As if you need reminding, the Palmers Green Festival is tomorrow. Last year’s was brilliant and this year’s looks set to be even better – food, music, community stalls and all your neighbours in festive mood.
For the full festival programme, visit the festivals immensely impressive looking website http://www.palmersgreenfestival.org.uk/palmersgreenfestival.org.uk/home.html.
See you there!
Just a few miles away from Westminster, Enfield’s local politicians are making a series of gambles that parliament’s big beasts wouldn’t dare try. They come with serious political and economic risk. But if even some of the things being tried by Enfield work out, they might … point to some radical solutions to Britain’s housing crisis.
I hear lots of people complaining about Enfield Council. But the latest article in Aditya Chakrabortty’s Enfield Experiment series for The Guardian shows the difficult circumstances in which Enfield’s Housing team are forced to work, and the Council adopting forward looking solutions. Well worth reading: http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/sep/01/enfield-experiment-housing-problem-radical-solution.
You can have a tree or triangle – that seems to be the stark choice facing Palmers Greeners as they look ahead to the future of Green Lanes.
Enfield’s Highway Services team have announced that while there was every intention to install a tree to replace the chestnut that stood at the Triangle for many years, investigations conducted at the time of the installation of the Triangle Clock have shown that there is no viable place for a tree on the site – in their own words “we have concluded that a tree cannot and will not be introduced into the current Triangle layout..”
Colin Younger, who has been following the story of the tree closely on the Palmers Green Community website, is asking if we should consider the words ‘current Triangle layout’ ominous. And I wonder what will happen to the money donated to the Council by the Broomfield House Museum Trust for the specific purpose of planting a tree?
Meanwhile, the recent meeting about shared space in Enfield was packed out – see the article, again by Colin Younger. And Basil Clarke writes on the possibility that mini Holland may offer a much needed solution to our streets being used as a rat run.
To join in the debate, visit Palmers Green Community.
Dear Councillors
Last summer I wrote to the Mayor about Southgate Town Hall about Betty Wright (nee Walton) a lady who had written to me via the Palmers Green Jewel in the North website with a unique connection with the Town Hall. She was born there in 1927 and lived there until she married in 1951 – her father was fireman and Mace bearer and she had many happy memories from that time. I believe George Walton may appear in one of the pictures in your Enfield history display upstairs at the Dugdale Centre.
Cllr Cranfield kindly sent my letter on to a number of other colleagues on Enfield Council, saying at the time that she felt that it was a reasonable request. But despite having sent various reminders to the Mayor’s office and others, I have never had any kind of response or acknowledgment.
I fully understand that Enfield has some very serious issues to deal with and this was never going to be a number one priority. However, while press this year and last indicated that Town Hall had been sold, I understand now from the local papers that in fact the sale was only completed very recently indeed.
I had originally requested that you give Palmers Greeners one last opportunity to view their town hall before it goes into private hands. I am no longer asking this, though of course, given Palmers Green Jewel in the North’s emphasis on history and people and valuing the local area, I would love it to happen.
But it seems to me that you or Council staff might still be in a position to use your good offices to grant Betty Wright and her surviving siblings the opportunity to view her old home once more before the work begins in earnest.
It is something she would dearly love to happen. Amidst all the business and complexities and difficulties of Council life, it would be an act of kindness on your part, which I hope you will be in a position to agree to or facilitate.
With kind regards
Sue Beard
Palmers Green Jewel in the North
Palmers Green’s local businesses association is up in arms about the potential implications of new ‘mini Holland’ proposals being masterminded by Enfield Council.
Green Lanes Business Association has called a meeting tonight (9 April) at the Vadi restaurant at 6pm to discuss its concerns that the mini Holland proposals, while promoting cycling, would remove parking on Green Lanes, with huge impacts on local business.
The ‘mini Holland’ money was recently awarded to Enfield by the Mayor of London as part of a project to improve facilities for cyclists across the borough. It adds to a rather bewildering combination of plans for the area – what is approved, what is simply being consulted on, and what actually has funding to ever move forward? What about the Triangle, which local residents seem unanimous that they want to keep?
“Parking may disappear along the length of Green Lanes/London Road, from Enfield to south of Palmers Green if the Council gets its way,” says the association in a recent email, alongside a mock-up of what they believe Palmers Green would look like: “Free of parked cars but also free of customers.” Those who do come to Palmers Green would be likely to park on busy residential roads.
The Green Lanes Business Association and the N21 Live Local group are working together to propose revisions to the plans “so that they don’t threaten businesses and residential roads”, and will be sharing their plans at tonight’s meeting.
A little bit of Palmers Green and Southgate’s history has reemerged in Sundridge Hertfordshire.
In our section on this website titled survivals, oddities and curiosities we told of the story of the weather vane which sat on a garage in the north circular road, on the site of McIntoshes old forge. The weather vane had originally graced the Weld chapel (built 1615) . The chapel was demolished in 1862 to make way for Christ Church, Southgate, and the vane had sat atop one of the Walker family’s barns until it was brought back to the forge in the 1920s.
Stephens Engineering moved to the forge site in 1968 and remained there for forty years before relocating five years ago. There were fears that the vane had been lost.
Not so. Engineer Bill Stephens has now restored and repainted it, and it now sits atop his new premises in Thundridge Business park. Bill welcomes anyone who would like to see it to pop along. More information about the story of the vane here.