Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Does Anyone Else Find Iron Smelting Slag in their Garden
For years I've been finding in my garden lumpy bits of what looks to me like slag from smelting Iron. I'd been assuming that it was related to the occupation at Harringay House since my house is very close indeed to the site of the house. However, one of the estate plans published by the British Land Company shows no building of any sort just where my garden is.
It's not just one or two pieces. It's a lot. I used to just throw them away. But, fearing it will all soon be gone, I've started preserving the pieces I find now.
I've begun to wonder, even if there was a building associated with the estate just where my garden is, would they really have been smelting iron or any sort of metal (especially in full view of the southern aspect of the house - all the functional buildings seem to have been to the west). Ironworking, like fashioning horse shoes for sure, but smelting iron? So I've begun to wonder if the smelting could have been from any earlier sort of occupation.
I'm trying not to let my fancies run away with me, but would be interested in finding a possible explanation. There's probably a simple and very mundane one, but I don't want to close off other possibilities.....just yet.
Does anyone else find anything similar? Does anyone have any ideas for an explanation?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I just found a pdf by Shefield Uni doctor of archaelology, Elpidia Giovanna Fregni. The work is entitled "The Archaeology of Metalworking fieldworkers practical guide".
What it says reconfirms my intial thought that I'm looking at iron-working slag. It says
No excuses for not recognising Iron Slag. Note the vesicular holes that could easily be mistaken for worm-holes or from roots.
Such holes are clearly evident in the pieces I found.
Another of the pieces is dotted with small pieces of metal, which according to the Sheffield Uni guide are most likely to be hammerscale - small fragments of metal created as the iron is hammered during smelting.
Click either image to enlarge it.
A dictionary definition of slag is also helpful
Stony waste matter separated from metals during the smelting or refining of ore.
It's the by-product of getting the metal from the earth, not of fashioning metal into objects.
In the pieces I have, there are many small stones in amongst the other material. It looks more and more like slag to me. But, I still don't know when it's from or why it's there in such profusion. In the unlikely event that mineral extraction was a common part of Victorian house construction as undertaken by small scale builders, we should expect to see it commonly everywhere. But I suspect that wouldn’t have been the case. Metal working, sure; mineral extraction? I don't think so.
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Permalink Reply by Roy aka Smiffy on
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Just a thought. The old brick kilns would have produced slag, cinders and all sorts of unwanted ash from the firings.
It had to be dumped somewhere or possibly sold as aggregate and ballast to the building industry?
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Permalink Reply by andy thomas on
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I wonder if bricks were made in the wider North London area at one time?
When I bought a garage in Palmers Green near Fox Lane, N13 some years ago, the deeds specifically prohibited "...the manufacture of bricks or the carrying on of a brick making business" and nothing else was mentioned.
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Permalink Reply by Colinloves on
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I think you are right.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Some of the garden walls in Hatherley Gardens ( between Hornsey Town Hall and the Crouch End Library ) are built or at least decorated ( decorated ??? ) with what looks like your slag. I think slag was used with cement to make concrete foundations.
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Thanks, John. I walk past there quite regularly, so I'll take a proper look next time I pass. In the meantime, a quick look at at Street View suggests that some fairly hefty pieces were used - and that makes sense form a construction perspective. However, the bits I have look like they are as they were formed, rather than being broken off a larger block. I'm not sure that fist-sized pieces would have made such good construction material.
Something along the lines you suggest is a good possibility, but I'll keep an open mind for the time being.
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Yup, I believe that to be true
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Permalink Reply by Raymond Coggin on
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This is slag from the brick making process from Williamson’s brick works that stood on the site of Harringay Stadium, which is where Sainsbury now have a supermarket. Williamson Road commemorates the spot. Local builders bought the slag very cheaply to fill in garden walls on the ladder etc. Many existed during the 50’s and 60’s when I was a boy but most have since been removed. I have recently seen walls containing the same materials in north Chingford.
Williamson provided much of the brickwork for building not only Harringay but much of the surrounding areas. I believe they specialised in much of the decorative earthenware tiling that adorned rooves etc. The founder was I believe the great great grandfather of my aunts husband Gary Williamson formerly also a resident in the area but for the last half century has lived in Canada.
Williamson Street in Holloway (near the old prison) was also named after the family but no longer contains any housing built by them, except possibly the pub at the Parkhurst Rd end. Williamson St., is also know to taxi drivers as the way to reverse direction from Parkhurst Rd to Camden Rd.
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Thanks for the possibility, Raymond.
I'm very familiar with the history of the Scales / Williamson Potteries. There are even a few pictures of them here and a little more here. You had a distant relative, Brian Williamson, who lived at the bottom of Allison Road until a few years ago. He was a familliar sight hanging over his front garden gate, chatting with passers-by
As far as I'm aware the only garden walls built on the Ladder are to the front of houses and along the sides of the gardens that border the Harringay Passage. I'd be interested to see an example of one constructed of clinker, but cannot recall having done so. If anyone knows of one, I'd be interested to see it.
My house is towards the top of the hill and at its rear has a brick faced Victorian tiled terrace. A quick google turned up a page which suggested that clinker was used to provide a free draining fill for walls built up against earth banks. So it may be that clinker was used as a fill for the brick wall of my terrace.
The clinker is widely distributed in the rear garden, but nothing to the front. So if it's clinker used for building this would seem to be a more likely explanation.
Do you know if the kind of clinker produced by tile/brick kilns commonly contained a high proportion of metal flakes as I described above?
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As I indicated in my earlier reply this stuff was in abundance in garden walls at least into the 60’s. When I was about 8 or 9 I built up my own hedge cutting round, most of my customers were on roads on the ladder. Many front garden walls had these strange lumps with the black clinker with the bluish green hue. Years later when I found out what the stuff was after researching the Williamson connection I tried to show to a friend I discovered most of it had gone, only to discover the stuff in abundance in Chingford. I will get a photo and post it on here.
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