North Downs & the M25: We had our elder son staying with us over the Christmas break and by the 29th the trains in our area were almost working normally and we decided to have a walk on the North Downs.
I didn’t write a lot about it on-line, though some of the pictures have captions, but here is the complete text from My London Diary other than those.
A couple of days later we took a walk on the North Downs at Woldingham. It was pretty enough, but for much of the walk we could hear and see the M25.
Though we were walking along rather less busy roads – the sign here says ‘Public Bridleway. No Four Wheel Vehicular Access.’
Wikipedia begins its entry on the village with “Woldingham is a village and civil parish high on the North Downs between Oxted and Warlingham in Surrey, England, within the M25, 17.5 miles (28.2 km) southeast of London.”
Which isn’t a great deal of help to those of us who have only the vaguest idea of where Oxted and Warlingham are, but this is a part of what I think of as “deepest Surrey“, a few miles out past Croydon. We live in a very different part of the county with few large houses and virtually free of horses and on the other side of the Thames which doesn’t really belong in the county – and until the 1960s was Middlesex, the county which once included London and our town is still a part of it.
There is a steep escaprment on the Southern edge of the North Downs
This year today engineering work on the railway means there would be no way to get to Woldingham by train, but back in 2007 – and at normal times of the year now – it’s a relatively short journey, with a change at Clapham Junction we could be there in around an hour and a quarter. So even with the short December days there would still be plenty of time to walk around ten or twelve miles before it gets dark and be home in time for dinner.
I can’t remember the route we took, but this was a circular walk from Woldingham station Both the first and last pictures I made that day were at Church Farm, just a quarter of a mile south from the station. It’s probably not a walk I would recommend unless for some reason this section of the M25 was closed, as almost everywhere you can hear the noise of the traffic along it.
My shadow taking a picture in the churchyardof St Agatha’s Woldingham, first recorded in 1270
It’s probably not a walk I would recommend unless for some reason this section of the M25 was closed, as almost everywhere you can hear the noise of the traffic along it. There seemed to be some long traffic jams, with cars moving hardly any faster than us.
The final picture I made on the walk. More on My London Diary at North Downs & M25.
Brentford, Chiswick & Hammersmith: On Thursday 27th December 2018 we still had a lot of Christmas excess to walk off despite having made our normal Boxing Day walk the day before. But we had followed that with a second Christmas dinner.
‘Rule Britannia’ on a boat moored below Thames Lock at Brentford
This is still one of my favourite walks in West London and includes various stretches I’ve often walked over the years in one direction or the other, usually during the times of year when days are short and we don’t want to spend much time in travelling. And during the time between Boxing Day and New Year, rail travel is often something of a lottery with much of the network being shut down for engineering work.
Brentford locks were gauging locks so that tolls could be charged based on the weight of goods in barges. The flats here on a site between the River Brent and the canal have replaced large dockside sheds.
Even our short journey to Brentford was affected in 2018 and the usual direct train service to Brentford – our slow route to Waterloo – was not running. But we could take a train to Twickenham and go the rest of the way on the top deck of a bus, always one of the most interesting ways to travel in London. And the bus did take us more conveniently close to where I wanted to start this walk, at the bridge which takes Brentford High Street over the Grand Union Canal.
The road over the canal used to be the main route from London to the west and southwest before the Great West Road opened in 1925, and the canal linked the Thames to Birmingham.
Brentford used to be a rather dirty downmarket industrial and commercial centre, with sheds and warehouses, factories, docks on the canal and where this enters the Thames, a thriving market, a large gas works and more. It has changed dramatically in the last 40 or so years with much of its river and canal sides now filled with luxury flats. Parts of the old Brentford remain but more and more is disappearing, including some things in these pictures I made in 2018. I’ve been there a few times since and it remains an interesting walk.
A narrow section of the towpath beside a derelict shed
More on My London Diary at Brentford to Hammersmith. Here I’ll simply post a few images with captions from some of the key places along our route apart from the picture at the top of the post they follow roughly in the order I took them, though we did quite a bit of wandering around in Brentford.
A small dock in the middle of BrentfordThe River Brent flows over the weir below the footbridge at centre left; at right, Thames Lock connects the canal to the tidal River Thames.The River Brent from the footbridge over the weir.Below Thames Lock the river comes back into the channel leading from the lock to the Thames.A working boatyard at Dock Road on the River BrentJohn’s Boat Works, Lot’s Ait with the bridge to it built in 2012Hounslow Council and boat owners fought a long battle over the moorings at the gasworks site, but these boats were simply abandoned after the council’s victory.Strand on the Green at low tide. It was warm enough to sit in the sun and eat our sandwichesWe walked through the gardens and out from the main gate to Chiswick HouseThe footpath to St Nicholas’s Church in ChiswickRiver Thames looking back to ChiswickRiver Thames and Hammersmith Bridge
In Hammersmith we took the District line to Richmond and then a train back home to tackle some of the leftovers from our Christmas lunch.
Boxing Day Walk: Most years this century we have walked from Staines to Old Windsor for a family lunch, at first at my sister’s house, but more recently at a pub in Old Windsor where we have been joined by other members of the family. We are hoping to do the same today, though perhaps we might need to take a bus, a few of which are rumoured to be running, though I think likely to be cancelled at zero notice.
The Swanmaster statue had been moved earlier in 2014 to the riverside garden in Staines
It’s not a great distance, though in earlier years we often added a few miles to the more direct five or so to develop more of an appetite, and sometimes we had too when the path beside the River Thames was flooded.
Offices on a small riverside dock on the Surrey bank in Staines
On My London Diary you can read more about some of these walks, and in particular about our walk on Friday 26th December 2014, ten years ago, when I wrote about it in rather more detail than usual. Here I’ll just post a few of the pictures from that walk with some captions, mainly those I wrote back in 2014. The pictures follow the order of our walk.
The annual Boxing Day Challenge (if river flow allows) between Staines Boat Club and Burway Rowing ClubThe more recent of the two bridges taking the M25 and A30 Staines Bypass across the riverA floating crane moored by the weir at Bell Weir Lock in water undisturbed by boatsThe 1910 water intake to the Staines aqueduct takes water to reservoirs and treatment works.Rosehearty has been moored here for years. The name is a town on the Moray Firth.Dock at Bell Weir Boats in RunnymedeHouses on The Island in Wraysbury – many here were flooded in February 2014The Thames at Runnymede, where we crazily swum in the buff when young after an evening in the Angler’s Rest Hotel. Then there was a diving board here too.R G Bargee – most boat owners seem unable to resist a pun. We were almost there.Another family at our destination.
Fire Station Cottage, North Rd, Highgate, Haringey, 1989 89-11f-45
I continued along North Road. Fire Station Cottage dates from 1906 and as the name suggests was built as a fire station. According to British History Online, “A room in North Road, Highgate, was hired in 1882 and a portable fire station was opened in 1887” with a fire engine manned by volunteers. This building was built as a replacement. It had closed as a fire station before World War Two but was reopened for use in the Blitz.
Highgate School, North Rd, Highgate, Haringey, 1989 89-11f-34
Taken from beside The Old Gate House pub at 1 North Road, a 1930s faux antique timber framed building with only its sign in my picture, I was looking across to Highgate School, founded by Roger Cholmeley in 1565, and formally ‘Sir Roger Cholmeley’s School at Highgate’. The current school fees for Years 7-13 are £8,830 per term and with VAT at 20% that comes to almost £32,000 a year. The per-student annual cost of public education in the UK in 2023-4 was £7,600.
The Grade II listed chapel was designed by Frederick Pepys Cockerell and built in 1865-6 and has an unusually long description in the official listing text.
Pond Square, Highgate, Camden, 1989 89-11f-35
Pond Square is certainly not a square, but a strangely shaped quadrilateral one side of which is South Grove. I rather liked the atmospheric nature of this image taken into the light which nicely illuminates what must surely be a gas lamp, as well as the many fallen sycamore leaves. The building on the right is 6 Pond Square and the church in the distance is St Michael’s Church, Highgate.
As well as not being a square, Pond Square does not have a pond, but rather more usefully does have public conveniences. There had been two man-made ponds here, the first apparently dug out as a hobby by a local hermit in the fourteenth century. Both were filled in by the local council in 1864 as unsanitary.
Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution, South Grove, Highgate, Camden, 1989 89-11f-22
South Grove forms the southern side of Pond Square and the Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution is at Number 11 on its junction with Swains Lane. It was founded in 1839 to enlighten the local population about the new developments in science and industry that were revolutionising the country. It still continues to do so.
It moved to this Grade II listed building in 1840 and remodelled it both then and later in that century. According to the listing it had previously been in use as a school for Jewish boys, and other sources suggest it may have been built on the cellars “of the Swan, Highgate’s first alehouse dating from the fifteenth century“.
The Angel, Pub Sign, Barclays Bank, High St, Highgate, Camden, Haringey, 1989 89-11f-25
There was a brewery and pub on this site at least by 1610, but it was given a new frontage in 1880 and then completely rebuilt in 1928-30. But though I liked the sign I was more impressed by the Barclays Bank and the adjoining building on the opposite of the street.
Barclays closed the bank at 54 High Street in 2020, selling it for £1.8 million and Highgate no longer has a bank. I think these buildings probably date from the late 1890s.
Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée: Monday 17th November 2008 was the last day of our stay in Paris where I had come with my wife for a week for me to go to Paris Photo and for the two of us to enjoy the city and the huge number of photographic shows that were taking place there. On My London Diary you can read PARIS SUPPLEMENT, my diary of our week there.
Rue de Tanger, 19e
We had arrived in Paris the previous Monday and the first thing we did on arriving there was to buy our weekly tickets – then Carte Orange – for bus and metro transport across the city – incredible value for those used to UK transport prices.
Parc de Buttes Chaumont
But that of course had finished on Sunday. And the only real way to see any city is on foot, so we decided to spend the day before our Eurostar train left for London at 17.13 taking a walk around some of our favourite places, booking out but leaving our cases in the hotel foyer to collect later.
Le Voltigeur on the courner of rue des Couronnes
As you will see from the pictures here we first made our way to Paris’s most fantastic park, Buttes Chaumont, a former gypsum quarry and waste tip converted into gothic fantasy, and then on to Belleville.
Earlier in our stay we had visited the Bar Floreal where I had been given a free copy of a small book produced some years earlier for a show there by Willy Ronis (1910-2009), one of my several favourite photographers of Paris, ‘la traversée de Belleville’ which describes his favourite walk around the area.
Rue Laurence Savart, 20e
Linda was keen to use this and find exactly the scenes in his pictures, while I was more interested in making my own pictures, and had followed a quite similar route some years earlier. But it was interesting to see it through his eyes, although considerable redevelopment had changed the area since he walked it in 1990. And more since 2008.
Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, 11e
Rather more atmospheric than my pictures is the video which Ronis appears and speaks about some of his pictures in made at the time of the show in 1990.
Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, 11e
Unfortunately the restaurant ‘Aux Monts D’Auvergne’ at which we ate a splendid three course lunch had been replaced by another by the time we next came to Paris. After the large meal we struggled a little but did just about manage to finish the ‘Traversée’, walk back to the hotel to collect our luggage and catch our train and were back home on the outskirts of London by 8pm.
Canal St Martin
There is more detail about the day in the text on My London Diary as well as in the picture captions – and as usual many more pictures.
Car Park, Angel, Works, Off-Sales, Co-op & Carnival Hats: I started my walk on Sunday 5th November 1989 at Walthamstow Central Station, and walked west down Selbourne Road.
Car Park, Selbourne Rd, Vernon Rd, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-11b-15
This is Sainsbury’s multistory Car Park on the corner of Selbourne Rd and Vernon Rd and there is a very solid looking rectangular box brick building under the curves of the incline up to the parking space, with anther rectangle, the back of the sign and a very small circle of a car tyre at the extreme right.
I think I walked into Walthamstow cemetery to photograph the chapel there which I’ve not digitised but I also photographed several memorials including this one which I think attracted me because of the feathers on the wing and roses.
There is still a Lennox Trading Estate here, and I think the same gates, although the writing on it is smaller and more regular but otherwise everything looks much the same.
Lennox Road is a short street and its southern side has no buildings but simply the fence of Thomas Gamuel Park, which was re-designed in the 1990s. So the consecutive numbering 82-83 made some sense. The area to the west of the trading estate and the park has been comprehensively redeveloped with low rise housing around Lennox Road.
Thomas Gamuel “was a rich London grocer living in Walthamstow who bequeathed six acres of land known then as Honeybone Field and Markhouse Common, to six trustees, so that rent and profits from this land would be paid to the poor of the parish.”
Chelmsford Road runs down the east side of Thomas Gamuel Park and this former off-license on the corner looked as if it had recently closed with a notice on its side ‘SHOP / YARD & GARAGE STORE TO LET NO PREMIUM’.
The sign and the lamp at the corner suggested to me it had once been a pub rather than just an off-licence though the building seemed too small, but I can find no evidence for this. Both these and the shop front have now gone and the property is now residential including a first floor flat.
Former Co-op, Hoe St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-11d-42
I walked down Collingwood Road into St Barnabas Road where I photographed the Safford Hall and the church (not digitised) and then made my way north to Queens Road to cross the railway line and get to Hoe Street, where I made this image.
The beehive was a common cooperative symbol and appears several times on this building along with its date, 1915. For many years it was all the London Co-operative Society store but now only a small section at the northern end is a part of the Co-op, Wathamstow Funeralcare. The London Co-operative Society was formed in 1920 by the merger of the Stratford Co-operative Society and the Edmonton Co-operative Society and I think this was built for the Stratford society.
A few yards north along Hoe Street I took a couple of pictures of the business on the corner with Albert Road
I loved the detailing here with a rather glum looking face holding up a column beside the door. Unfortunately I can’t read the first word of the name of the company here from the angle I photographed this or the next frame, just DISTRIBUTORS LTD. But it did seem a slightly unusual trade to be WHOLESALERS OF CARNIVAL HATS & NOVELTIES.
This property is now entirely residential a has a new fence on top of a low wall around it with a small garden area.
House, 62a, Stroud Green Road, Finsbury Park, Haringey 1989 89-11d-45
At this point I went to Walthamstow Central Station and took the Victoria Line to Finsbury Park. I can’t now remember why I decided to move to a different area but perhaps I simply thought the park at Finsbury Park would be a pleasant place eat my sandwich lunch. I left the station by the Wells terrace entrance and walked along to Stroud Green Road.
As well as the slightly unusual doorway, it seemed to be almost barricaded by the plants growing in front to the door, but the stairs on the outside suggested an alternative entry.
Samuel Lewis buildings, Samuel Lewis Housing Trust, Liverpool Rd, Islington, 1989 89-10h-63
Samuel Lewis was born in Birmingham in 1837, started work at 13 selling steel pens, then opened a jewellers shop before becoming the most fashionable money-lender of his day. When he died in 1901 he left £2.6 million to his wife, with over £1 million going to charity on her death.
£670,000 of this – equivalent to around £30 million today – went to a charitable trust to provide housing for the poor, and these flats are on the first of eight large estates they built.
This estate was built in 1909-10 for the Samuel Lewis Trust, architects Charles Sampson Joseph, (1872-1948), Charles James Smithem and Ernest Martin Joseph (1877-1960) who worked as Joseph & Smithem until 1916. The two Joseph brothers were sons of Nathan Solomon Joseph (1834-1909) who as well as building many synagogues was the leading designer of social housing as architect for the Guiness Trust and the Four per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company and worked also for the LCC and other London councils and he may also have contributed to the designs for these buildings.
I was amused by the contrast between this street and its namesake palace on the River Thames. This Hampton Court is a short street leading west from Upper Street at Highbury Corner, leading to Swan Yard, which is at the end of the street in my picture.
On the left wall is a sign for J Barrett & Sons, but I can’t make out what their business was at 250 Upper St, now a Starbucks. The posters on the wall at right are for a Socialist Party Public Meeting and I think we have four pictures of Maggie Thatcher; I can’t quite read the text but I’m sure it wasn’t complimentary.
The tall building on the right at the end of the street is now a printers and I think probably was when I made this picture. Those to the right of it have been replaced and I think those on the left considerably refurbished. Those in Swan Yard at the end of the street are still there but have lost their white paint.
Swan Yard, Islington, 1989 89-10h-43
I think Highbury Studios, at 15 Swan Yard and most other workshops on the street have been converted to residential or office use and there is now a new building at the southern end of the street, recently converted into coworking office space with a communal roof terrace overlooking Laycock Green, an urban green open space.
Swan Yard and the southern side of Hampton Court are included in the Upper Street (North) conservation area.
Mallett, Porter & Dowd, North London Engineering Works, 465, Caledonian Rd, Lower Holloway, Islington, 1989 89-10h-33
This warehouse and works was built in 1874. Its conversion to student housing for University College London was awarded the Carbuncle Cup for the ugliest building of 2013 from Building Design magazine. The red brick building was demolished with its frontage retained a short distance in front of a a new multicoloured building. The judges commented “The original frontage has been retained in a cynical gesture towards preservation. But its failings go deeper,” and said “This is a building that the jury struggled to see as remotely fit for human occupation.” The rooms lack adequate daylight, give little privacy and those behind the facade have no view outside. Islington council had refused planning permission for the treatment of this locally listed building but were overruled.
Those musical among you can sing “We’re Hub-bords Cup-boards, We’re Hub-bords Cup-boards, We’re go-ing to fight, fight, fight – to get your of-fice right” to the tune shown on this shop, Hubbards for Cupboards Tables & Chairs, at Hubbards Corner on Caledonian Rd. 453 Caledonian Rd on the north corner with Market Road is now a large block of flats with a natural food shop at ground level.
Built in an Italianate style in 1870 as a Primitive Methodist Chapel, architects T & W Stone, it became Caledonian Road Methodist church in 1932 and is still in use. It was restored in 1953 and the exterior cleaned in 1980. Grade II listed.
This building, at 18 Market Road opposite the bus stop at Market Road Gardens and the adventure playground was demolished between 2008 and 2012. Peter Darley in The Journal of the Islington Archaeology & History Society says it was a tripe factory when Czech refugge Otto Fischel bought it in the 1950s and made it Otaco Ltd, plastic injection moulders. His wife, artist Käthe Strenitz was fascinated with industrial London and produced many fine pictures.
You can read more in Jane’s London about J. L. Henson tripe dealer whose name was originally on the panel where E.Zee is in my picture. But the elephants and E. Zee remain unaccounted for, but were perhaps linked in some way with the playground opposite. Though I have a nagging feeling that somewhere in the past I have written more about them.
A private limited company EZEE Ltd, Company number 02564140, was incorporated in 1990, had its registered office for a year in 1992-3 at 14-18 Market Rd. Its business was given as Artistic & literary creation etc. It last filed annual returns in 1991 and was finally dissolved in 2015.
My walk continued and there will be another post shortly.
Blackpool & Minwear Wood: More holiday snaps. We could have walked to Blackpool from where we were staying in Narberth. Not of course the Blackpool in Lancashire but the very much smaller Blackpool in Pembrokeshire.
It would have been a pleasant walk along country roads and through Carnaston Woods, perhaps 5 or 6 kilometres, but we wanted to go a little beyond Blackpool to Minwear Woods for a walk there, and together with the walk back would have been too much for some of us.
Blackpool isn’t a very large place. It has a bridge, Blackpool Bridge, a large house, Blackpool and Blackpool Mill. One road to nowhere very much, woods around and several footpaths including the Knights Way.
The bridge takes the Knights Way over the Eastern River Cleddau, close to the limit of the tide coming up the river from Milford Haven and at the highest navigable point of the river.
It has an inscription stating it was built around 1830 by Baroness de Rutzen; she was the daughter and heiress to Nathaniel Phillips, the owner of the Slebech estate and of Blackpool Mill. I think it may have been rebuilt then rather than entirely new though it may have replaced a ford a short way upstream.
Mary Dorothea Phillips (1797-1860) had met Charles Frederick (1795-1874), Baron de Rutzen in Rome in 1821 and they were married in 1822 in England. Later they became Lords of the Manors of Slebech, Minwear, Newton, Narberth and Robeston Wathen, and of the Manors or Reeveship of Lampeter Velfrey and Llanddewi Velfrey.
Usually described as German, de Rutzen was born in what is now Latvia and the family had extensive estates in Lithuania and you can read a great deal more about him on Geni.com, including his description of his first meeting with the charming daughter of Mrs Phillips, who was a notable pianist. After the marriage the couple lived in Brighton and London for some years, moving to Slebech Hall after Baroness de Rutzen became joint owner of the estates there as well as in Jamaica in 1830. It was a happy marriage and they had seven children.
There is no sign of a pool on either old maps of Blackpool or the current OS maps, but I think the name may come from a creek of the Cleddau immediately upstream of the bridge. The were some dramatic views of this overgrown area from the track leading to the bridge, but a footpath there was closed as too dangerous to enter.
Blackpool mill was built in 1813 on the site of a wharf and a former ironworks and is a remarkable Grade II* listed building, recently beautifully restored as a “Heritage Dining” restaurant, Black Pool Mill, by the nearby holiday park. We didn’t go inside as we had brought sandwiches which we ate at a picnic table in the woods but the restoration has retained the machinery of the mill virtually intact. Originally powered by a large waterwheel using water from a mill race coming from around a mile up-river, the waterwheel was replaced by more efficient turbine in 1903. The mill race is a feature in front of the mill which is set back from the road.
Minwear Woods are a short distance to the west on the slopes above the river and we walked around the clearly marked trail. Trees obscure any view of the river except at a recently constructed viewpoint just off the trail. A short distance to the west the view from an earlier viewpoint is now completely blocked by trees.
Thames Path: Oxford-Eynsham: Saturday 27 August 2011
Here with just a few minor changes is the post I wrote in 2011, still available with many more pictures on My London Diary, though I’ve added some useful links here.
The question most people reading this may well be asking is ‘Where the **** is Eynsham?’ and fortunately the answer is ‘Not very far from Oxford‘ and one of its main attractions is the good bus service taking you back there.
However had you been reading this web site a thousand or so years ago (tricky because I don’t think those Anglosaxons were too hot on internet protocols and although the avian-based RFC1149 would have been technically feasible it was only published in 1990, more or less as Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the web) the question you might have been asking was ‘Where the **** is Oxford‘, a rather less significant place until it got the idea of a having a university.
Alice in Wonderland began here, as Dodgson and another Rev friend rowed up the river with three young girls
As we found when we got there, Eynsham had a huge abbey, though the only real sign we saw remaining of it were its fish ponds. But that was at the end of our walk, shortly before I mutinied and made for the Red Lion.
They brought Alice and her sisters to Godstow Abbey for a picnic. Earlier it was best known as the final residence
Our family walk started at the station and we made our way to the Thames, where our Thames Path book (the official guide, now in a new edition, but others are available) seemed to show the path on the wrong side of the river.
of the ‘The Fair Rosamund’ Henry II’s famous mistress, buried here around 1177.
Years ago, before we had a Thames path, I remember getting quite excited about the draft proposal for it, and even making a few suggestions. Of course there was a tow path next to the river except where some less scrupulous riparian owners had stolen and enclosed parts of it, but it did have an unfortunate habit of jumping from one side to the other at remote places where until around the 1930s there had been a ferry.
Most earlier visitors seem to have carved their initials on the Abbey, but I couldn’t see C.L.D loves A.L anywhere.
Now I’m not so sure that such ‘long-distance paths‘ are such a good idea. They encourage people to approach walking in a very competitive and one-dimensional way, ‘bagging‘ stages of the route in what are more route marches than enjoyable.
My kind of walk tends to go a quite a slow pace overall, stopping to look at and photograph things that take my interest, diverting from the path to look at what seem interesting features on the map, not worrying about getting any particular distance. But of course outside the city there are certain practicalities about finding a bus stop or station from where you can get home. My companions are usually rather more heading for the goal, and you will see the backs of two figures in the middle distance in some of my pictures, though not me running after them to catch up.
Some dead trees provided a useful seat on which to eat our sandwiches, and it was now warm in the sun
But at least this was a fairly short walk, and we did have time to look around Eynsham, a large village with around five pubs and a post office, as well as a heritage trail around the extensive former abbey grounds which we did around half of. The others were also keen to look for traces of the former railway, an extremely thirst-making and largely fruitless task, serving largely as a reminder of how short-sighted we were in abandoning way-leaves on what might by now have seemed a very suitable route for lightweight community transport.
The final picture was taken from the top of the bus on my way home as it went over Swinford Bridge, with a view along the Thames to Eynsham Lock. The bridge is a local traffic bottleneck, with long queues at the rush hour holding up traffic for around 20 minutes or more as motorists have to stop to pay the toll. Although the toll for cars is only 5p – cash only – that nets around £175,000 a year and, under the Act of Parliament granted in 1767 the income from it is free of income tax – which had not then been invented.
A long campaign (at least since 1905) by users continues to get the toll abolished, most recently with a petition to their local MP, a Mr David Cameron, who you think might be able to do something about it. But the owner of the bridge, who bought it in 2009 for £1.08 million remains anonymous, and could well be a considerable donor to Conservative party funds.
Crouch Hill & Stroud Green: My walk on Sunday 24th Sepember 1989 continued after I took a train from Blackhorse Road to Crouch Hill. Then the Gospel Oak to Barking line – apparently called by some the Goblin line was one of the least reliable in the country – perhaps it should have been called the Gremlin line. But for once a train came – and on a Sunday too!
The line is now part of the London Overground with a much improved service and in February this year was renamed the Suffragette line. It now also runs beyond Barking to Barking Riverside, though as yet there seems little reason to ever go there.
Marion Gray, Antiques, 33 Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-21
Almost immediately out of the station was the fine house, on the end of a rather less grand terrace on the west side of Crouch Hill. The station was opened in 1867/8 as a part of the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway and this accelerated development in the area.
This house was sold in 2017 having long been converted into a ground floor nursery with three flats above. Last year it was covered in scaffolding, presumably for a major refurbishment.
Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-22
These shops are on the east side of Crouch Hill, immediately north of Japan Crescent and south of the railway. They still look much the same although the shops have changed and become considerably less useful.
I was attracted by the decorated brickwork, obscured on the leftmost building by some unfortunate cladding, and the curved brick partitions between the houses about the shop fronts.
At extreme right is the pub sign for Marler’s bar, opened in 1983 in a former post office. It’s a pub which has gone through a whole pile of names apprently including Hopsmiths, Noble, Big Fat Sofa, Flag, Racecourse, Tap and Spile and Brave Sir Robin. Andrew Marler was a partner of Tim Martin of Wethersppons, but the history of their collaboration appears to be dulled by alcohol and variously recorded.
Fytos Fashion at 34, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-23 was one of the 20 images that was a part of my web site and book ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, and above is the page from that.
Alley, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-24
I can tell you little more about EKASA ENTERPRISE WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTOR other than the list printed here – CONFECTIONERY TOBACCO STATIONERY DRINKS GREETING CARDS MEDICINE E.T.C.
They shared the alley, reached through a carriage entrance between shops at 17 Crouch Hill, with Albert E Chapman Ltd, whose sign including also Stretchwall U K Ltd was there until at least 2011.
Bowler Products Ltd, 14-16, Crouch Hill, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-25
I hoped that Bowler products Ltd made either cricket balls or hats but they were Importers and Wholesale Distributors of a whole range of goods listed on their shop front but neither of these.
Old Style Delivery, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-9e-12
According to the Hornsey Historical Society this Grade II listed building “with its seven sgraffito panels, was built specially for the Friern Manor Dairy Farm Company on the site at the rear of Hanley Road, where the company rented cowsheds and stables.” There had been a dairy here “from the middle of the 19th century, first by Davis & Co. and then by George Taylor” but this building dates from around 1889-95. The company began earlier and an inscription states ESTABLISHED AD. 1836 The artist of the seven panels and architect are unknown, though the bricks came from Tommy Lawrence of Bracknell.
The buildings were let in the 1920s to United Dairies who used them until 1968. After this they eventually in 1997 they were carefully restored to become The Old Diary pub. This closed in 2020 but was reopened in 2022.
Present Day Delivery, Friern Manor Dairy Farm, Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989
I photographed all seven panels, and you can find some more pictures of them on Flickr, but here I’ll just share the two, one showing ‘Old Style Delivery‘ by two milkmaids with a yoke across their shoulders carrying pails, and this one, ‘Present Day Delivery‘ with the milkman driving a horse and cart carrying large churns.
Even as far back as I can remember in the immediate post-war years our milk was delivered using an electric milk float, at first I think a trailer with the milkman walking in front with a handle to control the power and steering and later with him sitting in a cab. But I do remember a visit to the outskirts of a small town in Germany back in the 1970s where the milk cart was horse-drawn and the milkman measured out the milk using litre or half-litre jugs into the containers brought out by the hausfraus.
We still now in our suburban area get our milk delivered in bottles by a milk operative in the middle of the night driving a now silent electric vehicle.
