Ever Ready Central Labs

Comment by Ruth on September 8, 2011 at 20:50

Yes, that''s true, very few such industries around now to employ people in and around Haringey etc. Service sector replaced most of the industries.

Comment by Christine Yates on September 19, 2014 at 20:32

The new Ever Ready building was put up in 62-63. My Dad was painting the front of our house at so e stage during the build (8 Warwick Gardens).

Comment by Hugh on October 25, 2017 at 13:30

Here's a job advert the New Scientist in 1978:

Comment by Christine Yates on March 27, 2020 at 9:48

This part of the Ever Ready was built in 1963 as an addition to the brick building that stood where numbers 1-11 Warwick Gardens had stood prior to the bombing raid. I remember at the time it was being built my Dad was repainting the front of our house at number 8.

Comment by Hugh on March 27, 2020 at 10:55

Thank you, Christine. As far as I’m aware that brick building was a piano factory. Do you have any memories of that?

Comment by Geoffrey Walker on August 13, 2021 at 22:57

I worked in the Quality Control department in Central Laboratories (known locally as "Central Bogs") located in the 1st. floor of the "modern" building from early August 1965 until transfer to Forest Road factory in late January 1969. The frontage facing St. Annes Road was an addition to the original building in Warwick Gardens. I still remember a lot of employees names from this era!

Comment by Christine Yates on August 13, 2021 at 23:06

The Central Labs stood on the site of numbers 1 -11 Warwick Gardens that were wiped out in a bombing raid (land mines) during WW2. The Edwardian fronts were blown off numbers 2-18 (our house was number 8), and mines were also dropped on the corner of Roseberry  Gardens and at the top of Warwick by Stanhope Gardens.  Prefabs replaced the houses until flats were built in 1962. Apparently the raid was aiming for the railway lines and factory district

Comment by Hugh on August 14, 2021 at 0:34

The corner plot had been bought by the borough of Hornsey in the late nineteenth century to build a small fever hospital. But for one reason and another, this never got built.

From at least 1902 to 1904, it was in hospital use as part of the Isolation hospital of St Ann's.

By 1906. the hospital had moved out and the site was eventually sold. 

1914 OS map (surveyed 1912 so showing hospital buildings)

In about 1913, Boyd Pianos, built their piano factory, the St Ann's Works, on the plot and had moved in by 1914. (I wrote this up here).

Boyd moved from the St Ann's Work to Ashfield Road in the factory district in 1928/29. Below is a copy of extracts from the 1928 & 12929 phone directories.

By 1936, Ever Ready had moved in. It is not clear whether they were using the factory to manufacture batteries in the earlier years of occupation.

1936 Post Office Directory

The 1938 OS map (surveyed 1935) shows Ever Ready factory. 

The post-war 1955 OS map, (surveyed in 1954), showed a factory with the same footprint as the pre-war one, suggesting that it didn't get badly damaged by bombing.

 

Although the map suggests that the building had by this time, become a plastic mouldings factory, the 1955 phone directory still shows the factory as an Ever Ready one. The company also made radios and, as the 1931 ad below shows, torches. So perhaps something like that is what was made here. Having said that, the 1955 phone book listing (see below) suggests that it was a battery factory at this point.

London phone directory, 1955

Comment by Hugh on August 14, 2021 at 11:39

East London Observer - 17 July 1937

This job ad was one of three placed on consecutive weeks in July, 1937, Apart from directory entries, it is one of the few written records I've been able to find for Ever-Ready's Harringay factory.

And this from 1931

Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 25 September 1931

Comment by Christine Yates on August 14, 2021 at 19:49

Great maps Hugh,

my friend Linda Apadoo lived at no.13 which was the ‘first’ house after the bombing which was opposite, but just past Chesterfield Gardens. There were a lot of prefabs where numbers 1-11 stood, eventually replaced with flats in 1962, so the terrace reached a way past Chesterfield Gardens towards St Ann’s Road.  My great aunt and uncle were in the Anderson shelter at the time of the land mine only to discover on the all clear that 2-18 no longer had any fronts!

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