Posts Tagged ‘enprints’

Further North in TQ32

Saturday, July 4th, 2020
Swimming Pool, Golden Lane Estate, City, 1992 TQ3282-017
Swimming Pool, Golden Lane Estate, City, 1992

I don’t know why TQ32 didn’t take me very much into north London during the years 1986-92 as certainly in later years I spent more time in Canonbury, Stoke Newington and Enfield etc, but this particular 1km wide strip perhaps just avoids the areas of them that interested me most.

Dummies,  Old St, 1988, Islington TQ3282-005
Dummies, Old St, 1988, Islington

It’s just an accident of geography that while Green Lanes begins just on its west edge, as it goes north it moves just a little to the west, taking it out of the area. Another accident that much of what I photographed in Tottenham lies just a short way to its east. Of course the pictures I took of these areas still exist and are either already on line in other albums or will I hope soon be there as I get around to uploading other strips of the project.

Tin, Zinc, Iron & Copper Workers, Dufferin Ave, Old St, 1986  TQ3282-003
Tin, Zinc, Iron & Copper Workers, Dufferin Ave, Old St, 1986

TQ3282 begins on the edge of the city where both Islington and Hackney and meet it around Old St in Finsbury, Shoreditch and Hoxton. I don’t think there are now any Tin, Zinc, Iron & Copper Workers in Dufferin Ave, which seems largely now to be home to various financial organisations and I think this building close to Bunhill Fields may have been replaced by something more modern, or at least refronted.

SEFCO Ltd, Honduras St, Old St  1986 TQ3282-004
SEFCO Ltd, Honduras St, Old St 1986, Islington

Honduras Street is one of several short streets between Old St and Baltic St, just west of Golden Lane, and at one time was where Olympus Cameras had their service centre, which is probably why I walked down it and took this picture of SEFCO Ltd which will probably have been taken on an Olympus OM camera.

There was a company called SEFCO Ltd offering to supply specially shaped rubber pieces from an address in Rosebery Avenue in a small ad in the magazine Electrical Engineering in September 1955 who may possibly be the same company moved to a different but nearby address, but otherwise I can find no other information on the internet.

In later years I visited Honduras Street to go to exhibitions and events when it became the home of Foto8 magazine and the Host gallery from 2002 to 2012.

Mural, Caribbean House, Bridport Place, Hoxton, 1986 TQ3283-001
Mural, Caribbean House, Bridport Place, Hoxton, 1986, Hackney

Among the other pictures that I made in TQ32 were a few from Hoxton and Stoke Newington and the start of Green Lanes, including a fine travel agent’s window and several of a photographer’s shop.

Photographer, shop window, Newington Green, Green Lanes, 1988 TQ3285-008
Photographer’s window, Newington Green, Green Lanes, 1988

And further north there are some of interest you can find for yourself, including one with some particular resonance at the moment which I probably photographed at the time in part for its street name, Black Boy Lane.

You will find the pictures on Pages 3 and 4 of TQ32 London Cross-section.

Norwood to Brixton: TQ31

Saturday, June 13th, 2020
House, Norwood Grove, Norwood,  1991 TQ3170-001

My pictures from TQ31, a 1km wide strip of London begin at Norwood Grove with a picture of the ‘White House’ there, a fine building dating from the early 19th century on the edge of Croydon. It’s a total mystery to me what I was doing there in 1991, but I did photograph this house again in 1996 but on a dull, overcast day. Possibly I was on a family walk and we had gone to look at its gardens which are listed with the house.

Barber, Norwood Rd, Tulse Hill, 1991 TQ3172-003

Hairdressers are a good example of businesses that can be set up with relatively little capital expenditure, and are often quite individual in the furnishing of their shops and window displays. I don’t think there are any real chains or franchises in the trade, either for barbers, unisex or ladies salons. And given the nature of the business the windows often include representations of heads – drawn and photographed (as in this case) or even three-dimensional, making them of great interest to me. Something that the differential fading of the colour image at the right only added to.

Tailor, Dulwich Rd, Herne Hill, 1991, Lambeth Tailor, Dulwich Rd, Herne Hill, 1991 TQ3174-020

It was definitely the colour that attracted me to this cafe on the Dulwich Rd at Herne Hill, set off by the white porcelain ashtray. Getting the colour right in the darkroom (it wasn’t on the enprint) proved a little difficult, but the ashtray and the CocaCola box were good reference points and this was one of the pictures I exhibited in the 1990s

Repairs, Railton Rd, Brixton, 1991 TQ3174-005

Brixton was a place I loved to visit for its colour and vibrancy. Back in the early days I went there quite frequently to buy cheap outdated photographic paper from A.W.Young Photographic in Altantic Rd. Later I used to go to Photofusion in Electric Lane to go to exhibition openings and take in pictures for their photo-library. This was Sherlock Electrical Repairs in Railton Rd, and they seemed to specialise in vacuum cleaners.

121 Centre, Railton Rd, Brixton, 1991 TQ3174-019

I bought some pamphlets and magazines from the 121 Centre in Railton Rd, on the corner of Chaucer Rd. It was a squatted anarchist social centre, and later in 1999 I went to at least one party in the street outside when it was threatened with eviction.

The centre had been squatted in 1973 by Olive Morris and became and anarchist social centre around the time of the 1981 Brixton riots, when Railton Rd was the “front line!, later gaining an international reputation for the groups and events it hosted. Set on fire by right-wing thugs in 1993, it recovered but was evicted by Lambeth Council in 1999 despite a determined and well-organised campaign of resistance. Property values in the area had risen dramatically and Lambeth who perhaps hadn’t been worried when Brixton property was almost worthless decided to take the property back.

More from Brixton in a later post. You can see these and other pictures in the Flickr album TQ31 London Cross-section. As I write there are still more pictures to add of TQ31 north of Stockwell.


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.