Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Formative years in Harringay
I was born in Islington in 1954 and moved to Harringay when I was about 1yr old. We lived in a top floor flat above what was then Lilley & Skinner shoe shop on Grand Parade, Green Lanes, between Chesterfield and Roseberry, until I was 10. My dad was a shoe salesman for Lilley & Skinner and the flat must have come with the job, a bonus for a young family.
My mum used to sit on the window sill (3 floors up!) to clean the windows, pulling the sash she was cleaning down to secure her legs. From the kitchen window we had a washing line connected to a tree on a pulley system. Between the kitchens of each flat was a balcony, which acted as a fire escape. I always believed that this was where Father Christmas's sleigh landed. It was probably far too small for any sort of sleigh but at that age I didn't question it. We would leave sherry for Father Christmas and a pot of tea and mince pies for the reindeer. Some years later this balcony became a source of fear as I thought the daleks could get across it and into our flat. On Christmas Eve we would leave the living room window open at the front of the flat for the tree fairy to get in. It obviously worked as she was always there Christmas morning. I used to imagine her flying over the rooftops and wondered how she managed to find our flat, considering she seemed to be the same fairy every year.
From our flat we could hear the sound of dogs and cars and the roar of the crowd from Harringay Stadium. The sounds fascinated me, providing both mystery and comfort. I also remember watching the smoke and steam from the trains from our kitchen window. When I was a bit older my brother and I used to duck past the ticket office at Harringay station on Green Lanes and take ourselves up on to the platform without a platform ticket. We then had to duck past the ticket office again on our way out. Dad would sometimes take us up Burgoyne Rd (I think) to a footpath over the rail lines above Harringay Rail Station to watch the trains. Waiting for the trains and the ensuing billows of smoke and steam was quite exciting. We always bought a quarter of sherbet oranges to take with us.
The sound of screaming arguments from up the road I later learned was Barbara Windsor and her husband/boyfriend. At the time the name meant nothing to me and then I started watching the Carry On films. "So that's who she is", I thought. Not quite what I imagined from the sounds I'd heard wafting down the back of the flats and not quite what I expected from a 'glamorous' and famous person.
I started school at the infants on the corner of St. Ann's Rd and Black Boy Lane and then went to junior school around the corner. I don't remember too much of these years but I do remember having what seemed like forever off school in the winter of 1963 when there was so much snow and the oil supplies ran out and the school was closed. Where the snow had been shovelled off the road and piled on the pavement there was still small left-over heaps in June the following year because it had taken so long to melt. Just behind the school (maybe Etherley Rd) was a small shop who sold home made ice lollies for a ha'penny. It was just an ice cube made in a household ice tray with a stick in it. They never lasted very long but were bought by half the school.
Smog was another thing to contend with in those days. We used to play hide and seek in the school playground when it was thick. You literally couldn't see from one end of the playground to the other. It must have been the winter of 1963 again, when we woke up one morning after the smog had been particularly thick to find buses and taxis abandoned in side streets at odd angles. Some of the buses were way off a bus route, demonstrating how disorientating thick fog can be.
I remember trolley buses and the excitement of riding on them. At a young age I was fascinated by how they stayed on the overhead wires. Unlike trams, trolley buses did not have tracks to ride on and guide them. It must have been an art in itself keeping them on path so the pylons did not come off the wires. I remember seeing the odd bus whose pylons had come off and I seem to remember the driver used a pole with a hook on the end to reconnect them to the wires. This last memory may not be correct - it was a long time ago.
Sometime in the early 60's, I think it was, Harringay was selected as a testing ground for a new type of pedestrian crossing. One of the first 'pelican' pedestrian crossings was installed almost outside our front door. It was quite an exciting thing to use it, pressing the button and waiting for the green light telling us we could now cross the road. Looking at Google earth maps it seems there is still a pedestrian crossing in the same place.
On our sweet money, my brother and I used to catch the bus to Wood Green and back without my mothers knowledge and considered it a great adventure. In later years my mother got a job with Eagle Star insurance in Wood Green. Rather than leave us at home on school holidays, she would take us with her and we would play in the park over the road so she could keep an eye on us. Not something most mothers would consider doing in this day and age. I was quite envious one day when she told us The Beatles had been in to the offices.
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Comment by rahman on October 15, 2008 at 11:51
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What a lovely account of your childhood memories!
How old were you when you left Harringay?
And where are you living now?
Was there a lot of dog poo in the Harringay passage even then? :D
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Comment by RuthE on October 15, 2008 at 14:07
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What other shops can you remember along Green Lanes? Its hard to believe there was ever a decent shoe shop. Do you and your family remember Green Lanes changing (for the worse) is that why you left?
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Comment by StephenBln on October 15, 2008 at 17:02
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You memories match up so well with mine, that I could I have written this piece myself.
I was born the same year as you in Hampstead and in late 1956 we moved to Warwick Gardens.
I don't understand how I can't remember you at school.. Perhaps we were in different classes?
The trolleybuses on Green Lanes we something special to me too, in fact I wrote about them here on HOL last year: Click here to read
Yes, the drivers and conductors did use poles to connect the poles to wires if dewired. The poles were bamboo and were stored under the trolleybuses themselves, but they were often left in the kerb after derailings.. Junctions were always the main places that dewirements often occurred. This made the otherwise very popular trolleybuses impractical. They were quiet, fast and efficent, caused no street pollution. But the 1930s overhead was quite ugly.
I also wrote about the Controlled Pedestrian Area scheme which can be read here as well as links to a virtual system to try out the crossings.
Other things that spring to mind are that 'Half day closing' in Harringay was on a Wednesday, whereas in Tottenham (Bruce Grove) and 'the Town' (Seven Sisters Road) as well as Wood Green it was Thursday. This meant that the Harringay shops were exceptionally busy on Wednesday afternoons.
We used to shop in the Egg Stores on Grand Parade and once a week (probably Wednesdays) we would buy 'Rissoles' for 'tea' (Supper, I think you Harringayites call it these days :°) ).
The train service from Harringay Stadium Station was more frequent and ran from St Pancras to Barking and Southend. It remained steam operated until 1959/60 when new diesel units were introduced.
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Comment by John McMullan on October 16, 2008 at 0:08
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Well I did not grow up in Wellington (NZ) but I went to university there and... they still have their trolley busses! I remember big strong Polynesian drivers doing the business with the poles.. and last time I visited (November) they were still there. Great post. Thanks heaps.
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SPOT MY MISTAKE... IF the early closing day in Harringay was Wednesday.. how could it be busy as well..?
No, Thursday was Harringay's big day..
@ John, thanks for the Wellington link..
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Comment by Hugh on October 16, 2008 at 7:12
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One of the traders who's been in GL since the sixties told me that the early closing days were both Wednesday and Thursday and used to alternate with Wood Green. In week 1, Harringay had Weds early closing and WG Thursday. In the following week the days would be reversed and so on.
This could never happen now since there is no equivalence between the two. Even as late as the sixties, it seems, there was some sort of equivalence.
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Comment by Cat on October 25, 2008 at 16:51
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Thanks for the post - still laughing about the daleks.
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Chris, wonder if the arguments you heard could have been with her soon to be husband Ronnie Knight. He was apparently in with the boxing fraternity. So it fits for Harringay (Also a friend of the Kray twins, with one of whom Barbara was later romantically linked)
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Comment by Chris Smith on December 13, 2008 at 12:16
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Hugh, it would seem to fit in with the timing that Barbara Windsor was seeing Ronnie Knight. As she also had links with Reggie Kray it could also have been him. Who'd have thought I was living so close to London's underworld in dear ole Harringay!
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Comment by Meryl O'Neal on July 16, 2009 at 2:53
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We lived at #20 Stanhope Gardens and Barbara Windsor used to come and visit Carmen, who was two doors down at #16, I only knew her by her first name. Had no idea that she lived just around the corner! They were both rather loud and brash. My favourite shoe store was Lilley & Skinners. My Mum told me when I reached 13 I could pick out a pair of casual shoes, I was in lace ups until then. I was overjoyed, as they were red and showed them to her in the shop window. She was not impressed, she said there was not enough support for my arches. I landed up with a horrible pair of brown shoes that to me looked like slippers! Came home crying and said I never did get a lot of wear out of them.
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