Gothic fantasy | >Re-PHOTO

Reservoir, Castle & Lordship Lane – 1990

Reservoir, Castle & Lordship Lane: My walk on April 1st 1990 began at Finsbury Park Station and the first post, Brownswood Park Finsbury Park – 1990, ended on Green Lanes where this post begins.

*Reservoir, Green Lanes, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-45*

The New River Path leads from Green Lanes immediately north of the ‘Castle’ and I think I walked from this path to the bank of the West reservoir to make this picture. There have been considerable changes in the area and I can no longer identify the trees or buildings in my view.

The West Reservoir next to the New River dates from 1833, and I think this section of fencing probably dates from when it was enlarged in the 1850s or a little later. The associated filter beds have been built on, but a vigorous local ‘Save the Reservoirs’ campaign in the 1980s saved the reservoirs, with the West used for water sports and the East as a nature reserve.

*Reservoir, Green Lanes, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-46*

I think this was a part of the filter beds which have now gone. I liked the shadow of the fence and the wheel which presumably operated a valve to control the flow of water, perhaps to the pumping station.

Sand in the filter beds was first used to effectively removed most particles from the water but it was later realised that the slime which grew on top of the sand was very effective in killing bacteria to increase the safety of the water and sand filtration still plays an important role in producing our clean drinking water.

*Reservoir, Green Lanes, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-32*

I think the man in the picture is a bird-watcher rather than a photographer and is holding up binoculars to his eyes. Many migrating species take a rest at our reservoirs and birders flock to watch them.

*The Castle, Waterworks, Green Lanes, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-21*

The gothic fantasy waterworks, built to house massive steam-powered beam engines in 1854–1856 seen from close by – I needed a very wide lens to include the whole height of the tower. According to Industrial History Online “The original six beam engines, two by Watt & Co and 4 by Simpson were removed in 1953.” I think these were then scrapped. You can see similar beam engines in the highly recommended London Museum of Water & Steam in Brentford.

*House, Waterworks, Lordship Park, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-24*

On Green Lanes I walked south and turned down Lordship Park. Here I got a view of the Castle. I think the tower at right is a disguised chimney and the square section on top of that at the left may have held the tank that water was pumped into to give the pressure for supply to customers.

*Man Reading, House, Lordship Park, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-13*

Another picture in Lordship Park shows the very solid looking houses built there dating from around 1865. These are three storeys with a basement, the steps rising to an elevated ground floor, built in a Victorian Gothic style with the entrances recessed with a side window giving a somewhat clerical look; they have is some nice ornamental brickwork but in a fairly restrained fashion.

There are quite a few of these houses on both sides of thee street and I picked this view because of the man sitting reading the Sunday Mirror on the steps.

*Lion, Brothers of Islam, Lordship Park, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-16*

A final picture on this street shows the passageway between two houses with a small flowerbed looked over by a lion, and on the post at right in the freely written message ‘Brothers of ISLAM’.

My walk, now in Stoke Newington, continued – more later.

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Brownswood Park Finsbury Park – 1990

Brownswood Park Finsbury Park: My walk on April 1st 1990 began at Finsbury Park Station. I walked a short distance past the gates to the park and then turned right down Queens Drive.

Queen's Drive, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1990, 90-3m-13 — *Queen’s Drive, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1990, 90-3m-13*

Queen’s Drive was laid out and developed from 1869, the same year that the park, misleadingly named Finsbury Park despite being a couple of miles from Finsbury, was opened, just a few years after the opening of Seven Sister Road station in 1861. In 1870 the station was renamed Finsbury Park. Most of the street was built up by the 1871 census, largely with substantial and well decorated four-storey terraces.

Queen’s Road – later renamed Queen’s Drive – was built as the ‘best road’ in a new select suburb then known as Brownswood Park, developed at first by John Brookes Porter in 1862. You can read more of its history in the Brownswood Conservation Area Appraisal.

Like many such areas it went downhill over the years. Wartime bombing including a V2 rocket damaged and destroyed a number of houses in it and nearby streets. By the 1950s most of the houses were in multiple occupation by “students, migrants, and the working class.”

This picture is of the rear of the Pembury Hotel which is on the corner of Queen’s Drive and Seven Sisters Road, just a few yards down the road and is a post war addition.

*Houses, Princess Crescent, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1990, 90-3m-15*

Princess Crescent, also in Browsnwood Park, is not a crescent but two straight lengths of road at an angle joining Queen’s Drive and Gloucester Drive. The houses here were rather smaller than those in Queen’s Road. The other section of road has a two large blocks of council flats, St John’s Court on one side and a primary school on the other. From 1934 until 1960 the Finsbury Park Synagogue was there.

I walked back onto Queen’s Drive and continued to Brownswood Road, turning east and crossing Green Lanes into Lordship Park – not a park but a street.

*Lordship Park, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 90-4a-01*

Taken on Lordship Park and looking up Allerton Road towards the ‘castle’ designed by architect William Chadwell Mylne for the New River Company on Green Lanes, to house steam engines to pump water which had been cleaned in the adjoining reservoirs and filter beds to consumers.

The water was pumped to a large tank at the top of the main structure and then gravity fed to consumers. The towers and turrets disguise the huge industrial engines inside, initially giant single cylinder steam engines linked to pumps. These were later replaced in the 1930s by diesel and electric pumps. The gothic fantasy was felt to be more acceptable in this then select suburb than an industrial-looking building.

When the water board closed down this facility in 1971 it was saved from demolition by Grade II* listing and three years later converted into a climbing centre.

*House, Tree, Lordship Park, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-03*

A pollarded tree in front of semi-detached houses on Lordship Park. The two story houses have some fine decoration on their doorways and windows. There are larger houses close to Green Lanes.

*House, Cars, Green Lanes, Brownswood Park, Hackney, 1990, 90-4a-61*

Notices on the house say ‘NO BALL GAMES; and NO PARKING’ but there seems to be some kind of car scrap business running here in front of once fine derelict houses.

*House, Cars, Green Lanes, Brownswood Park, Hackney, 1990,, 1990, 90-4a-64*

I think these houses were just to the north of Portland Rise on the west side of Green Lanes and have since been demolished and replaced by to modern blocks of flats at 291 and 293 Green Lanes. The building at extreme left is still there.

*House, Cars, Green Lanes, Brownswood Park, Hackney, 1990,, 1990, 90-4a-54*

Unusually I took 11 frames here and there are six of them on Flickr – but I’ll only post three here.

These houses were a short walk from the West Reservoir where my my next post from this walk will begin.

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Around Swiss Cottage 1988

Sigmund Freud, sculpture, Oscar Nemon, Swiss Cottage Library, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7h-61-positive_2400 — *Sigmund Freud, sculpture, Oscar Nemon, Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Belsize Lane, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7h-61*

Around Swiss Cottage 1988: Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) escaped from Austria after it was annexed by Nazi Germany and came to London, spending his final year until his death in the house in Maresfield Gardens which now houses the Freud Museum. Croatian sculptor Oscar Nemon made three busts of Freud for his 75th birthday in 1931 and visited him in London in 1938 to make a final bust on which the head of this sculpture was based. Funds were later raised for him to create this bronze sculpture which was unveiled in 1970 next to Swiss Cottage Library where I photographed it.

In 1998 it was moved to a more prominent position at the junction of Fitzjohn’s Avenue and Belsize Lane and it was Grade II listed in 2016.

Taplow, Winchester Rd, Swiss Cottage, Camden, 1988 88-7h-63-positive_2400 — *Taplow, Winchester Rd, Swiss Cottage, Camden, 1988 88-7h-63*

The five tower blocks of the Chalcots Estate where built for the London Borough of Camden in 1967-8. Taplow, Burnham, Bray, and Dorney are 23 storeys while Blashford has 19. The land was owned by Eton College and the names come for the area around Eton.

Cladding was added to the towers in 2006 by the same companies that clad Grenfell Tower but using fire-resistant rock-wool. When a fire broke out in a flat in Taplow in 2012 the fire was contained and did not spread and there were no deaths.

Embassy Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, Camden, London, 1988 88-7k-61-positive_2400 — *Embassy Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, Camden, London, 1988 88-7k-61*

Originally a stucco double-fronted Italianate Victorian villa, it was converted in 1890 into the Eton Avenue Hall for the Hampstead Conservatoire, a prestigious private music college; Cecil Sharp the great collector of English folk song was its principal from 1896-1905 and composer Arnold Bax one of his pupils.

The building was converted again after the college had closed and opened as the Embassy Theatre in 1928, with a school of acting from 1932. Damaged in the war it reopened in 1945, continuing as a theatre until 1956 when it was sold to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, now a college of London University.

College Crescent, South Hamnpstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-63-positive_2400 — College Crescent, South Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-63

College Crescent was built by the Eyre family who were (and are) major landowners in Swiss Cottage and parts of Hampstead, with the first houses built in the late 1840s. Initially it was named as three streets, College Villas Road, College Terrace and College Crescent.

40 College Crescent was not one of the original houses, but was built around 1880 on the site of Abbey Farm Lodge as the family home for Samuel Palmer or Huntley and Palmer’s biscuit firm in Reading. Following his death this area of open space with a drinking fountain and shelter – as its inscription states – “presented to the Borough of Hampstead for the public benefit in memory of the late Samuel Palmer of Northcourt, Hampstead by his widow and family. 1904”. It was Grade II listed in 1993.

St. Thomas More, Roman Catholic, Church, Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-64-positive_2400 — *St. Thomas More, Roman Catholic, Church, Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-64*

In 1938 the Archbishop of Westminster bought Hyme House at 3 Fitzjohn’s Avenue, for some years the studio of successful society portrait painter Philip de László (1869-1937) as the first English home for the Swiss-based Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross. The Sisters converted the studio into a church and bought the next two houses on the street to set up a girls school which they ran until 1985, after which it became a hotel.

In 1950 the studio had become too small and a second church was built on the site, but further expansion made this inadequate. The current church, built a restricted site on tennis courts at the back of the house and fronting onto Maresfield Gardens was designed by Gerard Goalen following the Second Vatican Council to maximise participation of the laity in the Mass. It was Grade II listed in 2016.

Netherhall Gardnes, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-42-positive_2400 — *Netherhall Gardens, Hampstead, Ca*mden, 1988 88-7k-42

A very rectangular house with a gate made largely of circles, but with the ironwork on the top of the gate reflecting the only non-rectangular feature of the frontage, and carefully positioned on top of it.

The Tower, Fitzjohn's Ave, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-46-positive_2400 — *The Tower, Fitzjohn’s Ave, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-46*

An irresistable Gothic fantasy. Development in this area had been prevented for years after the death of the estate owner Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson in 1821, whose will prevented his sons building on the land, and efforts by his son (confusingly of exactly the same name) to get the will amended came to nothing. When he died, his brother Sir John inherited and was able to make a deal making part of the estate a part of Hampstead Heath and making development possible in other areas.

The Tower, Fitzjohn's Ave, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-32-positive_2400 — The Tower, Fitzjohn’s Ave, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-32

Sir John divided the estate in 1873 with his son Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson who developed Priory Road and Fitzjohn’s Avenue from 1875 on, as a wide road with wide pavements linking Swiss Cottage and Hampstead which was described by Harpers Magazine a few years later as “one of the noblest streets in the world”.

The Tower, Fitzjohn's Ave, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-33-positive_2400 — The Tower, Fitzjohn’s Ave, Hampstead, Camden, 1988 88-7k-33

A much quoted Camden History Society article describes the Tower at No 25 as an ornate mansion which is now “a fine example of ‘Disneyland Gothic'”. The building with 25 rooms dates from 1880-1, its architect JT Wimperis, a very prolific Victorian architect for Herbert Fleming Baxter (1839-1905), an extremely wealthy American merchant who was a part of a family with extensive estates in Shropshire. The house has been restored and is now divided into flats. Rather surprisingly it was not Grade II listed until 1999.

My walk will continue in a later post.

Click on any of the pictures to go to a larger version in the album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse through the album.