The last few days have seen local groups in uproar following the news that Enfield won’t be taking part in London Open House this year. Apparently, Enfield has pulled out because it was unwilling to pay the £4,000 contribution required for its participating venues to appear in the Open House guidebook.
However other sources are suggesting that the real reason is that the Council is concerned about the number of hauntings and strange occurrences in the borough, not least the appearance recently, after a long absence, of ‘Bandstand Bob’ in Broomfield Park, glimpsed by a lady walking her dog just before the park closed. Bandstand Bob was associated with Broomfield House and the area by the lake, but hadn’t been seen since the fire which reduced the structure to its present state in the 1990s.
A few weeks ago there was also the discovery of a manuscript during the Town Hall renovations which indicated that Palmers Green was one of the three haunted hamlets of Middlesex, and that local people participated in rituals to keep witches at bay – a kind of Palmers Scream. The document is currently being examined by Dr Susan Devereux, lecturer in Early Modern History.
A source close to the Council has indicated that the borough is concerned that recent developments, combined with the current showing of the Enfield Haunting on Sky Living, is ‘creating a backward image’ for the borough.
The Weld Chapel, demolished to make way for Christ Church Southgate. Image (c) Enfield Local Studies Archive
Christ Church Southgate celebrates its 400th birthday this year.
The Weld Chapel was founded in May 1615 and was the first church in this area. Before that, churchgoers had to cross woods and fields to make their way to Edmonton.
Christ Church has set up a wonderful 400th year section on their website and Facebook pages in which they are exploring the history of Southgate, Bowes Park and Palmers Green as seen from the memorials and art in the church. If you haven’t set foot in the church, its a treasure trove of art and history.
This week saw the church celebrating the feast day of the poet Christina Rossetti, perhaps best known for writing the carol In The Bleak Midwinter. Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti designed the beautiful windows of St James and St Jude, in Christ Church’s Remembrance Chapel. Installed when the church was consecrated, the windows are dedicated to Captain Timothy Smith and his wife Sarah.
Captain Smith was commander of HCS London, an East India Company vessel. He lived with his wife in a large house in Southgate called “The Wilderness”, which was later demolished and became the site of Southgate College. Captain Smith sailed to Madras (now Chennai) and China. We know from archive reports in The Spectator of 1833 that HCS London ran into difficulties returning from China, encountering a sudden gale near the Azores, on 31st March, cutting away her topgallant-masts, arriving in the Port of London on 9th April. Captain Smith resigned as Commander of HCS London in 1834 and the team at the church are hoping to find a portrait of Captain Smith or HCS London – if you know of one please let them know! Captain Smith and his wife Sarah are buried in a vault in the churchyard.
The church holds its 400th anniversary service on 24 May, and on 20 May Ruby Galili of Edmonton Hundred Historical Society will be giving a lecture on the history of the Weld Chapel, admission a very reasonable £1.
The church and churchyard will be open for tours throughout the May Day Fair, on Monday 4th May 11am-4pm. Its a great event – do go along.
These are tough times for pubs. This week we learned that the Carlton Tavern in Kilburn was knocked down without warning and without planning permission – and apparently also without warning the incumbent landlady, who was told that it would be closed that day for an ‘inventory’.
Meanwhile, up in Winchmore Hill, the Green Dragon was boarded up early this year, only to be reopened in March as a ‘bargain shop’. Its long-term future as a pub, and as a landmark building, seems uncertain.
Not everyone is a pub goer, so why do we care so much? Perhaps it’s because whatever our personal habits, pubs are an important part of our streetscape, an old friend, something intrinsic to area’s bone structure and community. They are often the oldest buildings for miles, the ones with deep, tangible history. We’d like to be able to go in them even if we don’t (which of course is part of the problem).
Here in Palmers Green there were rumours last year that The Fox was about to close, thankfully firmly quashed by landlord Joe Murray. But what if the Fox were to be threatened in the future?
Following concerns, a group of local residents and community groups (including local councillors, this website, Palmers Green Community, Jaywalks, the Southgate District Civic Trust, and the Catanians) has been working on an application for the pub to be recognised as an Asset of Community Value under the Localism Act. The application was formally submitted to Enfield Council by Southgate District Civic Trust this week.
If successful, the application frankly gives scant protection for the Fox, but it does mean that if the building were ever to be sold, SCDT would need to be informed, and the community would be given time to come up with a counter bid for the premises.
Anyone fancy an historic pub with extensive grounds? Perhaps not, but it means that if The Fox were ever threatened, developers should be under no illusion that they would have an easy ride from the community.
The main text of the application is below.
If you think there are other important buildings which should be protected as an Asset of Community Value in Palmers Green, please contact Southgate District Civic Trust. For more about Assets in Enfield and the application process visit http://www.enfield.gov.uk/info/1000000236/property/2756/assets_of_community_value
The Fox stands in a prominent position on the corner of Green Lanes and its namesake, Fox Lane. Tall and imposing, for those coming to Palmers Green from the north, it acts as a gateway into Palmers Green’s main shopping area.
The Fox has a number of accolades. It is the oldest remaining pub in Palmers Green to have continuously stood on the same site – there has been a Fox on the site for over 300 years. It is also the only purpose-built public house still remaining open on the main route between Wood Green and some way north of Winchmore Hill, the others being shop conversions with little architectural or historical merit.
The current building, of 1904, was built as part and parcel of the Edwardian development of Palmers Green. The size and grandeur of the building is a reminder that Palmers Green was once a place of enough significance to require a hotel and associated dining for travellers. Before the coming of the car, the Fox was the terminus of the horse-drawn bus service into London, run by the Davey family of publicans who had stables at the back. Once the trams came, it was a major landmark on the journey from London. All taxi drivers still know the Fox.
The Fox, then, holds a position of huge cultural significance in an area which tends to think of itself as having a short past. It is a well-loved landmark and social hub. If Palmers Green were ever to lose its landmark pub, and this landmark building, it would lose part of itself.
As a former bus and train terminus, and a hotel, the Fox has always been at the centre of Palmers Green’s social and community life. June Brown, Dot Cotton from Eastenders, ran her theatre company from it, bands, including big names like Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band, have played in it, famous comedians perform in it to this day, and the famous have drunk in it – locals like Rob Stewart and Ted Ray and visitors including the famous names who trod the boards at the Intimate Theatre.
Today, as the only remaining live performance venue in Palmers Green, the Fox host a monthly comedy night attracting top Perrier nominated comedians. It hosts a community cinema, Talkies, desperately needed now that there are no cinemas for several miles. It hosts exercise and dance classes, and until recently bands and Irish music. As the only town centre room-for-hire, it has hosted wedding receptions, christenings, parties and bar mitzvahs, giving it a special place in many local people’s personal histories.
The loss of the Fox, in its current form as a public house, would leave the community impoverished; the loss of the building itself would take something beloved and iconic for local people.
For this reason, we wish to make an application for the Fox to be recognised as an Asset of Community Value, so that, should it ever be threatened, it will be clear that this is a both building and social hub valued in the local area, and that local people might have some kind of option to intervene.
The London Borough of Enfield is 50 today! No, really…
In 1960 a Royal Commission on London Government proposed radical changes in the organisation of London government. The result was the abolition of the Middlesex County Council and The London County Council, to be replaced by the Greater London Council, which of course was itself later abolished under Margaret Thatcher.
Long established districts were joined up into larger units to form the new London Boroughs, and Edmonton, Enfield and Southgate were amalgamated and took on the name of “Enfield” to form the London Borough of Enfield.
The new London Borough of Enfield set its best foot forward on the 1st of April 1965, fifty years ago today. And now here we all are.
Enfield will be celebrating the anniversary with a range of activities, set to include 1960s themed festivals, walking tours, a photo archive and film events, competitions and new factsheets about Enfield.
Melton Mowbray has its pork pies,
Eccles has its cake,
Devizes has its ciders,
But what does PG make?
At first glance, we do seem to be a little lacking in our culinary specialities, though I know that some will right now be thinking of the dolmade, the kleftiko, and the gently, deliciously oozing, nutty, honey filled baklavas of Aroma.
But perhaps the truly authentic Palmers Green originating speciality doesn’t really exist – or exist yet. Palmers Green Pudding? What would be in that, I wonder….? Please send in your recipes!
But there is one overlooked localish speciality that perhaps we should be tucking into. It doesn’t belong to Palmers Green, but it does come from a place not much more than two miles from here, though in a sense, like all our delicacies, it simply belongs to us all. I am talking, of course, of the pink, square, delight, Tottenham.
As I get older, as in the adage, my taste in music gets sweeter, and my taste in food gets more savoury (have you tried to eat a Kola Kube recently?). But perhaps my liking for Tottenham is hereditary.
My mother tells of how as a child just after the war, she’d get up in the darkness for a trip with my granddad, Charlie Freeston, to Spitalfields Market to buy fruit and veg for his shop in Ongar high street. First would be a visit to the market itself (and with luck, a sixpence from Mrs Kent, who kept a keen eye on the money sitting on high on her perch), then a trip to the wholesalers in Leytonstone, and then, best part of all, a warm-up with tea and Tottenham at a stall outside Bearmans department store on Leytonstone High Street.
A bite through the soft icing and into the springy madeira-like sponge with a gulp or two of hot sugary tea must have made a fine restorative. As equally it might today.
Note by the way, that in my family at least, it is ‘Tottenham’, not Tottenham Cake. The ‘cake’ is superfluous. We always know what you mean.
The origins of Tottenham like many of these things are not entirely clear, but Tottenham is certainly well over one hundred years old. It was baked by the North London’s Quakers, with the pink icing traditionally made from the mulberries from the Tottenham Friends’ burial ground (the Quakers built their first Meeting House in Tottenham in 1714).
Many websites will tell you that the cake was popularised by Thomas Chalkley, who sold it for a penny (or half a penny for misshapen offcuts), and that it was given away to the children when Spurs won the FA Cup in 1901. Local historian Peter Brown and his wife Doreen describe it as a children’s cake, a crowd pleaser, reflecting values of simplicity, sharing and equality, a view echoed by a cook book from 1931, quoted on Haringey Council’s website:
It sometimes happens that a large number of pieces of cheap cake are required at very short notice for such functions as children’s treats or tea meetings, and in such circumstances it may be almost impossible to prepare some thousands of buns or small cakes. Resort is then had to cheap sheet cake, which is easily made and looks large at the price at which it is sold. The cheapest cake of this sort that may still give entire satisfaction is Tottenham cake.
Give entire satisfaction it does. You can buy it from Greggs’ or Percy Ingle, as sadly we no longer seem to have a proper baker in Palmers Green (other than the aforementioned, excellent but Tottenham-free Aroma patisserie), but why not make your own? The Browns have continued the tradition of baking the cake for the Friends, using their old recipe, tried and trusted for over 50 years – in 2013 Doreen appeared on the Great British Bake off.
This is the way they make it:
Quantities as for a 7″ round tin (38 square inches)
• Cooking margarine – 6 oz
• Caster sugar – 6 oz
• Eggs – 3
• Self-raising Flour – 8 oz
• Vanilla essence – a teaspoonful
• Grated nutmeg (if desired) – a little
• Milk
Mix margarine and sugar (as for Madeira cake) beat eggs and mix in. Fold the mix into the flour. Add vanilla, nutmeg and mix well. Add milk as required to form a ‘dropping’ consistency. Pre-heat oven and bake at 150°C for 50 minutes. o achieve a flat-top cake, cover with foil.
Icing: This is either lurid pink or shocking pink: Icing sugar. Mulberry juice – from the Friend’s Mulberry Tree, (or Blackcurrant, or Cherry). Add Lemon juice if desired. Coat the cake with a weak mix of icing sugar and warm water, and allow to soak in. Coat the cake with the lurid (or shocking) icing.
This article first appeared in Palmers Green and Southgate Life
Guest writer Jason Hollis tells how a childhood visit to Palmers Green inspired a life long interest in ghostly goings on – and a book about the spooky side of Enfield
In 1981 I went on a school trip to Broomfield House. This was a few years before the first of the fires that sadly reduced the once fine building to the shell it is today and had I known its fate that day I might have paid more attention, for I don’t remember much about the visit.
One recollection I do have however was that our guide led my class down into the cellars, which were accessed via an exterior door at the front of the house. Once we had all filed down the narrow steps and into the corridor at the bottom, our guide proceeded to tell us a story.
Many years ago, we were told, sheep grazed in the fields around the house and on one occasion a stray lamb found its way into the cellars and was accidentally locked in. Its lifeless body was discovered some days later and it is said that sometimes you can still hear its sad bleating, calling for its mother.
That was the end of the tour and we all turned around to file back along the corridor towards the bright sunlight awaiting us at the top of the stairs. As we did so the desperate call of a lost, lonely sheep began to call out from somewhere behind us, causing a stampede of suddenly worried children running up the stairs. I was close enough to our guide to realise that he had one of those toys that make an animal noise when turned upside down. It was a marvellous moment although I was somewhat disappointed that the ghost story was not genuine, for that’s what made me tick… and it still does.
I live in Hertfordshire but was born and lived in Enfield for over thirty years. The Borough is full of locations said to be haunted but few have ever been featured in books and it always annoyed me that I couldn’t read about those places in any of the books I had collected about ghosts. I eventually decided that the only way I would get to read about Enfield’s ghosts would be to write the book myself and I started my research in 2000, never thinking that it would take thirteen years to complete it. That’s not to say I spent thirteen years writing my book. I gave up a number of times and life had a habit of taking precedence. In that time I courted and married my lovely wife, faced the uncertainty of redundancy and re-employment and became a father to two beautiful children.
Haunted Enfield was published in October 2013 and I have been very pleased by its positive reception over the past year. I believe it will appeal to people with an interest in Enfield’s history, even if they have no interest in ghosts, as I have included a lot of little known historical information throughout. Featured locations include Trent Park, Forty Hall, Myddelton House, Capel Manor and Salisbury House. There are a collection of pubs, a couple of grisly murders, an examination of ghost stories from around Edmonton and tales of witchcraft and devil worship in Winchmore Hill. Sadly, I could not find any real ghost stories connected to Broomfield House, except for a vague report of strange lights in the park and stories from the rest of Palmers Green were also thin on the ground. The only story I did include was of the Intimate Theatre, where a dressing room is said to be haunted by an actor who suffered a fatal heart attack in the 1930’s.
Stories that didn’t make it into the book include the man who was tapped on the shoulder in the theatre behind The Fox pub when there was nobody sitting close enough to do so in the row behind him. Another story tells of the apparitions of a woman and boy seen in a house somewhere in Palmers Green. According to an Enfield Gazette article from 1998, the tenants of the house went to the council’s Local History Officer who confirmed to them that a widow and her teenage son had been killed in an air raid during the Second World War. If I ever have enough material for a second volume I may well include these stories and would therefore welcome any further information about them or any other hauntings.
Haunted Enfield is published by The History Press and may be ordered from them direct or via all the usual book stores and on-line sites.
