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Grand Parade, I thought it was an appropriate time to look back at the story of the post office in Harringay.
The story of our post office is to a great degree the story of the post ofice throughout London and much of the rest of the country.
The first general post office in London opened in 1643, just 8 years after King Charles I legalised use of the royal posts for private correspondence. Back then Harringay was farm land.
What is now Harringay didn't really start to develop until shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century and during the last twenty years of the century things got going apace round here.
As Green Lanes began to get built up in the 1880s and 1890s, what was to become Harringay's first post office was established. But, as was the case with much of the rest of the country, we weren't big enough to warrant our own purpose-built post office.
In 1896, Sarah May (36) moved from her previous address at 4 Vale Road to 473 Green Lanes. She moved in her closest family from Kensington. This included her mother Sarah Ann (66), her sister Rose (30) and her two brothers, Frederick (26) and Frank (24). The two girls shared the surname, May. Their mother and brothers were all named 'Fox'. I assume that this was a second marriage for Sarah Ann. The Green Lanes property they proudly christened 'York House' is now home to Indkia restaurant.
Sarah and Rose set up a stationer's business there, which is referred to in the records as 'Miss S May, Stationer.' Sarah was clearly the boss! By 1902 the premises had become Harringay's first post office and its listing was upgraded to 'Miss S May, Stationer, & post & telegraph office'.
Although no records are available, it is almost certain that this was set up as a sub-post office. During the late nineteenth and first few decades of the twentieth century, 95% of post offices were sub-post offices. By 1913 this was 23,256 out of 24,354 offices. The sub-postmasters received a commission for the transaction of various services and for providing the necessary staff and accommodation. They were not established members of the Post Office workforce, and were often small shopkeepers who welcomed this side-line.
Sarah and Rose ran the business together for five years. The two brothers were not involved.
I suspect that this might be Sarah and Rose poking their noses out of the front door to get in the picture. Closest thing to an Edwardian selfie?
In 1906 George Robert Mitchell took over and reworked the shop's name to May's Library.
Mitchell appears to have been an enterprising sort who expanded his offering to include the services of a travel agency.
George must have been a busy man. The latter half of the 19th century had already seen Post Offices across the country expand into banking, telecommunications and parcel delivery. From 1880, the Post Office was acquiring progressively greater control of the telephone service, with the entire service being taken over in 1912. From 1908, it acquired a new social role as the chief payment agency for social security benefits, beginning with old-age pensions in that year.
The 1911 census tells us in that year George (35) was living with his wife, Ellen (35), his son Kenneth (7), his daughter Marjorie and their servant Esther Simmond (18).
By 1913, the family had moved on and Thomas Lawrence had purchased the business. He is recorded as the occupant still in 1915.
Records during the war unfortunately have disappeared and the next we pick up the trail is in 1920, At this point 473 is being run as 'Roberts Library' and it seems that the post office had temporarily moved down the road to just south of The Beaconsfield. There, at number 347, we find 'Herbert Gray Chemist & Post Office & telephone call office'. This appears to have been a short-lived relocation which may have been due to the dislocations caused by the Great War.
By 1921 number 473 was up and running again as 'Roberts Library & Post Office'. This lasted until the following year. Then in 1922, the premises was taken over by Thomas J Francis and his wife, Ethel. For the first two years the business was run as 'Francis & Norfield Stationers & Post Office'. I can find no trace of anyone called Norfield in the records, so I assume he was a short-term business partner. By 1925 the store was trading as 'Thomas Francis Stationer & Post Office'. Francis ran the business for a further 10 years, with the exception of a year or so.
Between 1927 and 1928, the shop is listed as 'Andrew F Hawes Stationer & Post Office'. Thomas and Ethel still apparently lived above the shop. But, either due to ill-health, or some other circumstance they were standing back from the business. By 1929 the couple had moved up to Southgate. The business was trading as 'F. R. Rhodes, Stationer & post office' with Thomas J Francis listed as postmaster, which it continued to do until 1934.
The eponymous Rhodes appears to have been business partners, Felix and Edith, who lived in Cecile Park, Crouch End. Felix was recorded as formerly having been a colliery agent. Perhaps, he'd been injured in the war or, was simply doing the interwar equivalent of downshifting. Either way, he and his wife co-ran the business with Thomas and Ethel up until 1935. In the meantime the flat above 473 was let to a succession of tenants apparently unconnected with the business.
The death knell for the old way of doing sub-post offices was sounded by the establishment of two government committees.
The structure of the Post Office had come in for criticism between the wars. The Bridgeman Committee was set up in 1932 to investigate. Following the report of this committee, the Gardiner Committee was established to determine action to fix the problems unearthed by the earlier committee. In 1936 Gardiner decided that branch offices should predominate in an inner circle of London around head offices, with salaried sub-offices at a greater distance and in less important locations. The changes were implemented between 1936 and 1940.
I am assuming that it was this policy change that led to the closure of the post office at 473 and the establishment of a Crown Office at 509-511 Green Lanes in 1936. Felix Rhodes' death is recorded in the same year. (Coincidentally, 509 had been previously set-up as a stationers, run by W Stokes. 511 had been an outfitters, run as J. S. Berridge, and previously as White & Co.)
473 continued life as a stationers for some decades to come. Immediately after the move of post office services it traded as 'W & E Roe, Stationers'. By 1964, it was trading under the name Harringay Library, an interesting echo of its Edwardian past.
In about 1975, the business became Harringay Stationers. In the 21st Century it was the first home of Fast Tech and also to the RMVF charity. For a while it hosted MEM catering. Four or five years ago it was set up as Indika Indian restaurant.
So much for the spin through time, the interesting part of this for me was yet another demonstration of how our idealisation of the past reveals stark similarities to the Harringay we inhabit today (as well as real differences).
In researching this article I came across a short late Edwardian piece about a councillor complaining that rubbish was only collected every three weeks on the Ladder. That's a past we definitely don't want to return to; it shows that for all the cheeseparing cuts over the past decade, our council services are still better than those experienced by our forebears.
Immortalised here is Harringay Post Office in its last week - https://bit.ly/49rbe8h (Click the targets or margin arrows to move between images).
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, actually off the pavement and behind a wall, but this is exceptional and the overwhelming number of bins are lined up on the pavement.
In my holiday snaps some of yesterday's bins can be seen overflowing (click to enlarge):
Scenes above from Northwood Road (and on the Holmesdale Road corner). This is happening in Europe's largest city, not the third world
Milton Avenue and Milton Road
One borough one future one-size-fits-allNine out of ten foxes favour Haringey's policy of fortnightly bin collection; a survey of rats and mice showed robust support, while maggots voted in overwhelming numbers for it.
Residents have been putting up with this since the inception of the Council's One-Size-Fits-All policy.
The lower (northern) arm of Milton Park
The upper end of Milton Park
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about the flora and fauna of the UK and shared a couple of photos taken locally, including one taken in my fridge.
Read on to find out how Nature invaded my fridge, a fight to save a much loved tree, where to see three giant robins and much more...
Local Nature News
Good news from Woodberry Wetlands!
In case you missed it, the appeal for Woodberry Wetlands passed the £110,000 mark (the cost of keeping it open for one year), thanks to £60,738 in donations from supporters and £55,000 in match funding from Berkeley Homes and Hackney Council.
This means Woodberry Wetlands will be reopening on Wednesday 15th July. The café will be opening, but with some changes to make it Covid-secure. You can check for updates on their website
Fight to save The Happy Man Tree
Also up the road in Woodberry Down, residents are locked in a battle to save a beloved London Plane dubbed The Happy Man Tree that is marked for felling to make way for new housing. A group called Friends of The Happy Man Tree are battling Hackney Council and Berkeley Homes to save the 150 yr old tree and are now mounting a 24 hr vigil to protect it, including building a platform in the branches. Local people recently lost a court battle and have been threatened with fines and prison if they continue to block its felling. Having just finished the powerful novel The Overstory by Richard Powers, this local fight to save a much loved tree has struck a chord. Read more about the plane on their website and it was recently featured in the Guardian series Tree of the Week.
The distressing and wanton destruction of the mature trees on Green Lanes in the BDC carpark one Easter Sunday is still fresh in the memory of many of us. I, for one, shall watch with interest how the fight to save the Happy Man Plane Tree story unfolds.
Feeding the wildfowl
A timely reminder from Lordship Rec of the dos and don’ts of feeding the waterbirds in our local ponds and lakes.
Photo via Facebook
Don’t swim in the rivers!
As pictures circulated of people bathing in the River Lea at Hackney Marshes (and people subsequently ending up in A&E), many of us were amazed that anyone would want to cavort in sewage and heavy metals, even with the heat. The rivers of East London are heavily polluted and the sad truth is that NO river in the UK is deemed safe enough for bathing due to high levels of pollution. With this in mind, a new campaign to see bathing water standards for British Rivers has been launched by the Rivers Trust.
Find out more here
The English Elms at Seven Sisters
I’ve really enjoyed a couple of mail outs from Bruce Castle Museum about trees in Tottenham, in particular the Elms of Seven Sisters and Bruce Grove. Packed with far too much information to share in this round up, I’ll just point you in the direction of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem The English Elms which begins,
Seven Sisters in Tottenham,
long gone, except for their names,
were English elms.
Find out more about how to sign up for emails from the museum here
Nature Street Art in Mayes Road
Three Robins
Photo by PeepO’Daze on Twitter
Nature Notes
The Summer of The Cannibal Rats!
Many people have reported close encounters with foxes, squirrels and other scavengers as the lack of food from restaurant bins and mucky humans means that they are forced into closer contact with our household bins and gardens. Rats too have had a hard time and have started to move in with us. The cannibal part? You’ll have to read the article to find out
The short but industrious life of the worker bumblebee
If you’ve been alarmed to find expired bumblebees, don’t worry. It’s all part of their life-cycle and the sad fact is that worker bees only live a few weeks before they die. It’s therefore quite normal to see a small number of dead bees in the garden. As long as you are still seeing live bees in the area, then it’s unlikely to be something to be concerned about.
Bumblebee nests grow throughout the season, and produce new males and queens at the end of their life-cycle. Throughout the life of the nest, a large number of worker bees help the nest to grow by collecting nectar and pollen – these make up most of the bees that you see out and about in summer.
When bees are close to death, they often cling to flowers and look quite lethargic. When they do die, they then drop off the flowers, and you may find a number of these in your gardens, especially near the most bee-friendly plants. The reason why dead bees are often found in gardens and near nest sites is simply because that’s where they’ve been living and working. Also, you may find dead bees and larvae near nest entrances, this is because dead and dying bees are removed from the nest so that disease does not spread.
Source: Bumblebee Trust News. Find out more about the life-cycle of the Bumblebee here
When is a wildflower meadow not a wildflower meadow?
Twitter users were very appreciative of a picture from Rotherham of a 13km stretch of flowering verges known as ‘the river of flowers” but not everyone was impressed. Ecologists and botanists pointed out that many of the plants were non-native species that don’t always support the native invertebrates of an area and that in creating these verges native species can be crowded out or even destroyed. Dr Amy-Jane Beer looks at both sides of the debate in this article in Discover Wildlife.
I didn't need to go to Rotherham to see a lovely display. I just had to stop and admire this planter in Woodlands Park Road full of pollinator friendly flowers. Well done to whoever has made such a lovely job of this space.
Lockdown silence enables the first global map of the Spring Dawn Chorus
Did you get up early in May to experience the Dawn Chorus uninterrupted by aircraft or traffic noise? Many people who did captured the birdsongs on their phones, enabling a global map of the Dawn Chorus to be built. Inspired by the bioacoustician Bernie Krause and led by Prof Michael John Gorman, the project has led to the creation of DawnChorus.org. Read about the project in this Guardian article
Butterflies and Moths to see in July
Finally
This gorgeous creature turned up in my veg delivery this week. Eurydema ventralis is a bit of brassica/radish botherer and was freezing in my fridge but after five minutes in the sun it was soon wandering about. Not sure if it will find many brassicas in my garden though!
Have a good week and don't forget to LOOK UP…
taken in 1890, whilst most of the old Crouch End was still intact on the east side of Crouch End Hill.
At the bottom was Charles Batterby. He was to be the last farrier in Crouch End, until his forge was acquired for development in 1895. Next up was an old wooden building housing a hair dresser. Tucked behind these was the Sugden's Oakfiled Villa. Next came a terrace of Georgian houses.1 These are followed by the Railway Tavern and a row of shops with one or two dwelling houses interspersed.
Fig. 1: Crouch End Hill, 1890, East side looking north from towards the top of the hill
Below is the complete 1892 listing from Kelly's Directory for all the premises from Batterby's forge to the end of the row of shops. The shop on the far right is Stiff's the florist.
63 - Charles Stiff, Florist 59-61 - William Madden Shirt Dresser 57 - Victor Hill Tobacconist 55 - Thomas Sharpe, Plumber & Gas Fitter 53 - Parker & Co, Bakers 51 - Albert Beans, Picture Frame Maker 49 - H Pegg Bootmaker 47 - William Warn. Blind Maker 45 - Joseph Gales Oil & Colour 43 - Not Listed 41 - John Joiner, Bootmaker 39 - Arthur Reason Perambulator Maker 37 - Mrs Harding 35 - Goodall & Goodall, Undertakers 33 - Mrs Gibbs 31 - F Menage, Repairing Tailor 29 - F Bryen & Co., Builders 27 - Mrs Rosina Bray, Shopkeeper 25 - Frederick Cooper, Chimney Cleaner 23 - Railway Tavern 21 - Joseph Holland, Harness Makers 19 - Not Listed 15-17 - R Cable Builder 13 - E Edwards, Shirtmaker 11 - Charles Wood, Carpenter 9 - George Richardson 7 - Mrs. Sanders 5 - Mrs. Gregory 3 - J.H. Shorter, Hairdresser 1 - Samuel Sugden (Oakfield Villa) 1a - Charles Batterby, Farrier
The next photo is taken from towards the bottom of the hill. Right at the bottom of the hill on the east side (right) is Batterby's forge. Coming towards the camera, next is a gap for the entrance to Oakfield Villa. The large tree was in its garden. Then came number 3, the old wooden building. The sign outside says "Ye Olde Barber Shop". Last are the Georgian houses numbered 5 to 11.
Fig. 2: Crouch End Hill, 1890, East side looking north from near the bottom of the hill
The next photo from circa 1890 shows Batterby's Forge. Behind the trees Oakfield Villa is visible.
Fig. 3: Crouch End Hill, c1890, East side looking south. The large house in the background is Oakfield Villa
The fourth picture from 1890 shows a better view of the Crouch End Blacksmith, Charles Batterby's, forge. I wonder if Charles is the guy standing behind the fence? You can also see the house 'above the shop' where he apparently lived with his wife.2
Life may have been good for Batterby. But his life wasn't without its difficulties. The minutes of the local board (forerunner of the council) on 1st August 1870 record a complaint,
A complaint was made by Mr Batterby of pigs being kept on the adjoining premises of Mr Crow in Crouch end. It was resolved that the surveyor do give the usual notice to remove the nuisance.3
Fig. 4: Batterby's Forge, Crouch End Hill, c1890
The final picture from 1890 shows the whole road, including the less photographed western side. On the extreme right, the old Kings Head with the bay window facing the camera, was soon to demolished.
Fig. 5: Crouch End Hill c1890, showing both east and west sides including the old King's Head. At the time, the pub's licensee was Charles Heather, but the premises was being managed by 24 year-old Scot, Frank Gunn.
We then jump forward a few years to about 1901. Batterby's forge** has been swept away by progress and it has been replaced by the Criterion Buildings.
Fig. 6: Crouch End Hill, c1901, looking south from outside the King's Head. The new licensee and manager was Londoner, Edmund Magness.
By 1905, the Ye Olde Barber Shop business had also gone and the premises was occupied by Madam Yvonne. Described as a Milliner in 1905, by 1910 she styled herself as a Costumier. Further up, at the top of the hill was the Crouch End School of Art.
Fig. 7: Crouch End Hill, c1905, looking south-east towards the old wooden building at number 3.
As the twentieth century progressed, Middlesex Council decided that Crouch End Hill was too narrow and at just 35 feet, it was impeding the flow of traffic. Consequently in the 1930s it began buying all the properties on the east side of the road up as far as Waverley Road. One of those purchased was Oakfield Villa which was bought both for the road widening and for the construction of a telephone exchange to serve the merged Mountview and Highgate exchanges. Pending demolition, it was lent to Hornsey Council Social Services and from January 1933 it was used as a recreational centre for the unemployed of depression-hit Britain. Eventually all the buildings were demolished new buildings erected including including the the Mountview telephone exchange and a new fashionable mock Tudor building for the Railway Tavern, opened in 1937.
Fig. 8: The Railway Tavern, Crouch End Hill, c1950. Behind the pub is the Mountview telephone exchange building.
In 1938, the Criterion building was demolished and replaced with what stands there today. The space between the bottom of the hill and the Railway Tavern was partially filled with 3-5 Crouch End Hill (which still stands today). However, development was then interrupted by the War. It was completed in the 1950s with the erection of another building abutting the 1930s exchange building. Further up the hill, Exchange House, a new GPO building was erected by 1965.
Fig. 9: Exchange House, Crouch End Hill, 1965
1. A very respectable source tells us that 14 cottages called Wright's Buildings were erected along this portion of Crouch End Hill in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. They were named after James Wright, who was the developer. However, it is difficult to see in the photo 14 buildings that appear to share the same heritage. So either the, respectable, source is mistaken or some of those 14 buildings didn't survive for long. Wright also built a terrace of houses in Maynard Street (later Park Road), probably those shown in this photo. (Source for Crouch End Hill info: A P Baggs, Diane K Bolton, M A Hicks and R B Pugh, 'Hornsey, including Highgate: Growth before the mid 19th century', in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 6, Friern Barnet, Finchley, Hornsey With Highgate, ed. T F T Baker and C R Elrington (London, 1980), pp. 107-111. British History Online)
2. Charles is recorded as living in a dwelling house on Crouch End Hill in 1895. It was probably 'over the shop'. He died the year after he closed the blacksmith business. He was living at 1 Topsfield Road. We know from the 1864 will of his Uncle James, that Charles was a farrier in Croucn End for at least 30 years.
3. From the original minutes held at Bruce Castle Museum, accessed 18th December 2021. I assume that the Mr Crow referred to was William Crowe, the 'beer house keeper' of the Harringay Arms. By 1881, he had moved his family to the Fox and Crown in Highgate and by 1891 he was listed as a domestic servant, also in Highgate.…