History of Harringay (1880–present)

The advance of late Victorian urbanisation during the last twenty years of the 19th century swept away the 18th and early 19th-century houses, their grounds and the farmland.

A small area of land between the Tottenham & Hampstead Junction Railway, Finsbury Park and Endymion Road was laid out as streets and fully developed by 1885.

It was bought from successful builder William Hodson[2] who had acquired the land in 1880 from the executors of Edward Chapman, the last owner of Harringay House and grounds.

Also in 1881 the Great Northern Railway Company purchased a large slice of land, about half a mile long by 800 feet wide, at its broadest.

The following is an extract: 1.Fences - Each purchaser is forthwith to make and afterwards maintain a good and sufficient fence next the roads and on the sides of his lot ---- 2.

No building shall be erected or used as a Shop, Workshop, Warehouse, or Factory, and no Trade, or Manufacture shall be carried on, nor shall 'any operative, Machinery be fixed or placed upon any Lot.

No Hut, Shed, Caravan, House on wheels, or other Chattel adopted or intended for use as a dwelling or sleeping apartment nor any Shows, Booths, Swings, or Roundabouts shall be erected, made, placed, or used, or be allowed to remain upon any Lot and the Vendors or the owner or owners of any of the Lots to which these stipulations relate may remove and dispose of any such erection or other thing.

The Hornsey Local Board minutes show that the biggest single development seems to have been one of 32 dwellings in Mattison Road, for which planning permission was granted in 1895.

The excitement with the scale and speed of the area's development can be discerned from comments made by the Chairman of the Hornsey School Board in 1883 during a visit to assess developments in the light of the possible need to provide a new school:- The enormous neighbourhood which is just coming into being on what is known as the Harringay Park Estate --- At the time the Board was established in 1874, Turnpike Lane, upon which the Harringay Park Estate abuts was a narrow country-lane, with a footpath on one side only, and a hedge and ditch on both, but the country-like lane has given place to a well made public road of 50' width, and the fields and parks which formerly existed have been given over to the ever encroaching builder, while new interesting roads have been laid out in all directions and upon a scale which can only be described as gigantic.

In the place of fields there are now well paved and well lighted roads covered with rows of neat looking and attractive houses, while others are still passing through the transition stages.

[20] These various churches and chapels, as well as ministering to different religions needs, also provided social outlets by creating organisations such as choral and debating societies.

[21] While most of the western part of Harringay fell within the borough of Hornsey, the eastern fringe adjoining Green Lanes became part of a new ward within Tottenham in 1901 after the middle-class residents, chafing at their inclusion in the predominantly working-class wards of West Green and St. Ann's, sought to be transferred to Hornsey.

Directories during the first decade of the twentieth century suggest that the accommodation above the shops in Grand Parade was very respectable with surgeons and doctors counted among the residents.

Harringay entered the 20th century a more or less fully developed suburb of London occupied for the most part by middle or lower-class people.

A photographic survey undertaken in the late 1940s showed the beginnings of the disappearance of the old shop front facades and the hint of some neglect.

[27] For a short period Turkish and Kurdish criminal groups used Green Lanes as a base to run national drug operations and more local protection schemes.

[28] Despite their ubiquitous presence along Green Lanes, the Turks and Kurds were not present in great numbers in the residential streets of Harringay.

[29] A number of the houses were converted to flats and a new wave of more affluent young middle class professionals began to move in, taking advantage of the fact that, despite rapidly appreciating property prices, Harringay was one of the relatively more affordable areas within easy access of central London to buy or rent a home.

[33] As had been the case a century earlier, despite lying just to the east of the north–south railway marking the political fault line across the borough (in 2010, except in Harringay, Labour won all the council seats to the east and none to the west), the increasingly middle class residents of Harringay at the beginning of the 21st century were again demonstrating their difference.

Harringay was also home to a film studio operated by George Merino and British Animated Productions, which produced the first British technicolour cartoon, Bubble & Squeak (A series of five cartoons about Bubble, a taxi driver, and Squeak, his sentient car, who get into various silly adventures together.

It also acted as the rough dividing line for land ownership, establishing Harringay's position on the edge of manorial and subsequently borough boundaries.

During the early 1960s, Harringay was the location for ground-breaking pedestrian control arrangements instituted by the then Transport Minister Ernest Marples.

[39] In the mid nineteenth century, the arrival of the Great Northern Railway (GNR) divided Harringay from the rest of its ancient borough.

Harringay's development in the late 19th century was of a markedly different nature than that which occurred to the west of the GNR and so the south of the THJR.

Eventually London Underground closed the branch in 1975 and transferred ownership to British Rail, who installed new connections to the main line south of Finsbury Park.

Finally the route has taken on its original intended purpose of providing a City terminus for suburban services, now run from Moorgate to Hertford, Welwyn, and Letchworth.

Provision for a Tube station at Harringay actually made it into plans contained in the Great Northern and Strand Railway (GNSR) Act of Parliament of 1899, which gave the go-ahead for a new line running from Wood Green to Aldwych.

Stations were to be built at Wood Green, Hornsey, Harringay, Finsbury Park, Holloway, Bingfield Street/York Road, Russell Square, Holborn and Strand (adjacent to Aldwych).

However, at the eastern end of the line, the Great Northern Railway considered the territory beyond Finsbury Park their own, and they vetoed any extension beyond that point.

[45] In the early 1930s, with the opposition swept aside, plans to extend the Piccadilly line from Finsbury Park up to Wood Green and beyond were made public.