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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

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Brilliant.  I hope it costs them twice what they would have made from their LuxuryFlats plan.

For the best of both worlds - let them build the much-needed accommodation and then the Council then compulsorily confiscates them because of no planning permission and lets them out at affordable ( yes really affordable ) rents.

The cinema mysteriously spontaneously combusted shortly after being procured by a local estate agent. Hmmmmm.
Westminster planning actually accepted the initial application. It was vetoed by the councillors. Sadly Harringay councillors don't appear to give a toss about illegal conversion over here. A couple of years back a few of us researched and discovered massive planning fraud in Harringay. We met with Ms Kober and the head of planning and showed her the proof. Since that time nothing has happened. Zilch, Nada...

The Coliseum - and yes, that's how it was spelt - was a favourite hangout throughout my childhood.  Sad to think it's gone forever.

Hello, Pav.  It was kind of derelict even in my day (the 40s and 50s) and affectionately known as 'the flea pit', but a cinema with a greater atmosphere would be hard to find.  In the late 1940s it was still showing films from the 30s:  The Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, gangster flicks with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart; horror films with Sydney Greenstreet, Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi.  Saturday morning pictures with Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, Hopalong Cassidy and Tex Ritter drew almost every kid in Harringay.  We knew all the lines by heart but it didn't matter.

The circle was a favourite spot; you could drop orange peel on to the people below.  Admission was around 6d and everything was watched through a haze of smoke.  The national anthem was played at the end and we marched back up the aisle to the entrance to Souza band music!

I'm not sure when it stopped functioning as a cinema.  It was still there when I left Harringay in 1963 but going into a decline.  Can anyone else remember when it stopped showing films?   

Second rate Westerns and cheap sci-fi films were the staple diet at the Coli or fleapit in the late 50s, early 60s. You'd find my brother there, at least twice a week.

My mum took me there twice a week in the 50s - an A film and B film with a serial in between (usually Flash Gordon and the B film was almost always a western - Audie Murphy and Randolph Scott). You could actually request a film and the Guvnor would try to get it. We were so well known there that when my mum died in 1958 the Guvnor closed for the afternoon performance and him and all the staff stood outside to pay their respects as the cortège passed the Coli.

There was a sweet stall to the side - 3d would get you 8 black jacks, 8 flying saucers and 8 pink shrimps! Behind that was a chip shop, bag of chips when we came out 3d. Our night out cost 4s 6d for both of us, including sweets and chips - that's 22.5p!!
And if only Haringey council would make use of its powers under Section 215 of the Town and Country planning legislation

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/town-and-country-plannin...

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