  In this paper we present a wide-area 610 MHz survey of the ELAIS\,N1 field
with the GMRT, covering an area of 12.8 deg$^2$ at a resolution of 6 arcsec and
with an rms noise of $\sim 40$ $\mu$Jy beam$^{-1}$. This is equivalent to $\sim
20$ $\mu$Jy beam$^{-1}$ rms noise at 1.4 GHz for a spectral index of $-0.75$.
The primary goal of the survey was to study the polarised sky at sub-mJy flux
densities at $<$ GHz frequencies. In addition, a range of other science goals,
such as investigations in to the nature of the low-frequency $\mu$Jy source
populations and alignments of radio jets. A total of 6,400 sources were found
in this region, the vast majority of them compact. The sample jointly detected
by GMRT at 610 MHz and by VLA FIRST at 1.4\,GHz has a median spectral index of
$-0.85 \pm 0.05$ and a median 610 MHz flux density of 4.5 mJy. This region has
a wealth of ancillary data which is useful to characterize the detected
sources. The multi-wavelength cross matching resulted optical/IR counterparts
to $\sim 90$ per~cent of the radio sources, with a significant fraction having
at least photometric redshift. Due to the improved sensitivity of this survey
over preceding ones, we have discovered six giant radio sources (GRS), with
three of them at $z \sim 1$ or higher. This implies that the population of GRS
may be more abundant and common than known to date and if true this has
implications for the luminosity function and the evolution of radio sources. We
have also identified several candidate extended relic sources.
