Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
This isn't f****ing Green Lanes!
I've been making the case for what our Neighbourhood's called for five years now. My logic is simple. I think it matters that we have a shared identity that we're proud of.
It's not been plain sailing. The Council have been trying to change our 130 year old name to Green Lanes for some time now. I was told by a Council Cabinet member, Nilgun Canver, that Harringay doesn't exist. Then there was the whole bridge banner thing.
So far this year's been a good year. The south side of the new bridge banner is going to say Harringay. Bish-bosh. Simple. (Update: Errr...not so quick Hugh. Cabinet member, Councillor Nilgun Canver got in there at the last minute and took it on herself to change this!)
Then a few weeks back I came across a resident in another area who was fed up with his neighbourhood being rechristened by estate agents. So, to find out what the man in the street thought, he walked 4.5km down his high street, stopping every 200M to ask 10 people at each stop "Excuse me, what area is this?". He published the results on a website called thisisntfuckingdalston.co.uk.
Great idea for Harringay, I thought. Let's find out what the 'man in the street' really thinks. So I copied the original idea and walked down Green Lanes from Manor House to Turnpike Lanes, stopping every 200 metres to ask 10 randomly selected strangers, "Excuse me, what area is this please". I wasn't expecting to have my day made, but I was very pleasantly very surprised.
So, Council, are you listening? This isn't me. This isn't a self-selecting group of digitally connected HoL users. This is 120 randomly selected 'men in the street' and their verdict is that this isn't Green Lanes.
I was scrupulously fair, not discriminating about who I asked. The only results I didn't record were those when the language barrier made it impossible to complete the Q&A.
In the chart below, the scale on the left shows the number of people who responded to each choice.
Click the picture to enlarge.
Tags for Forum Posts: harringay name
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ruth on
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But they might be street amblers or strollers or passers by or even kerb walkers, inspectors, crawlers
.... Could get complicated
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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So how are we spelling FUCKING then - with two **s or three*** - and are you having chips with that?
Yours,
The personal entity on the Clapham Omnibus, con ó sin cojones.
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The same survey walking through the passage would actually be really interesting. We are in Lausanne Road and I would have ticked Hornsey without hesitation if asked. It's on our full address as well (like the school in Falkland Road).
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I suspect you're not the only one who'd say Hornsey, Dane66. And yes, if I have the time on further walks home I'll do the Passage or Wightman and some other roads too.
As to your "full address", you're very probably referring to the address as determined by the Post Office postal district. All of N8 is in the Hornsey postal district, including Crouch End. For me that's just another administrative district and is as useful as a ward for determining an area, Crouch End is still Crouch End and not Hornsey whatever Post Office district they were lumped into many decades ago.
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Ask people where they do their shopping or where they go and eat in this area and I'd imagine the majority would refer to the 'area' as Green Lanes. Isn't the proposed change of name on the sign simply a piece of marketing to attract people to the area to shop and eat? I don't see that as a bad thing. What you actually call the area you live in is fairly individual, apparently, given your survey. Then, the very fact that that in these replies there's debate about where Harringay actually is, just goes to show that your council man is essentially right that it does not actually 'exist' in any real sense. What are you going to start to do - tell people they're not from Harringay because they live on Turnpike Lane or Manor House? Bring in 'immigration' controls before you can register on HoL?! Fantastic to encourage community spirit, but giving names to it, I don't think is either the way to go or something to worry about. In fact, if anything it excludes the people who say they live near Green Lanes, on Fairfax Rd, Hornsey, Londinium, my bedroom.
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Thanks for those thoughts, Andrew.
What I wanted to do, was to offer a reflection of what people in the street call the area. So I asked people in the street what they call the area. Can't say fairer than that, surely.
The name change on the banner reflects the name that the area has used since about 1880 and, it now seems, is common usage.
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I think having two overground stations with the name Harringay in them further reinforces the Harringay identity.
Odd that some of my official post comes with Finsbury Park on it...
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Again, I think the "Finsbury Park" in your address is a Post Office district thing.
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The P O have odd things going on with them. I have always liked being Harringay even if administratively it is usually absent. Maybe there is a sense of being that bit special!
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on
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It is pleasing to see that the Wikipedia article on the London Postal Area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_postcode_area) correctly lists N8, N4 and N15 as each covering part of Harringay in the borough of Haringey.
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