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A Palace for Us: Woodberry Down remembered
Just east of Manor House is situated a very large housing estate, Woodberry Down, comprising the area within a loop of the New River.
In 1934, despite powerful opposition, the London County Council compulsorily purchased all of Woodberry Down and the construction of an ‘estate of the future’ began after the war. 57 blocks of flats were erected on 64 acres of land and the project was completed in 1962.
The 2,500 homes had a mix of deck access and lobby access with the majority being two or three bedroom flats. Woodberry Down school, now closed, became one of Britain’s first purpose-built comprehensives in 1955.
Renowned artist, Tom Hunter, whose beautiful photograph Woman Reading Possession Order will be familiar to many of you, has been working with older residents of Woodberry Down to collect their memories of living there and create a film that bears testament to an age when decent, plentiful council housing was an aspiration for political leaders.
A review of the film says:
This is a magical film. It weaves the memories of people who grew up in east London and have lived on the estate since it opened into a silvery thread of meaning illuminated by dramatisations of their experiences filmed in the aged, but dignified, Woodberry Down buildings and public spaces. The estate, begun in 1946 and completed in 1963, was like a "palace" to those who remembered the East End slums, remembers one participant. But the film is also a palace of memory. Contemporary art often seems obsessed with youth: here it listens to the stories the old have to tell.
It evokes all our stories. Britain in 1945, out of the ruins of war, built the welfare state that clever rich kids are now so casually pulling apart. Estates like Woodberry Down embody an ideal of decent housing for all that was born out of the miseries of the 1930s and terror of the 1940s. A Palace for Us gently and acutely bears witness to this history that is now being dismantled.
An excerpt from the film can be viewed here:
A Palace for Us from Bellyfeel on Vimeo.
The full film is due to be available at Tom Hunter's website in the near future
Links: Woodberry Down on HOL
Tags for Forum Posts: Woodberry Down
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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Liz, mention Woodberry Down School and all I can see is Michael Marland's bow tie. My wife joined Clissold Park School in 1980 just when Woodberry Down and Clissold Park were about to amalgamate when all teachers from both schools had to go through the throes of resigning and reapplying for their jobs. Jack Whitehead, something of a local historian, was a colleague for just one year while the schools were more or less sharing sites and classes, before the merged schools emerged as Stoke Newington School with Robin Chambers getting the headship while Michael Marland went off to head the three-sited North Westminster. An interesting memoir here from Jack of Woodberry Down School's part in comprehensivisation etc. He taught there 1956 - 1980, from one year after it opened until it merged.
www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/schools/woodberry/index.htm Excuse lack of link.
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Permalink Reply by L F T Snowflake on
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FAscinating how all this interlinks. 'North Westminster' was an amalgamation of North Paddington Secondary School in Harrow Road (where one of my sisters went) and Sarah Siddons (where my other sister went) and Rutherford School (where my cousin went). I grew up in Walterton Road, less than five minutes walk from it and before it was built, the site it was on was a narrow collection of streets with small, picturesque cottages. I used to play down those streets when I was in primary school and attended the nursery in Marylands Road which was at the corner of the site. My older sister moved into one of the cottages when she first got married and in 2006, I taught ICT at North Westminster once a week when I used to go there as part of a link up with the SEN school I was HOD of ICT in at the time.
Today of course, North Westminster is no more and is now the Paddington Academic. And of course, Woodberry Down has been knocked down in part to make way for the Skinners Academy. Funny how life sometimes has a funny way of all linking up.
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That was where I first lived in this area. I am from Paddington originally and I moved into Woodberry Down when I came down from Oxford to finished my education at the LSE in 98 and stayed living there until 2005 . I quickly realised I had landed in vegetarian Heaven. I used to love just pottering along Green Lanes, wandering in and out of the food shops on one side of the road until I got to Wood Green and then I would cross back and potter back down again. By the end of it, I would be weighed down with various bags full of different food things that I would take home and experiment with.
In 2005, I moved to the chavs-with-money 'village' to look after a house for a friend.
Needless to say when the Cuffley 'engagement' came to an end and after a horrible period living in the Town Called Malice that is Potters Bar, I came back here like a shot. I did try and get a place on the Woodberry Down, but now of course they've all been sold to buy to let landlords who want a fortune for the places. So, I settled for the Bohemian squalor of a bedsit on The Ladders - which I love even more.
I'll look forward to this film with great interest.
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I'm afraid my memoires of Woodberry Down estate are not so romantic. My Nan moved there in the late 60s and lived there for over thirty years. As a child I often stayed with her at weekends. My Nan had to deal with chronic damp walls and floods from a sewage pipe that ran INSIDE her flat from all the floors above.
But one fond memory I do have of the place was waking up on Saturday mornings there to the sound of the Victora line trains running underneath. Strangely, the traffic on Seven Sisters Road always seemed to suddenly go quiet before this great, powerful rushing noise howled through the flat as the train raced through. I loved it.
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