Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Green Lanes 1918ish

Looking towards Stanhope Gdns.

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Comment by StephenBln on January 3, 2012 at 8:28: Nice shot Hugh.. Don't worry, no correction of the date - 1918ish? I actually think it is a bit later, around about 1920-23ish (The woman in white's outfit is later than 1918 I think) - but it is certainly post-WW1

Comment by StephenBln on January 3, 2012 at 9:01: It's either a Sunday or a Summer Evening.. warm with plenty of Sun because the blinds on the shops have been left down. By the puddle in the foreground, it looks like there had also been a Summer downpour.

Comment by Hugh on January 3, 2012 at 9:47: You're probably right about the date. My first instinct was later, but I was given it as 1914 so erred on the side of caution.

Interesting to note the Home & Colonial Stores (showing in the foreground). In 1957 H&C bought the recently defunct Harringay Arena and used it as a food store for the final twenty years of its life. (Side note: in 1961, H&C restyled itself under the name of a company it created in 1929, Allied Suppliers. Early in 1972, Allied was acquired by Cavenham Foods, formed six years previously by British entrepreneur James Goldsmith. Goldsmith and Cavenham were used as a basis for the thinly disguised Richard Devere and Cavendish Foods. (The sort of minutiae I used to pick up writing Wikipedia articles. I was constantly amazed at where links from Harringay stories took me)

Comment by paddyk on January 4, 2012 at 15:35: amazing what a century of progress can do for a place

Comment by StephenBln on January 4, 2012 at 19:20: BTW. I think the road surface is wooden..

You can just about make out the blocks. Wooden blocks that have been tarred to keep them in place.. They kept the traffic quieter than on real cobbles, but were seriously slippery if they became wet and were oily.. One of the last streets to still have them was, believe it or not, Piccadilly.

Comment by SarahC on January 5, 2012 at 16:50: Interesting about the surface. One of my Christmas presents was the Times Atlas of London which reproduces a picture of "Bartholomew's Road Surface Map of London & Neighbourhood" from 1922, which shows quite a lot of wood; you can't see as far out as Green Lanes, though.

Comment by StephenBln on January 5, 2012 at 17:15: Thanks for the tip about the Times Atlas - I have the 1997 edition and just had a quick look but couldn't find the page you mean:

I don't have any shots of wooden blocks in Harringay, but I do have this one of them being laid in Isleworth - May 1902.

or enlarged here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/isarsteve/6484165969/in/photostream/li...

Comment by Charlotte on January 5, 2012 at 17:19: Amasing, thanks for sharing. No litter!

Comment by SarahC on January 7, 2012 at 23:21: The road surface map pic is on page 147, but it is a new edition, so may be different. But this, though it's an earlier version, is very similar: www.soundsurvey.org.uk/index.php/survey/historical_road

That roadworks picture is great - I had no idea they did this until I saw the Times Atlas. I don't remember wooden roads being mentioned in any novels I've read...

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