 'No word on fate of Iraq peace hostages', The Independent, 12 December 2005. Retrieved 14 August 2005.
38. www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
39. Clarke, A History of Pinner, p. 192
40. ":: Michael Rosen - The Website ::".
41. www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
42. The Gazetteer for Scotland. Retrieved 7 August 2008.

References

• Patricia A. Clarke, A History of Pinner, Phillimore, 2004 ISBN 1-86077-287-0

External links

• Pinner Local History Society