Ponders End is the southeasternmost part of Enfield, north London, England, around Hertford Road west of the River Lee Navigation. It became industrialised through the 19th century, similar to the Lea Valley in neighbouring Edmonton and Brimsdown, with manufacturing giving way to warehousing in the late-20th century. The area features much social housing, with streets also lined with suburban terraced housing from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

As a result of immigration, the area has become the most ethnically diverse part of Enfield, with the majority of the population having an ethnic minority background at the 2011 census. As of 2021^[update] the area was experiencing large-scale regeneration, with the high-rise Alma Road Estate undergoing demolition and redevelopment. Ponders End had a population of 15,664 as of 2011^[update].

Ponders End is marked on the Ordnance Survey map of 1822. It was recorded in 1593 as Ponders ende meaning the "end or quarter of the parish associated with the Ponder family" from the Middle English ende. John Ponder is mentioned in a document of 1373; the surname is believed to mean a "keeper of, or dweller by, a fish-pond or mill-pond".

Ponders End once was rural Middlesex, but in 1840 the Northern and Eastern Railway (now part of Greater Anglia National Rail) station opened, which slowly attracted development to the area.

All but a southern belt of the district was in Enfield, as the south lay in Edmonton. These parishes diverged into civil and ecclesiastical parishes at a split of functions in the 1860s, which saw the final secularisation of government, the disestablishment of the vestries following the increase in Poor Law Unions in the hundred years before.

Through the 19th century the area became industrialised, due to its straight road and waterway network up and down the Lea Valley, including the 17th century River Lee Navigation. The first major firm to arrive was Grout, Baylis & Co, who were established in Norwich in 1807 as crape manufacturers, the material being used for widows' weeds. They opened a dyeing and finishing plant in Ponders End two years later. Crape went out of fashion by late Victorian times, and the factory closed in 1894. The buildings were taken over by the United Flexible Tubing Company.

In 1866 the London Jute Works Company established a factory on the Navigation in a desolate area known locally as Spike Island. Many of the new employees came from Dundee, the traditional centre of the jute industry in Scotland. The jute works closed in 1882, to be replaced by the Ediswan factory. Over the years the factory was enlarged, eventually covering 11.50 acres (4.65 ha), and employing many people, notably girls, from the area. Ediswan produced electric lamps, and the factory was colloquially known as The Lamp. They also manufactured appliances for the shipping and aviation industries, mechanical pianos and butter makers.

To the south of Ponders End Lock a factory making white lead was built in 1893. Further south of that factory, the Cortecine works produced floor-cloth and carpet backing. By 1906 over 2000 people were employed in local factories. Another major industry in the late 19th century was horticulture. Tomatoes and cucumbers were the principal produce, but flowers and fruit were also grown in the many orchards and greenhouses to the north of the locality. During World War I, a huge munitions factory, the Ponders End Shell Works, was built in Wharf Road. The factory building was sold after the war. Further factories were built in the 1930s alongside the newly-built Great Cambridge Road.