Books and Articles by Janet Owen

John Farrer – The Man Who Changed Hornsey

By Janet Owen

The story of a man from rural Cumbria, who trained as an architect and surveyor, and played a vital part in creating a large part of the built environment of Hornsey. [Read more…] about John Farrer – The Man Who Changed Hornsey

Smithfield Square’s Fascinating Past: Part 1

This major building development on a 13 acre site in Hornsey High Street has radically altered the appearance and character of Hornsey Village. What was there before the bulldozers got to work? [Read more…] about Smithfield Square’s Fascinating Past: Part 1

Smithfield Square’s Fascinating Past: Part Three

We consider our bathroom and en-suite facilities and our plumbed-in washing machines to be everyday life necessities, but what happened in Hornsey’s past when many houses lacked these essentials? [Read more…] about Smithfield Square’s Fascinating Past: Part Three

Telling a story of Crouch End using pictures from the HHS archive

This Shared Learning Project with the University of the Third Age (U3A) will produce an exhibition about Crouch End in the past using pictures from the HHS Archive.

The Edmonton Union Workhouse – Still housing the poor in 1919

North Middlesex Hospital, formerly the Edmonton Workhouse, date unknown

For many of us it is a shock to read the Tender (Hornsey Journal 30 May 1919) for the supply of provisions to a workhouse. Surely the workhouse, such a spectre hanging over the lives of the Victorian poor, had gone by 1919? If it hadn’t, why was the workhouse in Edmonton not in Hornsey? When did this degrading system end? [Read more…] about The Edmonton Union Workhouse – Still housing the poor in 1919

The Proposed Town Hall : Background

The iconic Art Deco Hornsey Town Hall in Crouch End opened at the end of 1935. Yet the Hornsey Journal, 19 September 1919, refers to town hall plans on this site then. Why did it take so long to realise these ambitions? Where was the original town hall and why did that building and its location have to change? [Read more…] about The Proposed Town Hall : Background

The Urbanisation of Hornsey

An extract from John Farrer The Man who Changed Hornsey by Janet Owen

London was sucking in people from the countryside as its industrial strength grew throughout the nineteenth century and its dramatic increase in population shaped the growth of Hornsey parish. People of all social classes arrived in the capital and the population exploded from 959,310 in 1801, to 2,808,494 in 1861, to become 4,521,685 by 1911. [Read more…] about The Urbanisation of Hornsey

Women and the Vote in 1919

The Representation of the People Act 1918 extended the franchise in parliamentary elections (right to vote) to men aged 21 and over, whether or not they owned property, and to women aged 30 and over who resided in the constituency or occupied land or premises with a rateable value above £5 (or whose husbands did).

Books and Articles by Janet Owen

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