Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Crouch End Heights !!!!?????
Estate agents (Prickett & Ellis of Crouch End - where else) have now given the name "Crouch End Heights" to the north (higher) part of Stapleton Hall Road. See the attached. The property in question at 194 is just down the road from Quernmore Road. What next Finsbury Park village?. There was an attempt at Stroud Green Village, but this came to nothing.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I was born in Sunderland just as huge social housing construction started. At that time town's areas were still largely defined by the villages that had been taken into the borders of the town, churches at the heart of an area and the functions of areas of the town. So people said they lived in places they called Town, Docks, St Chads, Town Moor and so on. Despite the new housing estates filling in the gaps between, old neighbourhoods kept their identity and boundaries. I absolutley knew when I walked from Hendon to Ashbrooke where the boundaries lay. I think that this was to do with the fact the people were still alive who knew them as villages and settlements and used those identities when talking about the places they lived in. In more recent visits back home I've seen the descriptions of those area become more fluid, perhaps as the original inhabitants have died and newer people moved into the area without that sense of just knowing that this is one place and that, even though a street away, is another,
Though some newer functional naming has happened. I know someone who says they live out at Nissan, near the vast Nissan factory there.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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With your comment, Michael, this discussion begins usefully to enlarge its scope.
The naming of place names is an onion skin process with myriad factors jostling together over time and place. Not least in huge, rapidly expanding and churning cities. And where history, geography, religion, memory and sentiment contend not just with estate agents, but political, administrative and commercial power.
And financial power. Let's not forget those splendid developers and their architects. Who often seem to focus on squeezing maximum profit from the minimum of land. Although to be fair, they may retain some of the old names in an attempt to give a little pretend historical character to their anytown new blocks. Perhaps with some old buildings across the street from their new malls.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Before being too tough on estate agents and developers, remember they only provide what sells. They fold in those romantic sounding names because that's what people want to buy. The finger should be pointed at the rest of us (well many of the rest of us). It's a little bit too easy just to blame property money; what 'they' do is a reflection of what 'we' want.
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Hugh, to see a fit between what "we" want and what "they" (property developers) want is to ignore practically every serious question raised about what's now happening to the housing market in London and other cities.
Unless of course, the 'we' who "want" is defined as simply those people with the money to buy the homes on offer. Some of those homes held as investment for "hot" foreign money (and sometimes left empty). Or simply "luxury apartments" for the super rich. Or perhaps - in effect -a Ponzi scheme whereby people are encouraged to bid up housing prices by borrowing and repaying ever increasing loans; which consume an ever increasing proportion of their current income.
Or continue to live with families and in-laws. Or perhaps have a poor standard of accommodation sometimes with gross overcrowding. Sometimes part of a system which makes millions for slumlords.
Is that what "people" generally want to buy to meet their housing needs? I don't think so. And I hope that neither do you.
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Yes, in this case, we're obviously talking about people with the money to buy the homes on offer. We're talking about market forces.
I'm not saying it's right, or that I like the choices made or that I'd make the same choices as 'we' seem to. I'm certainly not making any apologies for the current state of the property market or that I condone the awful impact it's having on people. I'm merely pointing up what I see as an inescapable fact about why estate agents and property developers make the choices they do about area names.
I don't think I'm ignoring anything, Alan. I'm just responding to the issue under discussion, which, as I understand it is area names, not the state of the housing market.
I do hope that converstaions with you haven't reached the point when I have to add a disclaimer to every opinion I voice, clarifying any number of things I don't mean, for fear of being pulled up on what I write.
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I replied to this post, Hugh. But it seems not to have arrived.
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I haven't seen it, I'm afraid. There was an alert for your post above and a few minutes earlier one for your reply to Michael, but nothing for a reply to this post.
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Alan, on the issue of developers trying to cash in on historical place names, sometimes the opposite is true too.
You may have heard of the rebranding of the areas to the north and south of New Oxford Street as Midtown. My friend Anne lives in a social housing block overlooking the old St Giles churchyard, overlooked by Centrepoint and overwhelmed by the Crossrail works.
The name of the area, St Giles, has very unsavoury connotations. It was The Rookeries, the place Victorians regarded with horror as an cesspit of disease, vice, crime and poverty (which they considered to be the fault of the people who lived there). Despite that, Anne and her neighbours have fought tooth and nail to avoid being rebranded. They proudly live in St Giles!
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I've every sympathy with residents who want to retain old names and recall the real warts 'n' all past. Not just a rebranded, renamed, cleaned-up version.
No, I hadn't heard about this new "Midtown" but I'm not really surprised. I have a gut feeling that this type of developer rebranding is an insidious form of lying. A "let's pretend", romanticised, film-set, version of history, towns and streets.
Remember last year's HoL thread "The Hell that is Wood Green" ? I wondered if in years to come future generations would find a gentrified revamped, Borough Market/Spitalfields style place. Perhaps with a new faux-historic name: "Moselle Meadows"? Maybe with tiny mementos from the past decorating its polished privatised air-conditioned environment.
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Once it's really really old stuff from historical times, Osbawn, nobody minds. In fact it can become art and significant, and very valuable.
But you won't have to wait for your comfy old boots to finally wear out and get painted.
On the left is one of the artworks from East London Canvas, currently on display on the hoardings between Stratford station and the bridge to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. (Click on the photo for a larger version.)
Unfortunately, unless someone knows of a way round, you'll have to walk through Westfield (the fourth circle of hell) to see them.
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Permalink Reply by james walsh on
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I think the new york real estate firms started this trend. SoHo = 'south of houston street'. TRIBECA = 'triangle below canal street'. and my favourite, DUMBO = 'down underneath manhattan bridge overpass'.
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