We are hoping to add to our Lockdown Gallery of images with a collection of people’s written accounts of their experiences during the Lockdown period. In this way we hope to have a written as well as a visual record of these months.
River Park House, a tall modern office block, has been home to Haringey Council since 2005. It stands on the corner of the Jolly Butcher’s Hill section of Wood Green High Road and Station Road, opposite Wood Green tube station. What stood on this prime position before it?
An extract from an article in the Bowes Park Weekly News,
5th October 1907
BRILLIANT OPENING CEREMONY
MILLIONAIRES AND LIBRARIES
Well, they had a gorgeous day for it, at all events. At four p.m. on Saturday last there was a bigger assemblage of local somebodies and their friends, than has ever been seen at the Wood Green Town Hall before.
As the Old Schoolhouse is closed for the time being, we thought we’d share some extracts from HHS publications on over the coming weeks and months.
The death of a famous Chinese magician as the result of an accident at the Wood Green Empire in the spring of 1918 provided a hot topic for discussion in north London and beyond. The reporting of the inquest in newspapers such as the Bowes Park Weekly News did nothing to halt speculation that the death had not been an accident.
GRAND OLD MAN OF CONFECTIONERY DIES AT GREEN OLD AGE
From the Bowes Park Weekly News, 6th October 1906
We regret to have to report the death of Mr Geo. Osborne Barratt, who passed away on Wednesday last, at 2.30pm, at the age of 78, at his residence, “Holly Mount” Crouch Hill.
Hornsey Historical Society Bulletin 61 has just been published. It is a long issue this time, full of interesting and varied articles, three of them by new contributors: Katy Ferguson on that wonderful local resource, the Park Road Lido, and David Pashley and Steven Wright, who have in very different ways explored the history of the roads in which they live, Mount View and Ferrestone. There is in fact a fourth contributor, but one no longer alive: Mr G. J. Richards, whose story of his long life and work at the now-defunct Barratt’s sweet factory in Wood Green was presented to the HHS in a hand-written manuscript by his son. This very personal (and very long) account has been edited down to manageable proportions.
This building in Earlham Grove, Wood Green, serves all sections of the local Cypriot community, providing vital community services and facilities. The land it stands on has a long history, having been the site of a family home and educational establishment. What story has it to tell?
An article from the Bowes Park Weekly News, 15 November 1919
The “great silence” on Tuesday came upon the district as a good deal of surprise. The tram and busmen evidently had their instructions from headquarters, and their vehicles stopped automatically. Other motor vehicles went ahead gaily along the High-street, Wood Green, when the guns sounded the hour of eleven, and the drivers if they heard of the stop order at all, did not intend a little thing like that to bother them. However, after puffing ahead for a few yards they became aware that the world had stopped, and they stopped also.
It is very difficult to imagine that central Wood Green with its cinema complex, shops, road junction and busy traffic was ever peaceful countryside with the New River meandering through. So what was Hollywood Green before?