Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

I just stumbled across Looking Back: Reflections of a London Child on the War years 1939 - 1945 by Eva Merrill. A short wartime memoirs book, it includes a chapter or two set in wartime  Pemberton Road. It gives a good idea of how the Ladder houses were used in those days. Part of it is reproduced here on Google books.

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Wonderful! Thanks for sharing.

There are only two (possibly three) houses that she could be talking about, so the residents of those might be very interested in this.  I find it interesting how the use of the houses is coming full circle - when my house (also on Pemberton) was built in 1892, it was sold outright to a couple in their 50s who had owned a house on Cavendish Rd., which they sold to finance the new property.  They sold up and moved to Southend, and by the First World War, the house was owned and occupied by a widow and her eldest son with a couple of other grown up sons officially renting the back bedroom, along with a lodger, from the oldest brother at a frankly extortionate rent for the time - three of them renting a 12' x 10' room for a total of £14 a month (including some meals).  The house then went through various owners over the years, but always with lodgers, and at one time there was a plan to split it formally into two flats, which never happened.  The people we bought from had also had lodgers periodically, and the house reverted to its original use with single family owner/occupier when we bought it.  Our house is in the right place to be the one Eva Merrill's family moved from in the extract Hugh links to - clearly it could be anyone of the houses nearby, but it would have been a house like ours and I can imagine her running up and down the road when they moved house!

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