2:24pm Monday 16th January 2006
KEN GAY looks at the fluctuating fortunes of Hornsey. Pictures donated by HUGH GARNSWORTHY, of Hornsey Historical Society.
The focus of the rural parish of Hornsey was always the medieval church of St Mary.
The parish council met in the church vestry or nearby at The Three Compasses. On the north side of Hornsey High Street, wooden cottages, brick villas and terraces, shops, and craft and trade premises lined the old road.
This community expanded after 1850 when the Great Northern Railway Company chose Hornsey as the site of its first station out of London on the new trunk railway to the north. Old estates, such as Camspbourne, began to be replaced in the 1860s by housing.
New buildings appeared. Among these was the National Hall and Constitutional Club, built in 1888 and can be seen here in an 1893 photograph.
Here were based a branch of the Middlesex army volunteer force and also the Primrose League, part of the Conservative Party. The building served as a parish hall and when the craze for films swept the country, it was adapted for a while to serve as a cinema in 1910. It was used in 1969 by the congregation of St Mary after their Victorian church had been demolished for safety reasons. Well built, it continues to survive, latterly in use as a restaurant.
Meanwhile, the centre of local government had moved. When the parish council was replaced in 1869 by Hornsey Local Board, it built its new offices not in the old village but in Southwood Lane, Highgate, half of which was in the Hornsey district.
However, as the population expanded, Hornsey village was chosen for three new buildings.
These are on the right in the second photo. Firstly the plain police station (1884), then the baroque central public library (1899) and the fire station (1885), out of the doors of which would dash a team of horses pulling a fire engine.
Notably, the site for these three buildings was on the south side of Hornsey village, in Tottenham Lane at its junction with Church Lane. For in this period, a new centre of population was developing Crouch End at the southern end of Tottenham Lane.
The urbanisation of the little village of Crouch End began with the sale in 1882 of the Crouch Hall estate and was finalised with the sale of Topsfield Manor, replaced in 1895 by Topsfield Parade, with the Clock Tower built next to it.
The new Crouch End developed good shops, and had Wilson's department store. Hornsey village did not develop in the same way when the Borough of Hornsey decided to have a modern town hall to replace the antiquated offices in Highgate they chose Crouch End as its site, not Hornsey village, despite its long history.
A new middle-class suburb had taken over. The seat of political power was now in Crouch End.
The central library survived in Tottenham Lane until 1965, when it opened in a new building next to the town hall in Crouch End. The fire station was replaced in 1963 and a new station stand in Priory Road.
The police station, rebuilt in 1915, took the opportunity to take over the sites vacated by the library and the fire brigade.
Although Hornsey village gave way to Crouch End in the 20th century as a shopping and political centre, things seem to be changing in the 21st.
The development of the former Thames Water site has brought in a new population, and new shopping facilities might arrive to serve them.
Already the medieval church tower, preserved from decay in the 1980s and 1990s by a handful of volunteers called the Friends of Hornsey Church Tower, is being used regularly for Sunday services to meet new needs. Regeneration proposals will change the old village.
What it will never be again is the centre for local government.
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