1619 Tottenham map (full)

Comment by StephenBln on June 8, 2011 at 12:06

Hugh, sorry it was the NorthMet building .. but was the company as the MET trams .. The building belonged to the MET and plates like those seen here could also be seen there.

 

Every Ready took over the building in the 1940s ?

Comment by StephenBln on June 8, 2011 at 12:07

.... after nationalisation of the utilities in the UK

Comment by linka on June 8, 2011 at 12:40

Was there another battery factory in South Tottenham too?

"In the last long-standing incident sources were complex and additive. The garden soil of the home was highly contaminated (8650-12 500 p.p.m. Pb, i.e., similar to lead ore deposits), and in adjoining gardens values varied (e.g. 150-3450 p.p.m.). Eventually contamination in potentially dangerous amounts was found in a wide area, including a playing field. This came, not so much from a disused battery factory in the terrace of houses, but from a small dusty battery factory further away (found by computer analyses and wind directions) where the Factory Inspectorate had been trying to improve standards. No battery casings were found in the gardens (soil or undersoil). The contamination also came from exhaust fumes and accumulation of builders' rubble over the years. The low Pb content in a nearby public garden was attributed to a new layer of topsoil." (1970) 

http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19702702688.html

Comment by linka on June 8, 2011 at 17:44

okay, I just went on a little field trip and I can confirm that:

Mayfield house is architecturally a bit different to the otherwise largely uniform early hospital buildings. Still 19th cent, as far as is visible.  But the diagonal path and bay outlines on the map of 1895 identify it clearly as the same building:

The diagonal path is still there, lined with box trees:

I have more shots of the lawn behind which still looks rather Victorian in layout, but perhaps I'll post more of those if I find out more about the house.

Charlotte Riddell & husband lived at the 'old rambling' St John's Lodge until 1873. Perhaps the house was rebuilt after this, but before the major phase of hospital reconstruction.

However, the fact that the builders knew they were rebuilding on the site of St John's Lodge is made fairly clear, I think, by the fact that the leadlight above the door shows the eagle of St. John, with the name 'St John' spelled out between its feet. I've manipulated my image a bit to highlight the letters.

(many parallels here:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=st+john+eagle&hl=en&client... )

Here's the colour detail from Hugh's photo:

St J-O-h-n

Next call: Bruce Castle for some sleuthing!

Comment by Hugh on June 8, 2011 at 17:49

Good Job - teamwork! Have they painted the window?

Comment by linka on June 8, 2011 at 17:52

no, that's me fiddling with the colour in photoshop to increase the contrast of the pale lettering.  How woeful is my religious education that I thought 'phoenix' first and not 'st John... eagle?'...!

Comment by Hugh on June 9, 2011 at 9:52

A few more bits here.

 

First does this from Open Plaques suggest that the Lodge was likely to have been the longer building close to the road?:

 

Second, this book about nineteenth century women authours has two good tidbits:

1. Referring to an offical document, it uses the address 'St John's Lodge, Stamford Hill'.

2. Her hubby went bankrupt shortly before they moved. Probably no coincidence.

 

Thirdly, using the address from the book above gives us a link to a copy of The Builder in 1876 when there's an entry about charges for "erecting St John's Lodge, Stamford Hill". "Our" St John's Lodge? A post-Riddell rebuild?

Comment by Hugh on June 9, 2011 at 10:00

Just a thought, after the Riddells left, could the building have been sold for the development of the hospital, a new building erected (the one that remains today) on the site of an older one and as a nod to the past, the glass from the older building added to the new one. 1876 certainly looks about right for "Mayfield", I'd say.

Comment by linka on June 9, 2011 at 11:59

First - I'm probably not seeing this properly (until I deploy the tracing paper!) but I'd concluded that the building fronting the street is actually the Lodge location, but the parts of the 'Green' in front of it were later incorporated in the private grounds (as happened over the road in the Chestnuts) and the road got narrower and moved slightly northwards, leaving it set back from the road later on.  I think the maps allow for that possibility...

Second re: the Builder - great find! Yes that tallies with the little chronology I'm building up here (with the help of some noodling through the census records).  In 1861 and 1871, the Riddells were recorded at 'St John's Lodge' (variously 34 Hanger's Lane and 103 St Ann's Road - the actual address of the building is different in every census as the area gets developed). That's them in the 'rambling old house'.

By 1881 'St John's Lodge' isn't used and there's a dairy farm in or around the premises (I'll come back to this). Possibly the building itself was demolished or being rebuilt.

In your newspaper clipping from 1888 the sale of the St John's Lodge estate is referred to including 'the desirable modern Residence, known as St. John's lodge, with detached stabling in the grounds'.

So we're looking at a new building in or around the area of the old St John's Lodge put up in the late 1870s/early 80s. It contained that direct allusion to St John in the leadlight and was marketed with the old name.  'Mayfield' was probably the name adopted by the purchaser, who seems to have been builder Charles D. Lavington, (who had played a role in the development of Stoke Newington but was noted as retired in 1891). Obviously they sold the house on as 'Mayfield', and hadn't found the pre-Raphaelite-tinged Hospitaller nostalgia attractive as part of the identity of the new house (more on this too later).

I'm going to start a second post about the other buildings on the site, 'cos it's complicated!

Comment by linka on June 9, 2011 at 12:43

Okay... this is a rambly one, I apologise in advance. 

I think the picture about buildings on the site of St. John's lodge may become clearer with some nice property deeds, but here's the situation so far - the questions raised are, was 'St John's Lodge' as a building name actually a bit of a 19th century conceit? and what were the different lifespans of all buildings on the Lodge/farm site?

First, St John's Lodge a novelist's/builder's whim? We know the Riddells lived in a fairly large house identified as old and called 'St John's Lodge' in 1861 and 71. In 1881 it isn't recorded as a separate building (there's a dairy farm there run by a lady from Dorset), and in 1891, despite having been sold as a newly built 'St John's Lodge' it is recorded as Mayfield House.

Tellingly, I cannot for the life of me find any distinguishing name used for the St John's buildings on Hanger Lane before 1861.  They may have been a St John's Farm, but they're not identified as such. Might the identity 'St. John's Lodge' have been a bit of a high Victorian fashion asserted by Charlotte Riddell and picked up by the owner/developer? Further evidence may contradict this, though.

Second, the lifespans of the different buildings:

To the West of the St John's buildings, on the next plot of land (possibly quite a few yards away) was a fairly genteel residence inhabited in 1851 by a stock broker (8 Hangers Lane) and in 1861 and 71 by John and Emily Robins (35 Hanger Lane, becoming 104 St. Ann's Road); interestingly, John is a graduate of St. John's college Oxford. The well-off Robinses are there again in 1881 (41 St. Ann's Road, still the same building!) after the Riddells had moved on. Emily Robins was the daughter of Fowler Newsham, who seems to have been the key developer of the 'St Ann's' suburb concept (through founding the church). 

Anyway, the Carden/ Robins residence was perhaps a little way off, and built on the plot that in 1619 housed a 'Hangers Barne' and in 1891, after the estate sell-off, was the location of 'Hangers Green House' (the battery plot?) 

But intermittently there are other households recorded in or around the St. John's Lodge/Farm site, suggested it sometimes had multiple lodgings that could be let out separately or together. This is where it gets confusing for us (ie. which building was rebuilt to become 'Mayfield' and which was demolished for the hospital buildings).

In 1891, after the sell-off and after the rebuilding of St. John's Lodge, the census records a large but probably quite poor family living at '(Cottage) St. John's Farm' (no. 65 St. Ann's Road, by this point, Mayfield is no. 66).  This suggests a rambling farmyard has been broken up, with Mayfield on one part (the lodge site?) and a cottage next door.

In 1871 it's not recorded as a separate residence. This is when Mr Riddell was making his stoves out back and they employed two servants.  In 1861, quite a few of the Riddells' relatives are living with them in the 'Lodge' making it a large residence.  Meanwhile in the 'cottage on farm' (no. 33 next to no. 34, the Lodge) a separate couple in their 60s are living.

So the evidence of the middle of the century suggests that there were farm buildings, including a cottage, and a grander building that could be called a 'lodge'.  This might tally with the 1798 map that shows two blocks next to one another, one looking a bit barn-like.  The farm buildings would have been purchased and demolished for the hospital - might this be from where we have the idea that St John's Lodge was under later hospital buildings? 

Whereas the name St John's Lodge may have been something that was instead subsumed by the earlier rebuilding process, and the breaking up of the site in the 1880s (whence 'Mayfield').

All hypothesis, but it's interesting

Add a Comment

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next ›
• Page