Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Gun shop (& Rifle Range) on Green Lanes
I was telling my son that there used to be a gun shop on Green Lanes when I first moved to the area (1987). He was interested to know more about it, but I can't really remember anything more than that there was a figure in the window that moved a gun up and down.
Can anyone else tell me more?
There was also a funeral parlour nearby, and I used to tell people that Green Lanes had everything! Now it's mainly food and jewellry shops.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Martin (Woodside) on
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I found the old business card.
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Permalink Reply by Paul K on
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Having a neighbourhood gunshop in urban London was getting a bit unfashionable in the 70s/80s [who were the clientele?] and some time in the 1980s [if you recall it still on Green Lanes in 1987 it must have been after that and before 1991 when I mover here] it moved further up Seymour Road to one of the units you can just make out to the right of the photograph on the business card, to be replaced by a chicken shop. Whether this was for security reasons [I suspect the police were none too keen on a gunshop with such lax security] or that a supplier of such niche products didn’t need a high street presence I don’t know, but the windows of the new premises were heavily barred, which is why, if you have ever wondered, the subsequent occupants [e.g. a letting agency, see attached photo] seem to have had absurdly heavy security! It still sold guns and assorted accessories. Despite the bars and locks, in the early 1990s it was broken onto and a lot of guns stolen.
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The clientele were largely the Greek Cypriot community who had a high demographic on the ladder, Finsbury Park and Palmers Green. The latter apparently held the most shotgun certificates in any one place in the UK. The thieves broke in via the above premises, ripped up the floorboards and slipped through the rafters. An extra security feature is having a steel rope (like a bicycle lock) through all of the trigger-guards on the guns in the rack, whether it was cut through or not used I don't know. The shop would indeed attract too much unwanted attention these days.
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Permalink Reply by Desmond Cass on
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Very interesting.
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