Finsbury Road, Wood Green Estate, c1905

Comment by Hugh yesterday

I added this photo recently in response to a query by HoL member Maria Hubyens in which she asked if anything was known about about 66 Finsbury Road, which she said  she believes originally to have been a shop and once a post office. My response is below:

Below is an extract of three Kelly's Directories from Wood Green, showing No 66 as a stationer and then finally just before the war, becoming also, just as you were told, a sub-post office. 

I've also added a photo (link ti photo above) which shows the premises somewhat obscured in the mid-distance - 66 was the corner shop on the other corner opposite the shop beneath the spire of what was then Trinity Church.

Below the main photo on the page linked to is an aerial photo from 1924. In that photo, you can see no 66, opposite Finsbury Gardens, with its three white awnings unfurled.

Below are a couple of newspaper clippings.

North Middlesex Chronicle, 27 May 1899

Middlesex Gazette, 4 April 1903

I hope all this gives you some sense of the building's history. Whilst no 66 survives, like many of the freehold estates built in Hornsey, much of the Wood Green Estate was demolished in the middle of the last century and replaced with public housing."

Maria replied with the following:

Fantastic - thanks Hugh! This is the first time I've seen any old photos of this particular property. Do you know roughly when the first photo was taken?

When I moved in here, back in 1997, the corner shop diagonally opposite was an ironmongers/hardware store called King & Sons, run by a lovely gentleman called Mr King, the grandson of the original owner. He told me that, when he was a child, there were shops along Finsbury Road from the Nightingale Road junction and then all along Commerce Road. These included a greengrocer, butcher, florist, baker, and even a furrier! He said it was one of the main shopping areas before the shopping city was created after WWII. Sadly Mr King died in the early 2000s and his shop was converted into flats.

To avoid trampling on another' thread, I've now moved our exchange to this one and continue with my response below.

Comment by Hugh yesterday

Maria, most photos of this style were Edwardian. So I tend to date them c1905. 

If you click the 'Wood Green Estate' tag under the photo above, you can see the other handful photos I've added of this small area, including another of Finsbury Road.

I'm not with my books at the moment, so I can't confirm, but I imagine that Alfred Pinching's book on Wood Green will have some information about the estate too. Right now the book is out of print, but you can still find used copies around. Alternatively, you should be able to buy a new copy from a new print run before too long. (As a member of the Hornsey Historical Society's publications committee, I suggested some months back tHat we acquire the rights to the book from Albert's estate and from the now defunct original publisher and reprint it. That is going ahead, but I can't say exactly when!)

If you're interested in finding out more about old postcards, my HoL article on Hornsey and Wood Green based photographer Alfred Braddock includes a little on the topic and I added references at the bottom of it with more information. I've recently updated and partially rewritten that article for the Hornsey Historical Society. With more on postcards and on Braddock's private life, its is  is appearing in this year's Bulletin journal to be published on 7th March. You can get a copy by joining the Society or purchasing a copy of- the-shelf. 

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