Edgware’s early history is inferred from its Saxon place name and recorded variants. It means “Ecgi’s weir”. Ecgi is a Saxon name and the weir relates to a pond where his people would catch fish. A legal record of 1422 mentions “Eggeswer”, in Middlesex, which, being in Latin, may have been written deliberately using an older form of the spelling. Over many years the name slowly became Edgware, and Ecgi as an individual is long since forgotten. By 1489, and the beginning of the Tudor period those writing the name added the “d” and it was Edggeware. The manor does not appear in the Domesday survey, nor has there ever been a manor-house as such. But its centre has traditionally always been Edgwarebury Farm since at least 1216. James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos erected a palace at Cannons Park around 1713 for £250,000 (equivalent to £38,060,976 in 2020) and was by far the wealthiest resident in its pre-20th century history. The ancient parish served by St Margaret’s church was larger than the manor and included parts of Elstree in the north, but not land south of Deans Brook and Edgware Brook, or Little Stanmore parish west of the Edgware Road marking a traditional longest boundary of Edgware. The area of Edgware was little altered and was in the 1930s 3.26 square miles.

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