A Hornsey Park Clock Shop and How the Needs of Road Transport have been Plaguing the Turnpike / Wightman Junction for over a Century

I came across this clock the other day. So I had to ferret around a little to find out about it. 3 Hornsey Park Road was on the corner on the western side of the road at the junction with Turnpike Lane. You can see number 3 Hornsey Park Road marked, just behind 2 Clarendon Road in the middle of the section of the 1944 OS map below. (Wightman Road enters the map, unmarked, in the bottom left-hand corner).

You can see the 1944 map overlaid on Google Maps below.

Looking at the old map, I wondered why there was no 1 Hornsey Park Road. According to both the 1893 OS Map (section shown below) and to the oldest Kelly's Directory I can find (1892), number 1 seems never to have been built. The map below suggests that a plot had been set out, but had never been built on.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will also notice the group of buildings on Turnpike Lane between Clarendon and Hornsey Park Roads, as well as the one just to the west of Clarendon,  are shown in 1893 but have disappeared by 1944. (You might also see that the last building on the western side of Clarendon Road, before it turned a corner was a Smithy.)

These buildings are the subject of the photo below taken in around 1905.

Jutting out on the right of the photo is the Unwin Arms (on the corner of Harringay Grove).  The building jutting out on the left would have been the one standing on the western corner with Clarendon Road. Beyond that is the terrace that ran between Clarendon and Hornsey Park Roads.

In fact the buildings were demolished not long after this photo was taken. And the photo shows why. The road at this point was very narrow and a plan had been approved to run trams along it and up to Muswell Hill. So, for the first, but not the last time, in the Twentieth century, this junction was the victim of the needs of the dominant form of road transport of the period.

The 1914 OS map below, shows the area less than a decade after the trams started running. The tram lines are also shown.

So much for the fate of Turnpike Lane. What about this clock?

From what I've been able to discern, Arthur George Rolland took on the premises at 3 Hornsey Park Road in 1938. 

The shop was trading as M.A. Crawford, Shirt and Collar Dresser in 1892 (this trade description was applied to someone who ironed shirts and starched collars by machine as part of a laundry process). I assume this business would probably have been the first occupant of the building. By 1896, it had been taken over by (or become) the Hygienic Laundry Company. By 1902, it was the Hornsey Hygienic Steam Laundry Company. It continued to trade under this name until at least 1910. By 1914, no occupant is shown. 

Shortly after the war, it had opened as John Linsell, Watch Repairer. By 1925, Frank Henry Axon had taken over the watch business. Two years later it was being run by Charles Loveday, who continued to run it for the next ten years. Then in 1938, Arthur Rolland acquired the business.

Rolland was born in 1903 in Islington, the third of seven children. By the time of the 1911 census, the family were living in Seaford Road, South Tottenham. 

He married Henrietta Pace in 1925, aged just 18. Thirteen years later he took on the Hornsey Park Road business, where he traded as a Watch and Clock Repairer and Gun Master.

By 1945, he and Henrietta had moved to 27 Turnpike Lane. I can find no evidence that he traded from the shop at that address. So it may be that the couple just took a flat above the shop. 

By 1963, Henrietta no longer shows on the records. So either she had died by then or the couple had separated. Arthur continued to live there till at least 1981, but had apparently moved away by 1983. 

As to the clock, I assume that Arthur didn't make it. It's likely that he either used it as a shop prop or bought a clock that had already been manufactured and stamped it for sale with his own branding. 

The fate of the property itself probably needs no explanation. It was lost during the works to align Wightman and Hornsey Park Roads during the 1970s. Numbers 3 to 21 Hornsey Park Road were demolished along with all the houses on Clarendon Road. The southern zig-zag of Clarendon Road was rotated anti-clockwise 90 degrees and shifted about a hundred yards north to its current position. It now meets Hornsey Park Rod where the frontages of 17 and 19 Hornsey Park Road once stood.