Fonthill & Tollington continues my walk on Sunday February 11th 1990 which began at Kings Cross with the post Kings Cross and Pentonville 1990. The previous post was Caledonian Road, Barnsbury & Lower Holloway – 1990.
The Tower House it at the south end of a late Victorian terrace at 141-9 Fonthill Road close to the junction with Seven Sisters Road. This was the factory and showroom for Witton, Witton & Co. In an advertisement in Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review they describe it as ‘BRITAIN’S FINEST FACTORY’ producing ‘”THE IDEAL BRITISH PIANO” Specially made for Variable Climates’. According to the Pianoforte-makers in England web site the company was formed in 1874, although earlier Wittons had made pianos from 1838. They held two patents related to pianos. The name continued in use after production went abroad in the 1930s. Their grand pianos are said to be not well made.
By 1990 the tower had lost its top floor topped by a cupola. Like much of Fonthill Road the building was mainly in use by clothing manufacturers and wholesalers in 1990.
The 3 storey house in this picture is still present on Goodwin Street, a turning off Fonthill Road which now leads through City North House to Finsbury Park Station. This is 11 Goodwin St, owned by the Trustees of Peace News and the home of CND, the Campaign Against Arms Trade as the hanging sign above the double door indicates, along with various other groups. I think the right hand door was number 13, though the numbering around here seems rather random.
The rather strangely staggered roofline is still there at 138 Fonthill Road and all the shops are still in the clothing trade, though I think all the names are changed. Photographer Don McCullin grew up in the area in the 1940s and described the area as “a battlefield” and later he was to photograph on many real ones, including in Cyprus.
It was the Cyprus emergency with the UK fighting EOKA in the the late fifties and the later war between Greeks and Turks that led to many Cypriots to come to live in North London – and a number of them set up clothing factories and wholesale businesses here – and others from Turkey, the Caribbean and Africa came too. At first shops here were simply wholesale, but then many began to open on Saturdays for retail sales, and the street was crowded with people – mainly women – buying real bargains.
I don’t think any trace remains of the Fonthill Metal Co or the garage next door on Fonthill Road which were almost at the end of Fonthill Road close to Tollington Park. There used to be many similar small scrap metal dealers who would pay cash on the spot for non-ferrous metals – Copper, Brass, Lead, Zinc and Ali – aluminium.
BRAIZERY here means copper pipes and other material which has been soldered and so contains small amounts of other metals, particularly tin and lead. If you have a decent load of this you can probably get around £6 a kilo for it – but no longer on Fonthill Road.
Later retail clothes shops elsewhere in the country found they could buy clothing cheaper abroad than garments made in the UK, and manufacturing here started to fall away. Slowly more and more wholesalers welcomed retail customers and many new wholly retail shops opened.
More recently the retail trade has fallen away too as the area becomes increasingly gentrified. Most of the clothes still on sale are now made abroad, particularly in Turkey.
Velvet Touch at 1 Fonthill Road was at the far end to the other clothing manufacturers, wholesalers and importers and although you can still read that line of their shopfront, (rather faded now) their name and the large sign on the side wall are long gone and I think the building is now residential. The very small window on the first floor is still bricked up.
Built as the New Court Chapel in 1871 by Congregationalists from New Court, Carey St, Lincoln’s Inn Field after their chapel had been demolished to build the Royal Courts of Justice.
The Neo-classical church, designed by C G Searle seated 1,340 and in the early years was often full in the early years, but after the war congregations dropped away. It was sold to the Catholic Church in 1959, becoming St Mellitus RC Church. St Mellitus was the first Bishop of London in 604CE and later in 619CE became Archbishop of Canterbury.
Tollington Park was one of the first streets in this northern part of Islington in Finsbury Park (estate agents like to call it Stroud Green, but that seems rather a stretch too far) to be laid out and its grand semi-detached villas date from the 1830’s and 40’s.
Before that cows had grazed its fields to supply milk to London across north Islington which had what was claimed to be the largest dairy farm in the country, run by Welsh dairy farmer Richard Laycock.
By WW2 the area had deteriorated and become a poor working-class area. It was heavily bombed in WW2 and much still remained in a mess twenty years later. By the 1970s it was home to many migrants from across the world, including “Welsh, Irish, Jamaican, and others from all over the world.”
Many of the damaged properties and some others were demolished in 1970 to form a park, Wray Crescent, and gentrification of the area set in. The Friends of Wray Crescent history page contains a number of pictures of Tollington in the 1960s and 1970s, taken by Leslie William Blake when “local campaigners and the Tollington Park Action Group began to fight to preserve some of the buildings, including the creation of the local conservation zone.”
Houses like those in my picture are now all or almost all a number of flats. Only 4 houses in Tollington Park are Grade II listed (along with the two churches) but many are locally listed including these two at 104 and 106, thought to have been built in 1840.
More from this walk to follow.
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