Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
This isn't f****ing Green Lanes!
I've been making the case for what our Neighbourhood's called for five years now. My logic is simple. I think it matters that we have a shared identity that we're proud of.
It's not been plain sailing. The Council have been trying to change our 130 year old name to Green Lanes for some time now. I was told by a Council Cabinet member, Nilgun Canver, that Harringay doesn't exist. Then there was the whole bridge banner thing.
So far this year's been a good year. The south side of the new bridge banner is going to say Harringay. Bish-bosh. Simple. (Update: Errr...not so quick Hugh. Cabinet member, Councillor Nilgun Canver got in there at the last minute and took it on herself to change this!)
Then a few weeks back I came across a resident in another area who was fed up with his neighbourhood being rechristened by estate agents. So, to find out what the man in the street thought, he walked 4.5km down his high street, stopping every 200M to ask 10 people at each stop "Excuse me, what area is this?". He published the results on a website called thisisntfuckingdalston.co.uk.
Great idea for Harringay, I thought. Let's find out what the 'man in the street' really thinks. So I copied the original idea and walked down Green Lanes from Manor House to Turnpike Lanes, stopping every 200 metres to ask 10 randomly selected strangers, "Excuse me, what area is this please". I wasn't expecting to have my day made, but I was very pleasantly very surprised.
So, Council, are you listening? This isn't me. This isn't a self-selecting group of digitally connected HoL users. This is 120 randomly selected 'men in the street' and their verdict is that this isn't Green Lanes.
I was scrupulously fair, not discriminating about who I asked. The only results I didn't record were those when the language barrier made it impossible to complete the Q&A.
In the chart below, the scale on the left shows the number of people who responded to each choice.
Click the picture to enlarge.
Tags for Forum Posts: harringay name
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Protheroe O'Shea on
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Good work hugh. out of interest what were names on the Others category?
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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One was "Holloway". The other was "Green Lanes Ladder".
I felt a bit guilty about the Holloway one. It was a response from a guy walking along with his wife / girlfriend. She started challenging him about the accuracy of his answer as soon as they moved on. About 20 feet further down the road things got quite heated. I think she felt bad about misleading me. I felt bad about starting a fight.
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Permalink Reply by Chris brock on
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How times have changed. When I was nipper in Dalston I would have given my right arm to get out the area. Now the estate agents want to expand it?
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Isn't it the A105 ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A105_road
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Green Lanes is, yes, but Euan's exercise was on the A10, if that's what you're referring to.
Do things look like they've changed since your time here, Stephen?
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Permalink Reply by Tilly on
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Hugh, how did you establish if respondents were referring to 'Harringay' and 'Haringey'. Technically the majority were in Haringey after all. Perhaps some people refer to the borough. Just as respondents in Dalston wouldn't be incorrect to say they were in Hackney.
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That's a good point to raise, Tilly. I didn't check, but I think the spread of reponses shows that the vast majority understood what level of specificiy was being asked of them. For example, at the northern and southern ends of the strip, in the areas solidly known as either Turnpike Lane or Manor House, no one chose to refer to the borough.
The same held pretty much true for Euan's experiment. Less than 1% of respondents answered Hackney and when they did, it was mainly in the areas nearer to Hackney proper. By and large, most people's personal geography isn't significantly influenced by borough boundaries.
I think it would be different if people were responding to a remote survey. But when there's some guy on the street directly in front of you, people tend to give more specific answers. Most people assumed I was lost and were trying to be helpful in locating me. When asked, I said I was trying to arrange to meet a friend.
To have forestalled questions like yours, I'd have asked the question, but can you imagine the time and the muddle, especially when a good proportion of respondents weren't using English as a first language. However, even in the absence of a discriminating question, for the reasons I've stated, I feel safe in making the assumption that people were referring to the neighbourhood and not the borough.
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You know the answer to that one.. In my day it was plain Harringay.. Green Lanes was only used when talking about shopping (Not Grand Parade)-
The choice of Haringey as the Borough's name and it's 'unhappy' pronunciation (We were taught Harin-gee, like Finch-lee at school in 64/65) and the moving away from that to the 'Harringay' pronunciation of Haringey is where the trouble started.
It is, BTW, taking the London dialect to it's extreme. Some people do, for instance, say in dialect 'Hornsay', rather than 'Hornsee'
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As an ex-resident of Grand Parade c94-98 (remember the W-bar - I was in one of the flats over that) I would like to add that I used to refer to the area as 'Harringay' back then. Never heard it referred to as 'Green Lanes' (isn't that an area near Winchmore Hill?).
Love the swearing, BTW.
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on
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I vote for Hugh's line on the subject of what our area is called.
It is clear to me that it was a mistake to choose the name of Haringey for the new London Borough when it was created by merging three earlier local government areas (whose names are still used and well understood as referring to particular territories). I would guess that "Haringey" will never be useful in this sense so any desire by Council people to suppress our local usage of Harringay is not likely to achieve any better recognition of the LB Haringey.
On the other hand, we are likely to be stuck with this niggling rivalry as long as LB Haringey exists. Unless that is (and this is the point of my little contribution) something big happens to raise the image of Harringay. The only sure fire way I can see to do this would be to build the missing Piccadilly line tube station under the Salisbury and call it Harringay. I would not object to the railway station of that name then reverting to its earlier name of Harringay West.
Otherwise, we shall probably have to await the next reform of local government which, on previous form, will be due in less than 50 years. The reformers can then revive the ancient administrative name of the Ossulstone Hundred which was our part of Middlesex until a reform in the 17th century. I don't know of a part of North London which uses this old name so it shouldn't create another necessary dispute.
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