Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
More Memories Of The 50's-60's in Harringay
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Posted by Les e39 on August 28, 2009 at 10:06
I moved to Harringay when i was five years old with my mother who at that time worked in Smithfield Market as a cook for the workers at Smithfield market.
We lived in a flat above a butchers shop called Thursby,s which was situated between Warham And Pemberton Road. I have very fond memories of growing up in Harringay which i Didn,t leave until 1973 when i married .
My mother used to leave very early in the morning to get to Smithfield and i remember that there was a Cafe a few doors away from us run by a Mrs Beard .Mrs Beard would give me my breakfast and when i got home from school she would give me my dinner some nights if mum was not home yet.It was a very hard life for my mother as it was just the two of us .My infant and junior schools were South Harringay in Pemberton Road.
I suppose the biggest attraction about living in Harringay when i was young was Harringay Arena. Oh how i remember Tom Arnolds circus.As a youngster my friends and i would go up to the arena to see all the animals during the day time. There always seemed to be something going on at the arena ,boxing events or something .A few years later as we were growing up it would be to see the Harringay Racers ice hockey team ,oh what a good time we had collecting the broken hockey sticks and taping them up and then playing in the street with them with a tennis ball.
We must have drove the local residents mad with our continuous playing in the street either football or with the hockey sticks .I can remember the coronation of our Queen in either 52 or 53 and the party we had at school and the mugs that were given out to us.
I remember well when all those traffic lights were put in Harringay .as we grew up aged about 10-11 we became train spotters,ah the old steam engines,By that time most of our time was spent at the Hogs back which was a piece of land to the side of Harringay West station ,watching the main line that came from the North into Kings Cross ,or we played a game called run outs which was a sort of tag game if i remember rightly.
As a young boy and my mother being on her own struggling to bring me up ,i as many others tried to help financially by doing a paper round in the morning and a paper round after school. I also had a milk round on saturdays with United Dairies, and i might add that when i first started doing the milk round we did have a horse and cart .There was also a bread round with Price,s to do as well .I really don,t know how we fitted it all in when i look back as my biggest memory was the fun that we used to have.
As we grew up our interests turned to other things .When we were 16 my pals and i all got motor scooters (yes we were mods ) Once again we must have drove the local people mad with all the noise of 15 0r 20 scooters going about Harringay .Oh happy memories
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gary Smith on
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It does make you realise that standing on your own two feet shapes a person. I am a great believer in the safety net of the welfare state but as a last resort. A young person working to contribute to the household finances was not uncommon. I have been in continual work since I was eight years old and, at sixty nine, I am still working (by choice).
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Permalink Reply by Geraldine on
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I agree with Gary. Les's story might have been about me - brought up by a single mother in Harringay after the war. We were not the only ones. I worked continuously from the age of 16 to the age of 75, and that was by choice. The milkman's horse was a grey mare named Mary by the way.
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A great account of life in to 50s/60s. When I read it the pictures in my mind were in black and white - a reflection of the times.
I remember my lone parent mum doing ‘outdoor’ work - work completed at home. She made sets of necklaces, waxing thread and threading beads of increasing then decreasing size onto the thread and clasps at either end. Each bead required a knot in the thread before the following bead could be strung. She also sewed buttons onto card. Both necklaces and buttons were delivered and collected, subsequently to be sold in shops. The ‘work’ was called ‘piece work’ as the pay was per piece - so the more you did the more you were paid. At one point I had free school meals (FSM) and what a stigma, as my name was included in an ‘elite’ short list of FSM children AFTER the main list of dinner children was called out meaning my class of 38 children all knew I didn’t pay for my dinner! -
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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We had two queues at school on Monday mornings. One was for kids paying their dinner money and the other for kids to be ticked off the free school meals register. My Dad was laid off work and it was about six weeks before he was taken back. I too recall the stigma of standing in the “other” queue.
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Lydia - My lone parent mum also did piece work. She addressed envelopes in her beautiful handwriting. I remember the piles of blank ones waiting to be written. She worked through the night sometimes. I was a free school meals kid too. I don't remember being in a separate queue but there was certainly a stigma, rather like being 'on the panel' if you needed to see a doctor and using the bag wash at the laundry - though my mum refused that last one.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Woods on
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Fascinating and thank you. There is some material here about Harringay where I lived from 1946 to 1964.
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Thanks, Richard. I enjoyed the food section. How before-its-time was the salt twist in Smiths crisps!
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Brilliant Richard, and so very accurate. Although we did have great neighbours from Cyprus and the Nana used to make her own yoghurt every day. We had best passover my Mums comments on eating "gone off" milk. They also had summer barbeques when they would skewer lamb on "green" sticks and cook them on the "bonfire", as Dad would put it. As a kid who would eat anything I thought it was great. I firmly believe that the different cultures that touched us in the 50's and 60's in Harringay were priceless. By the way, Cross & Blackwell baked beans were the best.
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Oh yes to the beans! My mother spent a few years in Canada and toasting marshmallows was a thing for us! And our 'off' milk was turned into cottage cheese in the pantry using a muslin bag and a pudding bowl!
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My mum regularly turned off-milk into a kind of yogurt. I don't remember eating it myself but she grew up in India and said it was normal there. She was thrilled when United Dairies (between Seymour and Hewitt) began selling yogurt. It came in small bottles with a red foil lid. This would have been in the 1950s.
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I remember the yoghurt from (Express in our case) - those nice dumpy little bottle were made for a dessert spoon. Mum like it 'raw' but my favourite was the vanilla and also the strawberry! Of course the sad thing is that it made life easier so the home-made stuff vanished. The cottage cheese lasted a while but when old man Percival sold the grocers to the Barnes everything changed and even that was bought in. About the same time we got our first =fridge - a huge secondhand Prestcold (similar to below) and stale milk was a thing of the past!
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Great recollections Les and several interesting comments arising. Our Dad died in 1955 when I was 6 so our Mum was left to look after 4 kids. She, as others have reported also did piece work from home, working on several different items and us kids used to "help out" with bits all sat round our big pine kitchen table. She also had different part time jobs. Luckily though we never depended on someone else providing our breakfast and tea, Mum was always home at those times. So we also had free school meals but can't recall it being much of a stigma. I do remember generally enjoying the grub though.
We lived in Harringay Road and my first job was also working at Smithfield from 64-65. We moved to White Hart Lane in 1970. Us kids spent most of our time playing in the streets, namely football, cowboys and indians and war games, armed with pea shooters, catapults, bows and arrows and the like, if we couldn't be bothered to walk ALL the way to Duckets or Woodlands Parks and yes, much to some neighbours annoyance at times ! Seems like we spent most of our days outside. Colina Mews was our favourite play spot along with The Oakwood Laundry waste ground. And our push bikes allowed us to venture further afield.
We did our train spotting from a platform in Finsbury Park. And yes...........run outs !! I did a paper round which served all The Hills as we called them, now charmingly referred to as The Ladder. That took some puff, I swear the paper bag dragged on the floor under the weight of all the items for delivery. Then I had a Friday night, all day Saturday job working at Pearks Grocers shop on Green Lanes.
But as you say Les, brilliant fun times were had by us kids. Not so for our single Mums though eh !!
And I remember you noisy lot revving your scooters up and down Green Lanes congregating at the bottom of Warham/Pemberton Road areas ? As interests turned to other things for us all....................
Anyway thanks for that post Les and contributions from others. Take care and grow old gracefully.
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