Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Anyone know what used to occupy this plot behind Conway Road?
I walked down Conway Road yesterday evening and saw an entrance to a site which I imagine must have been a workshop/light factory. It's now housing, called Priscilla Place. I read that it used to be a fire station, which would fit in since the fire station building is the one fronting on to Conway Raod, by the bend in the road at the western end of the plot. A practice yard, stabling for the horses before mechanisation? Anyone know the story?
Below are a couple of photos from ground level:
By the by, I also noticed this nice old survivor shop front just opposite, on Conway Road:
And it's companion a few doors down:
Seems like there was a thriving little area of shops - here's an old picture of one just round the corner in Etherley.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Geoff Dent on
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Congratulations - What a wonderfully detailed bit of research, a true labour of love I guess. Thank you John.
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Permalink Reply by Tina Eager on
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That Fire Station used to be a public bath house at least in the 60s. I remember making a weekly walk down there from home (Terront Road) and a cold, damp walk back (especially in winter) with clothes that didn't go on right because I wasn't properly dry. Having a bath there was great - really big deep baths half full of hot (ish) water. I think adults got more water than kids. There was a lady who sold things like tiny bars of soap and sachets of shampoo, and I think you could hire a towel as well, though we always took our own.
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Perfectly recalled there Tina......those cold, damp/rainy winter days trudging back home after a lovely hot bath. I lived in Harringay Road so slightly further away. Some find it hard to believe there were such places as public baths.
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Brilliant stuff John.........if you're still around ? I'm 9 years behind your post. Memory jerker as I lived around that area and schooled at Woodlands Park. I wonder what Smollett Montgomerie Eddington was and looked like. Hope he lived up to such an amazing name.
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Sorry for the delay, but I have just turned 65 and it was about time to look up some of the old places.
I was born at 11 Rowley Road in December 1948 and lived there until I was 13, when we moved to Enfield.
At the age of about 10, I used to play in that Tottenham Borough Council yard at weekends with a boy Called Roy Wandless, who lived in a cottage inside the yard (His Dad had a supervisory job for TBC). The other kids from Rowley Road who played there were John Martin, Bernard Jenkins and Barry Reed.
There were bunkers of sand and granite around the yard, which made it an ideal play area from a kids perspective, and a darkish building with a "workman's mess room" in which we used to listen to scary stories from the bigger kids.
The fire station occupied only a small part of the site to the extreme west and could not be accessed from the yard (If it could we would have been all over it). To the front of the fire station was a large road area made with a very smooth asphalt surface that we used to roller skate on at other times during those long drawn out hot summers that only seem to have existed as a child.
Other dangerous place where we played were the excavation tunnels of the then new Victoria underground line (adjacent to Chestnuts park in Black Boy Lane, the bombed out buildings inside Chestnuts park, along the railway lines at the end of Stanhope Gardens, and over the wall at St Anns hospital to get bag loads of conkers from the abundant trees they had.
Me and another mate used to travel all over London on buses and tubes for half-a-crown on a Red Rover ticket. I also used to walk to Markfield school in South Tottenham every day and never felt the worst for it.
Happy Days!
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Hi Christopher - Great bit of nostalgia from you! I lived in Woodlands and didn't go through Conway much as my direct route to the park was Cranleigh Rd. I knew of the yard as I related previously - perhaps you were one of those "older kids" (I'm a youngster at 62...) who told us that ringing the bell on the gate brought a steamroller out!! Seriously though - I don't recall the Vic Line tunnels you mention. I knew the line went somewhere nearby but hadn't realised it was that close. Amazed that one got past me as that's just the sort of thing that would have got me into all sorts of trouble...... Oh, before I forget - Happy New Year all!!
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Thanks Hugh and Geoff - Yes we had it announced in assembly at Woodlands Park Junior School, (You would have gone there Geoff - Remember Mr Lunny and Mr Shepherd?), that the road between the park and the school would be disrupted (It was) and we should keep clear. Red rag to a bull eh! As for the bell and steam roller - we never told anyone about the bell but were always playing on the steam roller. I remember Roy told us that we should not play on it, but he also told me not to point the syphon hose at his tadpoles when we were cleaning the water in his fish tank. Happy New Year!
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Excellent memories/stories/adventures Geoff & Christopher. Not an electronic gadget in sight and all the better for it!
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Permalink Reply by Mavic Starfish on
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Red Bus rovers, I was just telling my kids that virtually our whole class would meet up and go into the West End and spend all day exploring by jumping on and off the old Routemasters. Bundle!!!!!!!!!!! Health and safety was a long way off!
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Hello again Christopher. Just to be confusing, my school was West Green even though it was at the junction of Woodlands Park Road and West Green - I never did work out why your school bore the name of my road!! Be that as it may.... You have really set my "little grey cells" a puzzle concerning your mention of the Victoria Line excavations. Many years past I worked for LTE and understood that the stretch of Vic Line track between Finsbury Park and Seven Sisters actually ran under Seven Sisters Road which is some way South of Chestnuts Park and Black Boy Lane. Sadly my fairly huge collection of maps, old and new, does not help as the surface lines are marked but not the course of the tunnels between LT stations. I realise this may be a bit of a tall order, but can you recall if the tunnels you mention were access or "running" tunnels? Living in Sussex nearly 50 years on it's hardly the most important thing in my life but I love a mystery!! Cheers
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Hi Geoff. I never knew any more than it was a tunnel for the Victoria Line. It was close to the St Ann's Road/Black Boy Lane entrance. This would have been at a very early stage of the line's construction, so it may not have been the most significant of the many excavations carried out, but we kids did get down there and play along a tunnel. My older brother and sister tell me that the bombed out building that we played in, in Chestnuts Park, was an air raid shelter. We moved to Enfield shortly after construction of the Victoria Line started. I hope you find out more about the tunnel and I wish you luck with "Unearthing" it.
Chris
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