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More from Tollington Park – 1990

More from Tollington Park – 1990 continues my walk which began at Kings Cross on Sunday February 11th 1990 with the post Kings Cross and Pentonville 1990. The previous post was Fonthill & Tollington.

*House, Tollington Park, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2c-12*

Tollington is a district whose name dates back at lease into Saxon times. According to Eric A Willats’ ‘Streets With A Story‘, from which much of the information in this post comes, “It was spelt ‘Tollandune’ in the Anglo-Saxon Charters meaning the hill or pasture of Tolla. ‘Tolentone’ meant a pannage for hogs, a place of beechwood and mast. This area and Holloway were all then part of the Great Forest of Middlesex. It
had various spellings Tolesdone, Tolyndon, Tallingdon and Tallington.”

Modern development of the area, then farmland, began early in the 19th century; “About 1818-1820 ‘a pretty range of villa residences were erected in the Italian style by Mr. Duerdin, with stabling and offices attached, from the designs of Messrs. Gough and Roumieu.’” These are now 96, 102, 106 and 110 Tollington Park.

*House, Tollington Park, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2c-13*

Like many other early and mid-19th century developments the villas were first given their own distinct subsidiary names and only became numbers in ‘Tollington Park’ in 1871, Willats gives the following details:

After 1871 subsidiary names were abolished, e.g., Belmont Terrace became nos2-6, Birnam Villas 8-10,St Marks Villas 16-22, Claremont Villas 24-36, Duerdin Villas 44-56, Fonthill Villas 60-70, Syddall Villas 59, Syddall Terrace 63-73, Regina Villas 89-101, Shimpling Place by 1882 nos15-155 Upper Tollington Park, Harrington Grove 1848/9 became after 1894 47 to 67 and 52 to 70 CHARTERIS ROAD. Nos96 to 108 have been attributed to Gough & Roumieu, built 1839-40

*House, 53, Tollington Park, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2c-14*

This corner house has been significantly modernised but retains its tall archway and fits in well with the adjoining houses out of picture to the left. It doesn’t get a mention on the fine map of ‘Historic Tollington’ which was “created by the incredibly vibrant Tollington Park Action Group in 1994.” As well as the plan of the streets this contains informative annotation on 26 sites in the area and would have been very useful to me as a guide to the area which I photographed four years before the map was made.

*House, 20A, Turle Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2c-15*

Willats suggests the road was “Probably named after a John Turle of no.11 Tollington Park who was at that address in 1830 and in 1833.”

*George Orwell School, Turle Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2d-65*

The former Tollington Park School first opened in 1886. It gained some new buildings to add to its Victorian main block in 1930 but these were demolished by bombing in 1940. I think my picture shows the new extension built in 1955.

It was renamed by the Inner London Education Authority in 1981 after Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, in 1981. He had lived not far away at 27b Canonbury Square from 1944-7. The name of this ‘secondary modern’ school was changed when it was merged with Archway Secondary School and it disappeared in 1999 following a damning Ofsted inspection of all Islington’s schools, re-emerging as Islington Arts and Media School.

The school’s most famous former pupil is photographer Don McCullen who was born and grew up in Finsbury Park nearby.

*St Marks, church, Church Hall, Moray Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2d-53*

Work began on building the church in 1853; its architect was Alexander Dick Gough (1804-71) who lived at 4 Tollington Park. He was a pupil of Benjamin Dean Wyatt and for some years worked in partnership with Robert Lewis Roumieu; their work together in North London included the Islington Literary and Scientific Institution (now the Almeida Theatre), the rebuilding of the Norman St Pancras Old Church and several Italianate villas in Tollington Park mentioned above.

After their partnership was dissolved in 1848, Gough designed or redesigned over a dozen churches in North London and elsewhere, many now demolished, along with other buildings. St Mark’s required some structural alterations in 1884 and was renovated in 1904.

*Tollington Court, Tollington Place, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2d-54*

These 1938 flats are on the corner of Tollington Place and Tollington Park and I was standing a few yards down Moray Road to make this picture, with the square and fluted round pillars of St Mark’s Mansions, 60 Tollington Park, at the left. This building is locally listed as a semi-detached Italianate villa dating from around 1850.

*St Marks Mansions, Tollington Park, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1990, 90-2d-55*

This shows the neighbouring semi-detached villa of St Mark’s Mansions and the poor decorative state of many of the buildings like this long converted into flats in Tollington Park. The area has been considerably gentrified since 1990 and it is hard to believe the state of the properties then when you look at them now.

See what Tollington looked like in the 60’s & 70’s has a collection of pictures by Leslie William Blake taken before the area had begun to receive any real investment following extensive bomb damage in the war. The article states “it wasn’t until the late Sixties that any real investment began” to come into the area, and my pictures from 1990 show that there was still much to do.

More pictures from my walk in a later post.

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Church Hall, Station, Shops, Hospital – Leytonstone 1989

Church Hall, Station, Shops, Hospital – Leytonstone 1989 – more from my walk on Sunday September 3rd 1989.

*Dossetter Printcrafts, Leytonstone Rd, Maryland, Stratford, Newham, 1989 89-8p-13*

I think this was built as the church hall for Trinity Presbyterian Church. The church was founded in 1863 and the hall was built the following year, the church coming later in 1870. The church closed in 1941 and both church and hall were used as factories. The church burnt down in 1953. This building was certainly still in use by Dossetter in the 1970s but since I photographed it has been replaced by flats. The block at left is still there.

*Leytonstone Rd, Maryland, Newham, 1989 89-9a-61*

Another view of the former church hall. The road layout was altered at least twice sinc I made this pictre and there is now a pedestrianised area with a 10m spiral tower by Malcolm Robertson carrying a clock.

*Maryland Station, Leytonstone Rd, Maryland, Newham, 1989 89-9a-65*

Maryland Station was opened as Maryland Point Station in 1873 by the Great Eastern Railway, 34 years after the line was built. It was renamed as simply Maryland in 1940 and the new buildings were built during the war years in LNER Art Deco style, designed by Sir Thomas Penberthy Bennett, then Director of Bricks at the Ministry of Works. Later he was to be the main architect for Crawley New Town and Stevenage. Network SuuthEast, created in 1982, later added their sign which I think fits reasonably well with the rest.

*Shops, Leytonstone Rd, Maryland, Newham, 1989 89-9a-66*

I could not walk by Scorchers, a 24hr Ironing Service without photographing their signage. I think their 24hrs was the turnaround time rather than suggesting people might have an urgent need for some ironing at say, 3am which they would rush to deal with, though I did have a vision of a van with flashing blue lights and an ironing board rushing through the streets. I cannot now find the exact location and think these buildings may have been on a side street and have probably since been demolished.

Church Hall, Station, Shops, Hospital - Leytonstone 1989

I wouldn’t normally post this in these posts as it is only a very slight variation on an image from my previous post. I’d turned around and taken the pictures above and then came back to this place to make a further six frames – a very unusual thing for me, but I was determined to get this exactly as I wanted it. And here it is with the text that came with it on the web site for my ‘1989’ project.

Again from ‘1989’

*Langthorne Hospital, Thorne Close, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9a-56*

This splendid building is still there just a little off Leytonstone Road in Thorne Close and was built as the Board Room block for the West Ham Union Workhouse around 1870. In 1930 West Ham Borough Council renamed it the Central Home Public Assistance Institution and it was again renamed when it became art of the NHS as Langthorne Hospital. It continued to specialise in geriatric care and had the motto ‘fiat jucunda senectus’ – let there be the delights of old age. It was finally closed in 1999. The older buildings on the site are all Grade II listed.

*Langthorne Health Centre, Langthorne Rd, Leytonstone, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9a-41*

The Langthorne Health Centre is still at 13 Langthorne Road, though it appears now to be run by L L Medical Care though still giving NHS treatment.

Another from the web site – though these images without the text are on Flickr. Here I’m presenting the images in the order they were taken, but in the book and web site they were thoughtfully sequenced – and perhaps make a little more sense. The book preview shows around half of the book’s 20 pictures.

Flats, A Square, Bread & Funerals – Walworth

This post about my walk on Sunday 13th November continues from Gardens, Neckinger, Silver Sea, Special Girls & Deaf Boys.

Congreve St area, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-42-Edit_2400 — *Congreve St area, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-42*

Flats, A Square, Bread & Funerals – Walworth 1988
My walk continued on the other side of the Old Kent Road, in Walworth, where late Victorian housing was partly replaced by modern council estates in the 1930s and 1960s. I wandered through the Congreve/Barlow estate getting rather lost, as I often did in such places, where street maps like the miniature A-Z I always carried in a pocket were seldom of much use. The older houses here are in Tatum St, with those at the right further back in Halpin Place.

The passageway in which I was standing is between Ellery House on my right and the longer block of Povey House on my left, both dating from around 1964 and part of Southwark Council’s Barlow Estate.

Congreve St, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-43-Edit_2400 — *Congreve St, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-43*

Thelow wall at the left in front of Comus House was obviously designed for children to walk on top, and I found a small group doing so. The building on the right at 5 Congreve St is also still there, and has been in use by the Redeemed Christian Church Of God (RCCG) since 1997. I am not sure whether it was still in use as a factory when I made this picture, or what was made there.

I think this was the rear of a site entered from a yard on the Old Kent Road, possibly Preston Close, the front part of which was redeveloped in around 2005. Excavations on that part of the site by the The Museum of London Archaeology Service after it was cleared suggested it might have been the site of a Roman mausoleum.

At the end of the street you can see Townsend Primary School, still very much in use.

Comus House, Congreve St, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-44-Edit_2400 — *Comus House, Congreve St, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-44*

The block is a part of the Barlow/Congreve Estate and was built in 1957 for Southwark Council. The picture is from the corner of Congreve St and Comus Place.

Surrey Square, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-35-Edit_2400 — *Surrey Square, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-35*

The blue plaque on 42 Surrey Squareclose to the centre of the picture records that artist Samuel Palmer (1805 – 1881) was born here, just a few years after this street was developed in 1793-4 by architect Michael Searles. His plan included houses around the other three sides of a square but these were never built.

My Surrey Square Park describes this as “the only remaining group of 18th century domestic buildings in Walworth with any pretension to architectural quality“.

A church, All Saints was built in 1864-65 to the designs of R. Parris and S. Field, but damaged by bombing in WW2 and replaced by a rather plain church designed by N F Cachemaille-Day in 1959. This became redundant when parished were merged in 1977 and is now in use as The Church of the Lord (Aladura) and is their Europe Diocese HQ.

I was standing in front of the church with it out of picture to my right as I made this picture which shows the church hall, an Arts and Crafts style building dating from around 1900. It was used for a variety of purposes after the church closed and is since 2019 the Walworth Living Room, a community space.

Dalwoods, Bakers, Bagshot St, Smyrk's Way, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-22-Edit_2400 — *Dalwoods, Bakers, Bagshot St, Smyrk’s Way, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-22*

Dalwoods Quality Bakers and Quality Confectioners on the corner of Bagshot St and Smyrk’s Way was closed when I made this picture on a Sunday morning but still in business.

Dalwoods, Bakers, Bagshot St, Smyrk's Way, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-25-Edit_2400 — *Dalwoods, Bakers, Bagshot St, Smyrk’s Way, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-25*

I was rather attracted to the display font used for DALWOODS and BAKERS although I couldn’t put a name to it, perhaps a 1930s Deco touch? Something very similar came free with the first Desk Top Publishing package I taught, and it was one of several of which students would make highly inappropriate use. It rather contrasted to the sold block serifs of ‘HOME MADE BREAD’ above the window, best seen in the previous image.

The shop has changed hands since then and now offers the rather less tasty selection of ‘Hair, Nails, Cosmetics & Fashion Wears’ (sic) as a unisex hair salon and boutique. The shopfront has also been redesigned with smaller windows and canopies over the windows.

Funeral Services, Albany Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-26-Edit_2400 — *Funeral Services, 96 Albany Rd, Walworth, Southwark, 1988 88-11c-26*

Another business shopfront, for J W Simpson’s Funeral Service, with the word CREMATIONS over the coach entrance at left, suggesting to me an on-site service for anyone misguided enough to drive into it. The clock had suffered some damaged, with a blank black area above the face where one of the two texts partly visible below had once fitted.

I disliked the fussy little bricks that had been imposed on the front extension of the shop, but they perhaps look less annoying now as the concrete walls around the front garden have gone to make room for a parking space in front of what is still a funeral director. It’s one business that never runs out of clients.

My walk will continue ….

Kensington Gore and More 1988

Royal College Of Organists, Kensington Gore, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4d-61-positive_2400 — *Royal College Of Organists, Kensington Gore, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4d-61*

I’m not a great fan of organs, an instrument generally used in churches to overpower the combined forces of both choir and congregation and to glorify the immense ego of the organist intent on world domination. I think my mental predictive text tends to replace the ‘rg’ with an ‘n’, both words concerning an excessive interest in organs. Of course they can be played with sensitivity, or so I’m told. Visually organs often add interest to church interiors, and this building seems to me to perfectly express the idea of the organ, visually punning on those pipes and also having a ridiculous showoffiness.

Queen Alexandra's House, Kensington Gore, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4d-62-positive_2400 — *Queen Alexandra’s House, Kensington Gore, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4d-62*

Queen Alexandra’s House nearby also has a musical theme, but is considerably more restrained. It was founded in 1884 by Sir Francis Cook Bar to provide accommodation for women students at the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art and the Royal College of Science, and apparently still serves a similar but wider purpose. Queen Alexandra is I think largely forgotten now. She was born in 1844 as Princess Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, a relative of Queen Victoria, and moved up the scale when a conference of Austria, France, Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom made her dad King of Denmark in 1863 and her brother became King of Greece.

But by this time, Queen Victoria had decided her heir Albert Edward needed a wife and although she wasn’t the first choice (and he was enjoying one of his many affairs that continued after his marriage) the two were married in 1863. When Victoria died, Albert became King Edward VII and she became Queen Alexandra. Both as Princess of Wales and Queen she carried out many royal duties and supported many charities – including the one that set up this house, and was a keen photographer, issuing a book of her photographs, Queen Alexandra’s Christmas Gift Book, to raise money for charity in 1908.

Queen's Gate Gardens, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-22-positive_2400 — *Queen’s Gate Gardens, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-22*

Rolls-Royce DYR6 enjoys a suitably elevated position in front of some suitably grand housing in Queen’s Gate Gardens. The development of 127 houses and 51 stables around the square is said to have been a model for later Victorian Garden Squares. The grand design of the houses was probably laid down by the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 who purchased a large slab of South Kensington, parts of which were used for the various museums etc.

St Stephen's Church Hall, Emperor's Gate, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-34-positive_2400 — *St Stephen’s Church, Emperor’s Gate, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-34*

This is not St Stephen’s Church which is on the corner of Gloucester Road and Southwell Gardens, but on the continuation of that road on the opposite side of Grenville Place in Emperor’s Gate and is St Stephen’s Church Hall. I think it may have been actually in use as a church when I made the photograph, but now is a health centre, a hall for hire and has a kindergarten.

This area was sold by Lord Kensington to the Metropolitan warily way in 1867 and lies just to the east of the junction where the Circle Line parts company with the District, known as the ‘Cromwell Curve’. The railway let this South Kensington Baptist Chapel be built here in 1868-9, and in 1873 it became English Presbyterian – and they added this porch. Around 1930 it became the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile.

Middle-class housing was developed here in 1871-3. Initially the developers wanted to name this Alexandra Gate (after the Princess of Wales), but this was vetoed by the authorities and they came up with Emperor’s Gate, possibly a reference to the German Emperor – another of our royal family. The Survey of London says the mews behind the road on the south side, adjoining the railway was named McLeod’s Mews after “Sir Donald McLeod, a local resident and ex-Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, who died in November 1872 after attempting to board a moving train at Gloucester Road Station, falling between train and platform and suffering fearful mutilation.”

Eldon Rd, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-52-positive_2400 — Eldon Rd, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988

Eldon Rd, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-55-positive_2400 — *Eldon Rd, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-55*

Eldon Road with its urns, lion and unicorn and at the top St George and a dragon comes at the west end of a short and rather plainer brick terrace, apparently built in 1852. But I’ve been unable to find out more about it. Eldon Road is a short street with a rather eclectic selection of houses as well as Christ Church Kensington. Hardy Amies (1909-2003) lived four doors along the road from 1961 to 1979 at 17b Eldon Road, not surprisingly making a number of alterations to the fabric.

Kensington Court Place, St Alban's Grove, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-64-positive_2400 — *Kensington Court Place, St Alban’s Grove, Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4e-64*

The Builders Arms is still a pub of sorts, now a gastropub with an extensive and fairly expensive menu and craft ales on tap while I think when I took this picture it was a local where crisps and nuts and pork scratchings probably were the main foods on offer. Similarly although there is a shop opposite, it is no longer a launderette but considerably more upmarket where you can buy a pearl and jade harmony necklace for a mere £3,800. I think you now have to take your washing quite out of the area.

Clicking on any of the images will take you to the album 1988 London Photos with larger versions of these pictures and from where you can browse through over 1300 more pictures from the many I made in London that year.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.