The Elms, Wood Green High Road, c1900

The Elms was a large Victorian House which used to stand exactly where the auditorium of the Gaumont Palace Cinema was built in 1934 (Later the Odeon Cinema, now the Dominion Centre - Gaumont Palace and still retaining much of its art deco interior.

The next photo from c1905 shows the grounds of the house looking toward the junction with Lordship Lane.

The next photo from about 1925shows the ground on the right, looking south.

Finally, an extract from the Ordnance Survey Town Plan of 1895, showing the house. Along the road just to the south of the Elms was Gladstone Gardens.

A house is shown on the site n the 1869 Ordnance Survey map, but it looks as though it might be an older house that was demolished before The Elms was built.

From 1885 until his death in 1903, it was the home of George Marshall Keilor, a draper from Whitechapel. His son Marshall Bendall Keilor, inherited the house and lived there until his death in 1925.

Soon after the house was sold and probably acquired by Wood Green Council. The Council then sold it along with Gladstone Gardens for the development of the cinema together with the parade of shops that stands there today. The Council used the proceeds of the deal for the purchase of the more extensive playing fields on White Hart Lane. (The land swap idea had first been mooted in 1909 when a music hall syndicate had offered the council £8,000 for the Gardens site).

I have previously posted an aerial photo of the area from 1930. just before The Elms was demolished.