Harringay Farm, 1880

Comment by Hugh on January 16, 2018 at 11:28

As I said don't take any of those semi-pro 'historian's' books, specially the older ones as giving cast iron facts. One example of how incorrect 'facts' get entrenched relates to a supposed Cozens house which used to exist on the site where Harringay House was built. Book after book assumed a previous 'fact; was correct and it got repeated over the decades without anyone checking the facts. Here's a footnote I added to one of my Harringay Wikipedia articles:

"Sherrington, R.O. (1904). Story of Hornsey. F.E. Robinson & Co. It should be noted that whilst Sherrington cites William Keane  as his reference for evidence of a Tudor House, Keane himself mentions only the fancy of a Norman castle on the site. Sadly scant evidence exists for either (Keane, William (1850). The Beauties of Middlesex, being a particular Description of the principal Seats of the Nobility and Gentry in the County of Middlesex)."

This post relates to this issue. I think the 'fine old tudor house' existed, but not on the site where Harringay House was built. It is my supposition that the house referred to was in fact the one pictured above. This was a kilometre due west of Harringay house.  

Comment by Nic on January 16, 2018 at 11:54

Ok Hugh, that's the problem with researching historical facts. The records for this area are kept where as I have a feeling that John Cozens came from this area in around 1710-20. Nic

Comment by Hugh on June 8, 2018 at 11:46

I've just stumbled across a better version of the original picture at the top of this post, along with the source. I'm now trying to track down the original. In the meantime, what's written on the drawing it does rather surprisingly look like 1840 not 1880 as I'd previously said.

Whatever the date, it the picture highlights the interchangeability of names (Harringay Farm in the picture - Manor Farm in the 1861 census). 

I also came across Fred Collingwood's Marriage certificate to Augusta Humphreys in 1856. At the time he gave his place of residence as St Pancras. So we can narrow down the date he moved in to Harringay/Manor Farm to between 1856 and 1861.

Comment by Hugh on April 10, 2020 at 0:11

I came across the following this week whilst searching for something unrelated. It's a page from the Land Tax Records of 1790. It appears to show Gray taking over land from Cozens. 

Comment by cavendishmark on June 18, 2024 at 14:25

Are you sure that the picture is from 1840 given that Holy Innocents was built in 1877. 

I wonder whether there is any relationship to "Brixton House" which is in a similiar position on the OS map published 1873.

Comment by Hugh on June 18, 2024 at 17:25

Mark, no not at all. In fact I think it highly unlikely that the drawing was done in 1840. I was merely reporting the result of what I'd read on the picture. As you say of course, Holy Innocents was completed in 1877. So, the date that appears in the title of this photo-page is almost certainly the correct one. I have tracked down the name of the collection from which the drawing was taken, but no artist's name is given and I am yet to track down its current resting place. 

Brixton House, later Woodside was a little further north than Harringay Farm and occupied the site of what became Britton's Pickle Factory.  It was located just south of a lane that led to Farmer's Field behind it. By 1867, the lane had become Broad Lane, a four-foot wide path that was the only access to Abyssinia Village being built on the field. For about 40 years from soon after the turn of the 19th Century, Brixton House was in the northeast corner of the Harringay House Estate, which ran along Tottenham/Turnpike Lane from Duckett's Common with a fat finger of land extending along the road as far west as Brixton House.

Harringay Farm was further south, opposite Manor Place and Manor Cottages, just to the north of where Ferme Park Road was laid out by the end of the nineteenth century. It was almost certainly the manor house for Fernfields Manor and through its manorial status, gave the name to the houses opposite. 

Abyssinia Village, Brixton House in both its guises as well as the factories that replaced it are covered in a new book shortly to be published by the HHS. 

Comment by cavendishmark on June 18, 2024 at 17:33

Thanks Hugh - I've been looking into Abssyinia since I heard you were releasing a book. Super interesting and looking forward to reading. Still can't figure out where the name came from and where their beloved ditch was.

Comment by Hugh on June 18, 2024 at 17:44

Thanks, Mark. The answer’s in the book! :0)

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