was increasingly adopted. Parishes had taken over from manorial courts by devolution to their vestries chiefly in the 17th century. Southgate, extending to the north and east, became a local board in 1881, and later an urban district and municipal borough. Friern Barnet civil parish, extending in the other directions, became Friern Barnet Urban District which existed between 1883 and 1965. St Paul's Church, New Southgate was consecrated in 1873, taking part of its parish from Christ Church, Southgate and part from St James the Great, Friern Barnet, the latter transferring land east of the Great Northern Railway. The extant ecclesiastical parish boundary likewise traverses the boroughs of Enfield and Barnet while additionally a small portion is within the London Borough of Haringey, Bounds Green Ward. Friern Hospital Many tens of acres were bought and used by the second county lunatic asylum for Middlesex, as maps of before World War II show. The later mental health hospital on the site closed in 1993. It was redeveloped into two housing estates, Princess Park Manor and Friern Village in New Southgate. Churches The Anglican church in New Southgate is the first locally. It originated in 1870 in a mission to the new district of Colney Hatch by the assistant curate of the church built seven years previously in Southgate. In 1873 it became a consolidated chapelry in parts of Southgate and Friern Barnet parishes, with the vicar of Southgate as patron. Attendance on census Sunday 1903 was 206 in the morning and 265 in the evening. Services were held in a temporary building in Ely Place until a church was built on land between Betstyle Road (later High Road) and Woodland Road probably given by G. Knights-Smith, one of the largest subscribers. The foundation stone was laid in 1872 and the church, built of stone in the Early English style under the direction of George Gilbert Scott, was consecrated in 1873. It consists of chancel with north and south chapels and south bell turret and aisled nave. The fabric, severely damaged by bombing in 1944, was restored by R. S. Morris by 1957. A stone vicarage, built in Woodland Road opposite the church in 1878–80, was demolished in 1964. A parish hall was built to the north of the church in 1908. In 1910 the more stridently Protestant, Baptist United Reform church, Christ Church New Southgate & Friern Barnet was built. The