Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

A Tudor Garage (amongst others) in Crouch End

The other day I stumbled across this picture of an odd confection of the Tudor Garage in Crouch End.

This business used to stand next to the Hope and Anchor on Tottenham Lane on the site now occupied by North Point flats.

I'm assuming the only logic behind the Tudoresque style is the contemporary penchant for building mock-Tudor.

The business arrived at this address in 1930/31. I'm not sure if it had been operating elsewhere prior to this date.

Above the first floor on the part of building on the left of the photo, you can just about make out evidence of the company's transition to its first new name of Capital Motors.

In the mid-1950s, a new building complemented the new name.

The business subsequently changed hands and was bought by Spurling Motor Company, a north London Vauxhall dealership.

The building was demolished by the mid-1980s and the site lay empty for about ten years until the flats were built (1990s?).

I knew nothing about either of these buildings until recently. The site has a bit of a poignancy to me since the person who first brought me to N8 lived above one of the shops opposite. for the first few years that I knew it, the site was occupied by two huge billboards.

Advert from 1956

Advert from c 1960

Budget car rentals at Capital Motors, advert from c 1973

In checking on an earlier address for the Tudor Garage, I came across another early garage just down the road.

Lynne Frank & Wagstaff set up on what later became Kwik-Fit in 1919.

Below is a picture showing the front of the garage in 1963. The photo's owner says, "This is the garage where I worked as an apprentice from 1961 to 1966. The person nearest the camera was Peter the one behind was Dave. They were both fellow apprentices but being older than me they were more senior than I was."

Both pictures come courtesy of Roger Frost on Flickr.

Lyne Frank moved out before the end of the century, but it seems that they still own the building, or that they have done until recently. (I discovered this when I searched their name on Google and was directed back to a fairly recent post on Harringay Online about a planning application to develop the site for flats).

LF&W advertising from 1927

I love this little snippet about LF& W from a 1931 local London newspaper.

Tags for Forum Posts: lotus, lotus cars

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Permalink Reply by Steve Wright on May 24, 2020 at 21:39

I looked up John Vincent Teychenne and the Ferrestone Road address in 1951-1953 is a mistranscription. He was at 41 Church Lane if you look at the actual electoral register.

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on May 24, 2020 at 22:09

Thanks, Steve.

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on January 29, 2022 at 11:32

Just stumbled across the following in the 1914 register of electors whilst researching something else. I add here for the record. It tells us that Teychenne was a man of means.

....and this from the Middlesex PO Directory for the same year.

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Permalink Reply by John Shulver on February 9, 2020 at 17:39

Re the mention of The Hope and Anchor public house............ sometime during the 50s/60s/70s family friends of my parents ran the pub. The lady was gorgeous as I remember and I had been brought up to call her aunty. In my later teenage years I used to call in at any excuse just to "view" this gorgeous "aunty" of mine. She really was a stunner. Can't for the life of me remember the names.

And with ref to Lotus.........my girlfriend's father worked at a garage in the Hornsey area known as Johnson Roberts Motor Engineers. Her father, Joe Brim, specialised in engines. The company did much work for Colin Chapman in the fifties/early sixties with Chapman being a regular visitor to the garage before he relocated his Lotus business to Norfolk. Girlfriend's father completed around 25 years service there retiring in 1975 to Suffolk.

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on November 24, 2020 at 10:48

This article from the North London News Group (Independent series) on the occasion of Capital Motors' diamond jubilee in 1983. Thanks to Alan Warwick for the copy.

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Permalink Reply by Sean Boyle on November 24, 2020 at 11:43

I see that the ‘new’ premises “were designed by none other that the chauffeur-driven architect John Poulson...”. Is this he of the Poulson Scandal, which led to the downfall of Home Secretary Reggie Maudling in the ‘70s?