Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harringay #gentrificationwatch - early signs of trouble
An early attempt to gentrify Harringay undermined by barking dogs and the rattle of crockery
The Age: June 9 1947
See more about the 1947 Music Festival at Harringay Arena in our archives
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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I rather like how that little article conjures up quite nicely the world of 1947. Harringay was always quite a noisy place it seems!
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Permalink Reply by Penguin on
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I would have thought the hundreds of blue checked mattresses dumped around the streets would have provided excellent acoustics.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Then as now, the media exaggerated no end.
The last TRAMS passed by Harringay Arena in 1938**, so nine years later, it must have been their ghosts that could be heard. They were replaced by silent trolleybuses.. well known to be deadly because of their acceleration and silence.
The shunting trains at Harringay West could, if the wind was in the right direction, be heard right over to St Ann's Road.
This report should, I think, be taken with a pinch of salt.
**Trams still ran to Manor House until 1952, but I doubt they could be heard at the Arena.
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I imagine those ladies rattling the crockery in the buffet probably made a din though. Maybe Beethoven's Third Concerto is really quiet.
I suspect the complaints say a lot about the people who went to the Arena to hear the music and the type of people who write up "culture", apparently many of the papers mocked the fact that the Arena was fairly empty (not so different from now: witness the recent pursed lips of some critics at popular- with- teenage- girls actor Benedict Cumberbatch doing Hamlet).
The following year 1948 saw record audiences so maybe they persuaded the tea ladies to keep it down.
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Was the Harringay Music Festival big news for Australia in 1947?
The newspaper is 'The Age' published in Melbourne. Elsewhere in the scan there's N.S.W. (New South Wales) coal mining, and A.A.P is the Australian Associated Press. Was there an Australian soloist or orchestra perhaps - not the Solomon named in the cutting, he was the Londoner Solomon Cutner.
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One thing I've noticed trawling through the archives is that there is a fair bit of news from Britain in newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, maybe reflecting the relationship between them then. However, this is a tiny article on the foreign news page so probably not big news. More of an amusing footnote
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Liz thank you, yes I wondered if it was a 'squib' too, though surprised it went so far. Thank you for posting it initially!
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Permalink Reply by Geraldine on
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When I arrived on a trip to Oz in the 1980s, I switched on the radio in my hotel room hoping to pick up some local info, only to find I was listening to a long programme about Princess Anne. Thought it was so funny!
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Permalink Reply by Richard Woods on
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Ten pound poms?
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Liz, the thing about reporting back then. He, I guess it was a 'he', could have reported that the Arena was next to a lake and nobody would have known better. The reporter just spiced up the report with all the things he'd seen on his trip to the Arena.
Times have changed and these days, most of us know more about the outside world then ever before.
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I doubt he even went to the Arena (The Arena was pretty famous though because of the major boxing contests that took place there) - I suspect he may have cobbled it together from other British newspaper reports of the time. some of which were not very 'supportive' shall we say, and phoned it over to Melbourne as a bit of light-hearted foreign news.
I'm surprised at the reference to passing aircraft more than trains and trams. Would there have been that much going over Harringay? Admittedly if one did, it was more likely to draw attention (given what London had just been through) and disturb listeners but was it likely in 1947?
We are, of course, so used to them now it is their absence that catches our attention not their noise (the massive 6.30 plane that crosses Harringay every morning is an excellent alarm clock mind you)
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