Yet More from Stoke Newington: This is the final post about my walk on 8th October 1989 going down Stoke Newington High St towards Dalston with some minor detours. The previous post on this walk was Cemetery, Synagogue & Snooker.
I wondered about the history of these three shops at 75-79 Stoke Newington History with the three-story Golden House Chinese takeaway at its centre. The first-floor brickwork on either side didn’t quite seem to match suggesting to me that the central building may have been a post-war addition to an existing building, or that these first floors may have been a later addition.
This central shop is still a Chinese takeaway but under a different name.
Hovis Bread, Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington High St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-55
The Cinema Treasures site states that The Vogue Cinema at 38 Stoke Newington High St opened as The Majestic Electric Palace on 15th December 1910 and was closed on 21st June 1958 as a protest by Classic Cinemas against the landlord’s rent rise.
It remained shuttered and closed for 42 years until in November 2000 the foyer was converted into a Turkish restuarant with housing behind, described to me on Flickr as the “best Turkish restaurant ever.” The restaurant owners restored the Vogue sign.
My picture with the Hovis Bread ghost sign was taken from a few yards down Victorian Grove looking towards the cinema across the High Street. The block at right of the picture has now been replaced by a large building with a Tesco Extra on its ground floor.
House, Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-56
This street was originally called Victoria Grove, but its name was changed some time in the middle of the last century. Much of the area was redeveloped in the 1970s but these houses dating from the early years of Victoria’s reign in the 1840s or 1850s remain.
This Grade II listed pair with the unusual curved bays and balconies have the name ‘BRIGHTON VILLAS’ on a plaque between the first floor windows, hidden by the curvature of the nearer bay in my photograph. The nearer balcony roof has been replaced since I took this, matching the one on its neighbour.
Works entrance, Victorian Grove, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-41
The wall beside 3 Victorian Grove is still there, but now has only graffiti on it. There are still some industrial units behind the villas of Victorian Grove, though surely they will soon be replaced by expensive flats, but access to these is now thourgh a gated vehicle entrance further down the street.
Posters, Stoke Newington High St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-42
Should you Google – as I did – ‘Trevor Moneville‘ – you will find he was a 33-year-old from Hackney, was found dead at HMP Lewes on April 18, 2021 from Sudden Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) because of insufficient and unacceptable management of his care.
But this was a case of history repeating itself. A copy of the poster at top right is also in the collection of Hackney Museum, where the web site notes:
“Trevor Monerville went missing from Stoke Newington police station after being taken into custody on New Year’s Eve, reappearing after several days on the other side of London in Brixton prison. He had multiple injuries and later underwent emergency surgery in Maudsley Hospital. The case highlighted existing concerns about alleged institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police and led to the formation of the Hackney Community Defence Association in 1988.”
And in the centre of the picture is a poster for another, better known case of police brutality. Blair Peach was a young teacher murdered by the police Special Patrol Group who went beserk when policing an anti-racist protest in Southall on 23 April 1979.
Further south Stoke Newington High Street becomes Stoke Newington Road, and back in 1989 I found myself confusing the two. Andy’s Fashions was at 141 Stoke Newington Road. No longer Andy’s, the shop is now Stitch “N” Time offering tailoring, alterations, repairs. and no longer has its wares on the pavement outside or partly blocking the entry to the Stoke Newington Estate of the Industrial Dwellings Society (1885) Ltd.
The IDS was established as the Four Per Cent Dwellings Company in 1885 by “Jewish philanthropists to relieve the overcrowding in homes in the East End of London” and changed its name in 1952. They opened the Stoke Newington Estate in 1903.
Another shop somewhere on Stoke Newington Road, with a fine formation of net curtains for sale, though in my book ‘1989’ I imagined them rather differently, perhaps as the front of a vast army of angels, “Or a phalanx of klansmen or some strange voodoo creatures about to burst out onto the streets of London.“
The texts in that book were intended to explore the question of why some scenes grabbed my attention enough to make me fix them as photographs, and why they continue to excite my imagination and I hope that of other viewers.
Street Market, Shoreditch High St, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, 1989 89-10f-33
My walk had ended and I got on the bus to take me to Waterloo for the train home. I almost always sit on the upper deck on double-decker buses and enjoy the views from the windows. As the bus went slowly along Shoreditch High Street close to the junction with Commercial Street it passed the informal market on the pavement where I had time to take three frames through the window. The area looks a little different now, but the last time I went past on a Sunday there was still a rather similar market there.
This is the final post about my walk on 8th October 1989. You can find more pictures from London and elsewhere on Flickr, with both black and white and colour images in albums mainly arranged by the year I took them, such as 1989 London Photos and 1989 London Colour.
Cemetery, Synagogue & Snooker continues my walk on Sunday 8th October 1989 which had begun at Seven Sisters Station. The previous post Stoke Newington Shops – 1989 had ended with me opposite the gates of Abney Park Cemetery, which I had visited on a walk the week before, Abney Park & South Tottenham, and I wrote more about the cemetery there.
Angel, Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10e-45
The cemetery has a huge assortment of memorials and I photographed a few of them, including this angel, perhaps a fairly typical depiction, with similar angels in memorials across the country. It also gives an idea of the wilderness which the cemetery had become by 1989.
Angel, Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10e-23
Another angel erected by a husband in sacred memory of his wife Elizabeth who “departed this life” only 28 years old in 1865. This is a rather more unusual monument and I wondered if it might perhaps resemble this young woman who may well like many of the time have died in childbirth. There are two cherubs on the plinth and below them a rather strange pipe with perhaps shoots emerging at both ends. I suspect someone may know the significance of this. I cannot quite make out the name of her husband, although someone had clearly removed the creeper from the stone in order to reveal it.
John Swan, Engineer, Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10e-26
The text on the monument at the right of this picture is clear, and this is the Grade II listed memorial to John Swan (1787-1869), the inventor of the screw propellor for use on ships, and also of the self acting chain messenger which apparently saved the nation around £70,000 a year, for which he “never received the slightest remuneration.”
I took around 20 pictures in the cemetery and have only digitised seven of them – you can find four not included in this post on Flickr.
Built as a Primitive Methodist Chapel in 1875, this building was bought by members of the Beth Hamedrash Ohel Yisrael Synagogue as “more suitable and commodious premises” than their previous synagogue at 46 Brooke Rd in 1953 and consecrated in 1955. It became known as Beit Knesset Ohel Yisrael or Northwold Road Synagogue.
The synagogue closed the month before I made this picture. The building at 16 Northwold Road became the Sunstone Women Only Gym and is now the Tower Theatre.
Northwold Road begins opposite Abney Cemetery gates and its first secition still includes a number of interesting buildings as well as the former synagogue, but these on the north side of the road opposite it have been replaced by a large grey six-storey block of housing.
The flats at right re a part of the George Downing Estate on Alkham Road and are on the other side of the railwa line.
Grade II* listed along with its neighbours 189 and 191, this is part of what the listing text describes as “an Early C18 large scale composition of 3 houses, the centre one projecting, touching at corners”. (It actually says proecting, but this building has a large yard in front and 189 has its porch almost on the street,)
This house was built in 1712 for Silk merchant John Wilmer (1696-1773), a wealthy Quaker. It later became ‘The Invalid Asylum for the Recovery of the Health of Respectable Women’. Substantially rebuilt in 1983 it is now the Yum Yum Thai Restaurant.
Hard to remember why I cropped this so tightly as to remove the S from Snooker and the SLI of Slindon Court, but probably it was just to make what I felt was a more satisfactory composition. I had previously photographed this in colour with a slightly wider view.
Haringey Development & Ritzy Strike: On Saturday 23rd September 2017 hundreds marched from a rally in North London against the council’s plans to make a huge transfer of council housing to Australian multinational Lendlease, which would result in the demolition of thousands of council homes, replacing them largely by private housing. I left the march close to its end taking the tube to Brixton where strikers at the were marking a year of action with a rally.
Haringey Against Council Housing Sell-Off
People had come to a rally and march against Haringey Council’s ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’, HDV, which proposed a £2 billion giveaway of council housing and assets to a private corporation run by Australian multinational Lendlease.
This would result in the speedy demolition of over 1,300 council homes on the Northumberland Park estate, followed by similar loss of social housing across the whole of the borough.
Similar ‘regeneration’ schemes in other boroughs such as Southwark, Lambeth and Barnet had resulted in the loss of truly affordable housing, with the result of social cleansing with many of the poorer residents of the redeveloped estates being forced to move out of these boroughs to areas with cheaper private housing on the outskirts of London and beyond.
London’s housing crisis has been made much worse by the activities of wealthy foreign investors buying the new properties and keeping them empty or only occasionally used as their values rise. Among the groups on the march were those such as Class War and Focus E15 who have down much to bring this to public attention.
In London it is mainly Labour Councils who are in charge and responsible for the social cleansing of the poor and the loss of social housing that is taking place on a huge scale.
Along with speakers from estates across London where similar schemes are already taking place there were those from Grenfell Tower where cost cutting and ignoring building safety and residents’ complaints by private sector companies including the TMO set up by the council created the disaster just waiting to happen.
On My London Diary I quoted part of a speech by then Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn a few days later at the Labour Party conference which condemned current practice on estate ‘regeneration’ and housing of which the HDV is the prime example.
“The disdain for the powerless and the poor has made our society more brutal and less caring. Now that degraded regime has a tragic monument: the chilling wreckage of Grenfell Tower, a horrifying fire in which dozens perished. An entirely avoidable human disaster, one which is an indictment not just of decades of failed housing policies and privatisation and the yawning inequality in one of the wealthiest boroughs and cities in the world, it is also a damning indictment of a whole outlook which values council tax refunds for the wealthy above decent provision for all and which has contempt for working class communities.”
“Indeed it has. And high in the list of that brutality is the estate regeneration programme that threatens, is currently being implemented against, or which has already privatised, demolished or socially cleansed 237 London housing estates, 195 of them in boroughs run by Labour councils, which vie with each other for the title of ‘least caring’, and among which the councils of Hackney, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth and Haringey could give the Conservative-run Kensington and Chelsea council a lesson in disdain, privatisation, failed housing policies and the inequality they produce. But it’s good to hear Corbyn discard the Tories’ contemptuous terminology of ‘hardworking families’ and ‘ordinary people’ and finally – if belatedly – refer to the ‘working class’.“
They go on to comment less favourably on Corbyn who they say had ignored “the estate regeneration programme that is at the heart of London’s transformation into a Dubai-on-Thames for the world’s dirty money” and so had failed to perceive that “every estate undergoing demolition and redevelopment could produce a similar testimony of inept and incompetent local authorities, bad political decisions and a failed and broken system of democratic accountability.”
The grass roots revolt against the HDV plans resulted in a political change and the scrapping of the plans. But the Labour Party has also changed radically, and those very people responsible for those ‘least caring’ local authorities in London and across the country are now in government.
A quite different vehicle was the star of the show in Brixton, where BECTU strikers at the Ritzy Cinema were celebrating a year of strike action with a rally supported by other trade unionists, including the United Voices of the World and the IWGB and other union branches.
The strikers continued to demand the London Living Wage, sick pay, maternity and paternity pay, for managers, supervisors, chefs and technical staff to be properly valued for their work, and for the four sacked union reps to be reinstated.
After speeches in English and Spanish, came the surprise. The vehicle in Brixton was the newly acquired ‘Precarious Workers Mobile’, a bright yellow Reliant Robin, equipped with a powerful amplifier and loudspeaker, and after more speeches this led the protesters in a slow march around central Brixton.
Various actions at the Ritzy had started three years before this, when workers called for a boycott of the cinema. In 2019, after an industrial tribunal had won some of their claims BECTU suspended the boycott and the Living Staff Living Wage campaign although still continuing to fight for equal pay and against other dismissals.
Stoke Newington Shops: Continuing my walk on Sunday 8th October 1989 which had begun at Seven Sisters Station from where I had walked south down the High Road and the previous post, Church of the Good Shepherd, Synagogue & Stamford Hill had ended on Stamford Hill.
Star Mews, Cafe, Windus Rd, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-15
I continued walking down Stamford Hill, taking a brief look down each side street, but nothing particularly attracted my attention until I reached Windus Road. Some way down this I came to the entrance to Star Mews.
The archway to Star Mews is still there between 52 and 54 Windus Road but there is no longer a cafe, the property is now residential with a small walled front garden. Star Mews is one of two mews in the street and leads to two single storey (now with roof windows) in the area behind which were presumably once stables.
The houses here are not grand, and I think these were probably built for small businesses who will have had horse-drawn carts for delivery rather than the carriages of mews in grander districts.
I went back to Stamford Hill and at the entrance to Stoke Newington Station turned into a small pedestrian side-street, Willow Cottages with this row of three shops, one of them Marshall’s School of Motoring so had to take this picture. These are still there beside the new station building, and G’s Car Service is now Ron’s Car Service. – the old station was almost invisible at street level – but this small area has altered so much I can’t be sure. The jewellers is now a hair salon and Marshalls have left the building, now occupied by Ria money transfer and a takeaway.
I crossed the busy A10 Stamford Hill and went down Manor Road opposite where there was this row of shops on the north side. These three shops are single storey buildings, at the end of the two storey buildings of Manor Parade, but seem to have been built in the same style, probably like their larger neighbours in 1906, according to an ornamental date on their gable.
The site with two large advertising hoardings at right is on the side of the railway line, here in a cutting, and there is be little level land behind these shops.
This noticeboard without notices on the top of what was until fairly recently a private hire service office, Hill Cars, is another of the pictures which I used in my web site, exhibition and self-published book ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, still available, and this picture is from those. The first paragraph refers to the page before this one in ‘1989’.
The house here is still at 16 Manor Road and is now residential and without the clutter and signage. Andora’s builders yard is now commercial premises on the ground floor with flats above and a vehicle entrance to more in the yard behind.
L T Locking, Estate Agent, 18, Manor Rd, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10e-65
This short row of shops was just beyond the builders yard, all at 18 Manor Road, although they seem to have been built at different times. Locking’s estate agency is in a taller and more elegant four storey tower, and the closer building at right was, according to a ghost sign under its first and second floor windows, the DEPOSITORIES of T HARRIS, though his name is not clear. This industrial warehouse is now an events and filming venue and was the birthplace of the original TV “Dragons Den” where the first season was shot in 2005.
Also now I think a filming location as ‘The House Next Door‘ (or possibly a part of The Depository’ and that is the next shop.) Earlier it had been home to the curiously named Balloon Lagon (lagon is French for lagoon), which sold odd balloons and then a property agency.
The post at left looks like a lamp post, perhaps for a gas lamp, but could also have simply held an advertising sign. Srill on the pavement it has now lost its upper half.
Back on the A10, I walked down to the end of Stamford Hill at Cazenove Road, where it becomes Stoke Newington High Street, and went briefly down Cazenove Road and photographed a couple of the shops there. I’d previously photographed Madame Lillie on a walk in July 1989 so haven’t digitised the picture I took this time, but this one of Rabinowitz, Kosher Butcher & Poulter and The Metaqphysical & Inspirational World Universal Book Shop at 2 and 4.
I returned to the main road and crossed it to the gates of Abney Park Cemetery where the next post on this walk will begin.
Church of the Good Shepherd, Synagogue & Stamford Hill: Continuing my walk on Sunday 8th October which had begun at Seven Sisters Station from where I had walked south down the High Road. The previous post, South Tottenham & Stamford Hill had ended on Rookwood Road.
Church of the Good Shepherd, Ancient Catholic Cathedral, Rookwood Rd, Castlewood Rd, Clapton, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-34
This Grade II* listed church was built in 1892-5 for the Agapemonites, aka the Community of the Son of Man, a group founded by former Church of England minister Henry Prince who set up the Agapemone community whose name means ‘Abode of Love’.
Various scandals ensued when it emerged that this love was sometimes rather more than spiritual. Prince died in 1899 and John Smyth-Pigott became leader of the sect and his relations with numerous female followers caused greater scandal. In 1902 Smyth-Piggot declared the Second Coming had arrived and that he was Jesus Christ, the Son of Man.
An angry mob chased his carriage across Clapton Common and he retired to Somerset where he died in 1927.
St Luke, Ox, St John, Eagle, Church of the Good Shepherd, Ancient Catholic Cathedral, Rookwood Rd, Clapton, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-36
The church was built by Joseph Morris and Sons of Reading, the sculptures were by A G Walker and the church apparently has remarkable stained glass by Arts & Crafts artist Walter Crane. When the last Agapemonites died it became in 1956 the Ancient Catholic Cathedral Church of the Good Shepherd and in 2007 the Georgian Orthodox Cathedral Church of the Nativity of Our Lord.
St Mathew, St Mark, lion, Church of the Good Shepherd, Ancient Catholic Cathedral, Rookwood Rd, Clapton, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-22
Another picture of the sculptures on the church by A G Walker. The stained glass which I was unable to see was by Walter Crane. There is a lengthy description of the building in its Grade II* listing, first made when it was the Church Of The Ark Of The Covenant.
New Bobov Synagogue, Egerton Rd, Clapton, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-24
Built around 1914-15 in an Edwardian Baroque style the Grade II listed New Synagogue was bought in 1987 by the Babov Community Centre from the United Synagogue. The Bobov congregation (Beth Hemedrash Ohel Naphtoli) was founded in Poland but now has its headquarters in New York and is Strictly Orthodox Ashkenazi.
Newsagent, Used Cars, Stamford Hill, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-11
The Hill Candy & Tobacco Stores Ltd at 141 Stamford Hill was well covered with advertising for Camel, Marboro and others as well as sensational posters for the Evening Standard, ‘LONDON MURDER SPARKS ‘RIPPER’ FEAR. Tabloid journalists were probably the only people in London who were affected by this particular anxiety.
The shop is now an off-licence. The used car sales with its bunting at right is no longer but there is a parking area in front of the offices there now. The Turnpike House pub just visible in the distance on the corner with Ravensdale Road closed in 2021 and is now boarded up.
Eshel Hotel, Stamford Hill, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-12
Eshel is the Hebrew for Tamarisk. Genesis chapter 21 verse 33 states that Abraham planted one at Beersheba and prayed there to Yahweh in thanks for God’s covenant with him. That species of tamarisk is a slow growing desert tree and at some times in the year it secretes a sticky honeydew which some think was the manna which provided food for them in the wilderness.
I think this building is now offices for Orthodox Jewish organisations. The delicate wrought iron gates and railings with the menorahs in them were replaced a few years ago by rather more secure fencing.
My walk continued to Stoke Newington – another instalment shortly.
South Tottenham & Stamford Hill: Continuing my walk on Sunday 8th October which had begun at Seven Sisters Station from where I had walked south down the High Road – the pictures start some way down my post Abney Park & South Tottenham.
Shop window, High Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10c-13
On the High Road in South Tottenham I found another of the 20 images which were a part of my web site and book ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, and above is the page from that.
The Emerald Bar, St Ann’s Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10d-63
I turned from the High Road into St Ann’s Road and a short way down came to this sign for the Emerald Bar. Now disappeared this was obviously an Irish bar (the Shamrock as well as the name was a clue!) and only a short walk from St Ignatius Catholic Church on the High Road. It appeared to be in a part of the yard of St Ignatius Primary School.
The brickwork at the entrance and the rather curious design of the sign both had a curiously amateur feel. On the large noticeboard below the bar’s name I could just make out the words STRIPPER and HERE; there were a few other letters but nothing I could make sense of.
High Rd, Stamford Hill, 1989 89-10d-52
I took another picture on St Ann’s Road (not online) but soon returned to the High Road and continued south, where this road becomes Stamford Hill, past Phililp Kosher Butcher at 292 (picture not online) crossing the busy road to photograph some rather grander houses which I think are actually at 11-15 High Road on the border of Haringey and Hackney.
The House of Value, Ravensdale Rd, Stamford Hill, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-53
Back on the other side of the street was the turning into Ravensdale Rd where above Beeny’s Fresh Fish is still one of London’s best-known ‘ghost signs’. When I made this picture most of the signs for Yager’s Costumes were covered by two large billboards and only the YAGER’S, BUY YOUR WINTER COATS HERE AND SAVE MONEY and THE HOUSE OF VALUE could be read.
The House of Value, Ravensdale Rd, Stamford Hill, Hackney, 1989 89-10d-54
I think the Yagers who owned Yager’s Costumes were probably a part of the Yager family, Jews with Austrian/Romanian parents who came to England at some time before the 1901 census. By 1911 they were living not far away in Downs Park Road Hackney. Harry Yager started a number of businesses including a timber merchants and Park Royal Coachworks. He had a hall named after him at Stamford Hill Synagogue. But the family history has no mention of a clothing company.
A company, Yager’s (Stamford Hill) Ltd, Company number 23013, was apparently registered in 1928 but dissolved by 1932 but Companies House records available online do not go back far enough to find information.
Benny’s Fresh Fish is now a shop offering shoe repairs and key cutting and the rest of the shop is a café.
I continued down Stamford Hill and then turned east along Clapton Common. On reaching the grass and trees I went to there left along Castlewood Road where after some rather dreary postwar blocks I came to this fine 1930s block of flats, Rookwood Court, on the corner of Rookwood Rd. These private flats with a view (for some) across the common were built in around 1936. New windows installed around 2011-12 doubtless make the flats more comfortable but have lost some of the appeal of the building.
Next door to them you can see the tower and spire of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rookwood Road, now the Georgian Orthodox Church. More about that in the next post.
Abney Park & South Tottenham: I ended my walk on Sunday 1st October 1989 (which had begun at Finsbury Park) in Abney Park Cemetery, one of London’s ‘Magnificent Seven’ garden cemeteries laid out after an 1832 Act of Parliament encouraged the establishment of private cemeteries in the outer suburbs of London as graveyards in the inner city were dangerously overflowing.
Abney Park Cemetery was laid out on the grounds of Abney House and its neighbours and named after Sir Thomas Abney, Lord Mayor of London in 1700–1701, who had Abney House built for him in 1676 – it was demolished for the cemetery which opened in 1840.
Those involved with setting up the cemetery were members of the Congregational Church but it was set up on a wholly non-denominational basis. For the next 40 years was the burial place of choice for many leading non-conformists. Among those who had played a part in the landscaping of the area around Abney House long before it became a cemetery was the prolific Congregational hymn writer Isaac Watts, many of whose hymns are still well-known and loved, and there is a statue of him in the cemetery.
Unusually, as well as a cemetery it was also established as an arboretum and retains a magnificent collection of trees and a significant example of landscape design. From 1880 it was run strictly on commercial lines, but when the company went into administration in the 1970s the cemetery became hugely overgrown. In the 1980s it was taken over by Hackney council, but at first they did little to improve its condition other than establishing it as a nature reserve. More recently it has been considerably improved with the help of lottery funding.
Rev Henry Richard, (1812–1888), the Apostle of Peace, Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989
According to Wikipedia “Henry Richard (3 April 1812 – 20 August 1888) was a Congregational minister and Welsh Member of Parliament between 1868–1888. Richard was an advocate of peace and international arbitration, as secretary of the Peace Society for forty years (1848–1884). His other interests included anti-slavery work. “
The memorial over his grave was erected by public subscription in 1891, and his statue in the Square in Tregaron where he was born was unveiled in 1893.
Young Angel, Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10c-31
I can tell you nothing about George Clayton other than is recorded here, but I was attracted both by the young angel and surrounding flowers in this relatively recent example of a memorial, shortly before the cemetery fell out of use.
I didn’t spend long in the cemetery on this occasion, walking through it to get to Stoke Newington Station as by the I was in a hurry to get home. I took around a dozen pictures in my walk through the park but have so far only put two of these online. But I did return to it on my next walk a week later – and have been back quite a few times since.
My next walk began from Seven Sisters Station a week later, and I walked from the Victoria Line exit south down the High Road.
Motor Auctions, High Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10c-22
Sometimes I came across what seemed to me, at least in a photograph, a kind of visual conundrum and this was one of them. Probably standing where I was to take the picture I could have sorted out why what appears to be a view through a rather smeared tranparent sheet in some places shows what is behind it but elsewhere replaces it with a different view. Kind of seeing through a glass darkly. And what is this strange structure which holds this sheet. I can’t now tell you. But the empty can of Ginger Beer spiked on the fence is quite clear.
Posters, High Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10c-23
Turkey and Africa meet on the posters here. The Türkiye Devrimci Komünist Partisi – Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey – is, according to Wikipedia, “a clandestine communist party in Turkey” and “Not to be confused with Revolutionary Communist Party (Turkey).” Kahrolsun Fasist Diktatorluk! I think translates as ‘Down With Fascist Dictatorship’ and presumably means that of Turkey rather than Haringey Council.
Underneath is a poster for and event at Dougie’s Nightclub in the Lower Clapton Road, which would appear to feature sounds from Africa and Zimbabwe in particular. Dougie’s was in a function room for the White Hart pub, which later became the Clapton Cinematograph before becoming a night club, Dougie’s in 1983. Later it was the Palace Pavilion nightclub where stabbings and shootings made this road known as ‘Murder Mile’
And underneath these, other posters which little or almost nothing can be seen. It was a well-used post, just south of the railway bridge and then just to the side of a small shop or cafe, the former station ticket office, since demolished to provide a path to South Tottenham Station.
The Dutch House, High Rd, Crowland Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-10c-24
The Dutch House public house at 148-156 High Road, Tottenham has recently been renamed The Station House and is now an Irish pub. This area was developed around 1880-1900 and this building dates from shortly after 1894. Locally listed it was not built as a pub, but possibly as a music hal. It it has some incredible Venetian and Moorish detailing as this picture shows. It is by far the most interesting architecture in the area and I think should be given proper listing.
The Dutch House, High Rd, Crowland Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989
Originally this building was completed with a spire above that incredible corner tower which perhaps seems oddly truncated now. But of course I would have had to stand much further back to take the picture were it still there. As well as a pub, the building also housed clothing factories and fashion shops.
Highbury to Stoke Newington Church Street: Continuing my walk from Sunday 1st October 1989 which had begun at Finsbury Park and continued to the Nags Head before returning to Finsbury Park. The previous post ended on Blackstock Road.
Blackstock Road continues south into Highbury as Highbury Park and I walked some way down this before turning east into Northolme Road. Highbury Park was developed in the 1870s but the houses in Northholme Road date from the 1890s. This and neighbouring roads were built on the Holm Estate and the LCC applied for permission to develop these roads in 1890.
North Holme is near Helmsley, North Riding of Yorkshire and although it has been described as a “township” is a small cluster of buildings, more a farm than even a village close to the River Dove. “The Revd Joseph Parker, DD (1830-1902) … lived in 1866 at a house in Highbury Park he called ‘North Holme‘. The sites of Northolme Road, Sotheby Road and Ardilaun Road were on part of the grounds of his house.” He was the “Minister of the City Temple, 1869-1901, author, preacher and twice Chairman of the Congregational Union“.
This house is at the eastern end of Northolme Road, where it meets Kelross Road and is a detached villa rather larger than the terraces along long the rest of the road.
Clissold Park, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-35
From here Kelross passage leads to Highbury New Park, a street with villas built from around 1850. But I pressed on across it into Collins Road, making my way towards Clissold Park and Stoke Newington Church St.
Clissold House was built as Paradise House for Quaker City merchant Jonathan Hoare, a noted philanthropist and anti-slavery campaigner and brother of banker Samuel Hoare Jr. The water here was a stretch of the New River which brought clean drinking water from Hertfordshire to London, but I think at some point the river here was culverted, although the bridge taking Stoke Newington Church St across it remained until the 1930s.
The park was first created as grounds for this GradeII listed house. Hoare got into financial difficulties and lost the house and grounds, which passed through several owners before being owned by Augustus Clissold. When he died in 1882 the estate was bought by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners who intended to make money from developing it as housing, but the Metropolitan Board of Works were persuaded in 1887 to buy it to be a public park.
By 1989 the house and park were in a poor condition and Clissold House was put on English Heritages ‘at risk’ register in 1991. Since then both park and house have been restored with the aid of lottery money.
Park Crescent, Spensley Walk, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-23
Grade II listed Park Crescent at 207-223 Stoke Newington Church Street was built in 1855, but by the 1980s was in a very dilapidated state and became home to around 90 squatters alongside only a handful of legal tenants. The houses were then owned by Hackey council who planned to sell them to housing associations.
Park Crescent, Spensley Walk, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-11
Three motorbikes parked outside one of the houses of Park Crescent. You can clearly see the poor state of the buildings which need Acrow props to support the porches, with the steps at right being roped off to block access to the unsafe building.
Park Crescent now looks very neat and tidy compared to this.
The building at 185 Stoke Newington Church St had been sold when I made this picture in October 1989, but The Modern Man, a hairdressers, was still alive in another shop on the street, shown in my next picture.
This row of buildings with ground-floor shops is still there and like the rest of the area has become rather better kept and is now that epitome of gentrification, an estate agents which has also expanded into 187.
Perhaps surprisingly the 5 Star Cleaners at 189 is still a dry cleaners, though under a different name.
The Modern Man, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10c-52
I found The Modern Man still in business at 121 Stoke Newington Church St at the corner with Marton Road. It didn’t survive the gentrification of the area and the shop has passed through several hands as ‘frere jacques’, ‘search and rescue, ‘Ooh Lou Lou Cakery’ and ‘The Caffeine Fix’.
I don’t know how long Tanya’s Cafe-Diner Take away lasted but around 2009 it became Lydia Cafe Restaurant and retained the name Lydia until recently becoming ‘The Tiffin Tin.’.
My walk was almost at an end, but I’ll share are few more pictures in a later post.
Blackstock and Brownswood: Continuing my walk from Sunday 1st October 1989 which began at Finsbury Park and continued to the Nags Head before returning to Finsbury Park. The previous post to this ended on Blackstock Road.
The buildings at the right of this picture are those on the left of the final picture in my previous post. Here I wanted to contrast the deco style of the Gillespie Neighbourhood Office at 102 with that of the solid Victorian house next door and its more utilitarian infill at 98.
The border between Hackney and Islington runs here along the centre of Blackstock Road and this is on the Islington side, though I was standing in Hackney to take the picture. I was in Hackney’s Brownswood Conservation Area, but the more interesting side of the road here is not in a conservation area and this Art Deco office does not even appear on the local list.
House, Brownswood Rd, Wilberforce Rd, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-52
The development of this area was delayed by the setting up of the park in the area as in the early years of its planning the actual boundaries were not fixed. So much of the area was built up in the 1870s, giving it a unusually homogeneous architecture.
Brownswood Road runs though the area with two peculiar staggered junctions and this picture was made at one of these.
Frinton Metal Ltd, 145a, Brownswood Rd, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-53
I think the house number is from Blackstock Road – the scrap metal and Gold and Silver buyer was in the back yard of the house at the left, 145 Blackstock Road. Although there were no ‘TO-DAYS PRICES’ listed for Gold & Silver and the shop was closed on a Sunday, there is a light on inside and I think it was still in business.
Google Maps labels this section of Brownswood Road as Lydon Row and there is no sign that there ever was a business here.
Mountgrove Garage, 115, Finsbury Park Rd, Finsbury Park, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-56
I walked a little further on down Blackstock Road and then turned down Mountgrove Road. The house at right is on Mountgove Road and that on the left – along with the garage – in on Finsbury Park Road. Rather to my surprise Mountgrove Garage is still there, now offering ‘MOT Tyres Servicing Bodywork’ and claiming ‘ALL VEHICLES REPAIRED HERE’, though all of the notices in my picture have been replaced. I think it looks rather less impressive now.
Shops, 162-176, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10b-41
Back on Blackstock Road I photographed this nicely detailed row with ground floor shops and facing more of the same on the opposite side of the street. I chose this one for the sign which I think at the top read OFFICIAL BOOKING OFFICE with MOTOR COACHES between the first and second floors and lower down ALL ROAD ROUTES and RAIL SEA AIR.
That sign has I think been restored since 1989 and is clearer now, but the uppermost word, already difficult to read in my picture has disappeared. Rather than a booking office the shop is now a book shop.
Head, 198-200, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10b-42
A little further down Blackstock road was this head above BESTOCK FURNISHING, a secondhand furnishing shop, the kind of place we bought chairs and tables when we were poor, and on the shop front of RITEMARKS LTD FOOTWEAR MANUFACTURERS a variety of symbols – a sunflower and two leaping fish. I think the window between these is a reflection of the building in my next picture.
217, Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10b-43
Built as Highbury Fire Station by the LCC in 1906 it was one of many closed in 1920 after the replacement of horse-drawn engines by motorised fire engines meant that stations could serve a wider area.
As a young man around 1920 my father worked for a short time at Dennis Brothers Limited in Guildford. He was (among other trades) a carpenter, having grown up working with his father making horse-drawn carts, and they were then still making wooden fire engines, as well as ‘charabancs’ – open motor buses. Cutting the curved doors for these was a tricky three-dimensional job and he did it freehand.
Since I photographed it this Edwardian Arts & Crafts locally listed building has been converted into the Little Angel Day Nursery with flats above.
Seven Sisters Road: on Sunday 1st October 1989 I took the Victoria Line tube to Finsbury Park (a couple of pictures here) and walked through the park to its most easterly corner, the junction between Green Lanes and Seven Sisters Road at Manor House.
Finsbury Park, The Manor House, Manor House, Haringey, Hackney, 1989 89-10a-53
A view from beside the wall to Finsbury Park by the gate. This area was know as Woodberry Down before the Manor House Tavern was first built here on 1830-4 at the crossroads with Green Lanes, a turnpike or toll road, after a 1829 Act of Parliament had allowed the building of Seven Sisters Road. Local builder Thomas Widdows had owned and lived in a cottage on the site and saw a business opportunity, though it is unclear why it was given the name Manor House – probably because it sounded posh.
It opened as a ‘public house and tea-gardens’ in 1834 and its first landlord advertised it, writing “The Grounds adjoining are admirably calculated for Cricket, Trap-ball, or any other amusement requiring space. There is likewise a large Garden and Bowling green, good Stabling, lock-up Coach-houses, &c. Dinners for Public and Private Parties.
The original pub was demolished in 1930 when the road was widened and the Piccadilly line Manor House station built here, and replaced by this attractive Flemish style building with just a hint of Art Deco. The pub and tube station led to the area becoming known as Manor House, with the name Woodberry Down being revived for the large post-war housing estate built a little to the east by the LCC from 1948-62.
You can learn more about its interesting history and varying clientele – including its time as a major Blues venue in the 1960s – in the Wikipedia article cited. The pub closed around 2000 and its ground floor became a supermarket in 2004.
Shops, Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10a-42
Finsbury Park was a rather run-down area in 1989 and some friends were worried about my safety as I walked around the area carrying a bag full of expensive camera equipment, but I had no problems. People were friendly though sometimes clearly thought I was mad to be taking photographs of their streets and shops.
At left is KYPRIAKON KAFENEION, shown more clearly in my next picture. Between the shops are decorated pillars and above them rather odd decorated stone balls. I think the shops were probably added a few years later to the mid-Victorian houses behind.
Cypriot Social Club, Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10a-43
You can still see this row of shops on Seven Sisters Road, in the parade between Yonge Park and Medina Road*, and I think this Cypriot cafe is now a dentists. In 1989 there were many Cypriot businesses in the area, but the area is now more diverse and has a large Muslim community. None of the businesses in my previous picture are still present.
* I have now decided that these shops are those at 218-230 Seven Sisters Road which can clearly be seen in a photograph I took later on this walk. They were very similar to those further down the street but have been more altered since 1989, and some demolished.
Sisters Gowns, a few yards down Coleridge Road was also clearly a Cypriot business, and one of many clothing manufacturers in the area, which has now become one of London’s most vibrant fashion areas, particularly around nearby Fonthill Road.
This doorway could still be seen iin a derelict building n 2008, but the whole corner site was demolished soon after, although the site was still empty in 2022.
Shop Interior, Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10a-31
I think this busts and bodies were for wale along with other pieces of equipment for use in shop displays, but it looked to me like some kind of kinky torture chamber. Though shopping for clothes is often a torture, particularly when accompanying others who are looking for them. I’m not sure what the football is doing here.
Shops, Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park, Islington, 1989 89-10a-32
An extremely motley assortment of buildings from different periods, including BANGS, established in 1907, but I think the frontage at least is from the 1930s.
Rather to my surprise, these buildings are still there, though the shops have changed and below BANGS rather than JANE CAST LTD is now a Tesco. Even the building at the right of the row which appeared in my photograph to have no visible support is still there as well as the pub surrounded by scaffolding have survived. The Eaglet, built in 1869, was apparently badly damaged by a Zeppelin in 1917 but recovered and is still open.
North London Drapery Store, Axminster Rd, Seven Sisters Rd, Holloway, Islington, 1989
Built in 1938 as North London Drapery Store this Art Deco store was damaged in the war. In 1989 it was used by a variety of businesses including London International College. It has recently been converted to provide 118 expensive flats, with shops on the ground floor.
According to ‘Streets With A Story‘, “Robert Enkel from 1830-49 owned property and occupied the nursery until 1834 when Cornelius Crastin and his family took over and continued as nurserymen until at least 1890. The street name disappears by 1975.” Enkel’s family came from Holland and his name was given to the street which dated from around 1875-6. As you can see the street name was actually still there in 1989.
There is still an Enkel Arms pub a few yards away on Seven Sisters Roadm but Enkel Street disappeared with the development of the Nags Head Shopping Centre in 1992. And there is a Nags Head Market indoors at 22 Seven Sisters Road, apparently since 1975.
