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.
Seven Sisters and Walthamstow High St: On Sunday 24th September 1989 I returned to north-east London to continue my walks, this time starting a little to the west on the Middlesex side of the River Lea at Seven Sisters in Haringey. The Lea (or Lee), London’s second largest river, has been a significant boundary at least since the Iron Age when it separated the Catuvellauni from the Trinovantes, later the Middle Saxons from the East Saxons, then England from the Danelaw and until 1965 Middlesex from Essex (though some of Middlesex by then was in the County of London.) It still separates Haringey on the west from Waltham Forest on the east.
House, 176, St Ann’s Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-9c-44
I can’t remember now why I got off the Victoria Line at Seven Sisters and took a short walk from there on my way to Walthamstow, but possibly there was a temporary problem on the Victoria Line which terminated My train there. But I found this part-demolished house, once quite grand, at 176 St Ann’s Rd in South Tottenham.
The sign above the door is for N Nicolau who had manufactured dresses, jackets, skirts and slacks here, though I think the advertisement for vacancies for machinists, finishers and pressers was rather out of date. There were still plenty of clothing sweatshops in the area, and many were Greek or Cypriot run companies.
This house has been rebuilt in a rather plainer fashion, but there are still some other houses of a similar age on the street, largely developed in the later Victorian period. This is now in the St Ann’s conservation area around the church which was consecrated in 1861. The new building here is mentioned; “constructed of London stock brick … white rendered square bays and a slate roof and respects the character and appearance of this part of the Conservation Area.“
J Reid, Pianos, St Ann’s Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-9c-45
I liked the PIANOS sign surrounded by keyboards, though the 13 octaves on both top and bottom seemed excessive – our Broadwood manages with only seven and a few extra keys.
J Reid Pianos was established in 1928 and are still in business at 184 St Ann’s Road. You can buy a Reid Sohn piano from them, though these are now made in Indonesia, and they sell other makers too, with the “largesst selection of quality pianos in London“. They have also restored many pianos from “Barraud, Bechstein, Bell, Bernstein, Bluthner, Bosendorfer, Boston, Brinsmead, Broadwood, Carl Schiller, Challen, Challen, D’Este, Erard, Fazioli, Fenner, Feurich, Gaveau, Gebruder, Grotrian, Hoffman, Ibach, Kawai, Kemble, Knake, Knight, Lipp, Matz, Pleyel, Pleyel, Reid-Sohn, Ronisch (Rönisch), Sames, Samick, Sauter, Schiedmayer, Schimmel, Seiler, Squire, Steck, Steinmayer, Steinway (Steinway & Sons), Steinweg, Thurma, Weber, Welmar, Yamaha.“
1858 Model Cottages, Avenue Rd, South Tottenham, Haringey, 1989 89-9c-46
Model cottages were an early form of social housing for the working class and began with the help of Prince Albert who was the President of Society for Improving the Conditions of the Labouring Classes. He was unable to persuade the commissioners of the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park to include the model cottages designed by the SICLC in the exhibition as they were felt to be too political but he had them built next door at Knightsbridge Barracks – and later they were rebuilt where they still are in Kennington Park.
Following this, many of the housing societies set up in the Victorian era to provide relatively cheap and decent homes for the working class built model cottages at various sites across London. Rents were set at levels those in manual work could afford but still gave a decent return to the company investors.
These Grade II listed Model Cottages are some of the earliest to be built and were perhaps a local initiative linked with the neighbouring St Ann’s School and church. They have been restored since I took this picture, and the doorway at left now has a rather austere woman’s head above it – perhaps a modern version of a Mercer Maiden?
The next picture, Car, House, Leaves, Bedford Rd, 148, West Green Rd, West Green, Haringey, 1989 89-9c-32, was one of those included with text in my book ‘1989‘.
High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-33
Finally I got back onto the Victoria Line to Walthamstow Central and walked to the High St, a very different scene on a Sunday Morning that the crowded market I had photographed recently on a Saturday afternoon.
Palmerston Rd, High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-34
I liked the font used for BEAU.BAGGAGE as well as the STOP PRESS around the window advertising the end of season sale. There was also the three signs at the top right of the shop which somehow seemed joined together. Then there was the street furniture – the waiting man on the traffic lights, the telephone unbox at left and a lamp post with a ‘No Entry’ sign at right.
All very carefully positioned in my frame with probably a little help from the 35mm shift lens which enabled me to choose my position and then slide the lens and view a little to the right or left (and up or down) to position the frame edges where I wanted them. Most of the photographs I took were made with this lens.
High St, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, 1989 89-9c-35
Another picture of shops on the High Street, showing post-war and probably late Victorian buildings. At left is the Cakemaker’s Centre, with its picture of a balance and I think the name EASY WEIGH and in the centre the entrance to The Walthamstow Working Men’s Club & Institute.
The club celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2012 and claims to be the oldest surviving working men’s club in the country. It was founded in 1862 by Lord Henry Solly (1813-1903), British Unitarian minister, social reformer, and instigator & founder of the Working Men’s Club movement, the Charity Organisation, and the Garden City Movement.
This was a temperance club, with the aim to educate working men and free them from alcoholism. It had a library, a games room and a discussion room. The club is limited to 50 members and in 2012 all were still men. They said nothing prevented women joining but none had applied. It is still a temperance club, though members might sometimes bring a can of beer in, and as it is affiliated to the CIU, members can go to many other clubs across the country (including I think a couple in Walthamstow) and buy a beer.
Unlike most other working mens clubs which rely on bar sales this club gets an income from several of the shops whose premises it owns – I think including some in my picture.
More from Walthamstow on this walk in a later post.
