News is coming through this morning that Enfield Council has turned down an application for the Green Dragon pub in Winchmore Hill to be registered as an Asset of Community Value.
The pub closed a few months ago and the lease was put up for sale. Since then, a bargain shop has opened in part of the building.
There has been a Green Dragon on or near the site for nearly 300 years, and following the closure an online petition was set up on the website 38 degrees, attracting nearly 5000 signatures from local people. Apparently the owner of the site has told the Council that they will be putting forward a full retail and residential application in due course. It’s a frustrating outcome – is it the end for the Green Dragon, and are any of our landmarks safe from developers?
An application for The Fox to be registered as an Asset of Community was submitted to Enfield Council a few weeks ago. Will it fare any better? To read more about the application click here
One of the most positive things about Palmers Green is the number of people who are prepared to put time into the community and making it better for all.
One such person is Annita Correia, who runs Palmers Green’s popular station café. Designer and former teacher Annita has in the past run the popular Waiting Room Café, which did lovely food and hosted many local events, including blues nights and craft events.
Annita now runs the recently refurbished station kiosk, whose cornbread muffins with cheese and chilli have brightened many of my mornings, and whose wonderful range of art cards have saved me from not a few last minute birthday panics. You can buy great coffee, tasty snacks and tickets for Talkies in the kiosk, and it’s a great place to meet people and find out what is going on in the area. Annita’s latest project is to revive Palmers Green’s Sunday market – and this one is a real act of love.
The old market had been ailing for some time, and ground to a halt just before Christmas. So why revive it now?
“When I moved to Palmers Green, the market was the source of my livelihood – I designed fabric and clothing. People had put a lot of work into it, and it was a positive thing for the area. To have seen it go down hill was really upsetting.”
Annita is convinced that Palmers Green should be able to sustain a market of this kind, but that it has to have local support.
“A local market is a great opportunity for people in Palmers Green to have access to products not on the high street, a chance for entrepreneurs to get a first stab at setting up new businesses, hopefully also a way of drawing more people into Palmers Green on a Sunday – we have kept the prices low – pitches will be £20 (£10 for arts and crafts)”.
The roster for the first market includes South London’s Norbiton Cheeses, Essex artisan bakers Brownbread, Brockman’s Farm Produce, Brian and Natasha’s Fresh Fish. Gringostiv’s Cut Flowers and Plants, and Karl Wager of St. Albans with his handmade Furniture from reclaimed and drift wood.
Annita’s ambitions are simple:
“To get the market up and running again, hopefully bigger and better than before, and attract new traders. I am keen for the market to have a buzz, and to develop a reputation for supplying products which are well made and affordable.”
Neighbours, if that is something you would like to see in Palmers Green, you know what you have to do.
Market N13 will take place every Sunday from 15 March 10am – 3pm in Palmers Green Station Car Park.
If you are thinking of a winter’s Sunday walk, you could do worse than spend a few moments on the tube to Cockfosters, and take a wander around the beautiful undulating and Repton designed grounds of Trent Park, once part of the Royal Hunting Forests of Enfield Chase. Head past the café on the path that goes north of the lake and you will eventually come to the mysterious green waters of Camlet Moat, a scheduled ancient monument.
sue beard 2014
It may be centuries old but the C shaped enclosure, full of ancient trees, has a kind of unknowable life of its own, with letters carved into trees, charms and tokens wedged and tied into the branches, and tinsel and streamers laid over the limbs of the ancient trees. Druids say that it’s a spiritual place, where one can experience the earth’s energy. It’s certainly eerie as the low winter sun slowly sinks and the shadows grow longer, a place where anything might happen.
But our story begins, not in Enfield, but in Egypt in 1923 when manicured socialite Sir Philip Sassoon was invited by Lord Carnarvon and Harold Carter to witness the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Returning home, unaffected by the famous curse of King Tut but excited by the prospect of hidden treasure, Sassoon’s thoughts turned to the ancient monument on his own property, Trent Park, where he regularly entertained the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Rex Whistler, and George Bernard Shaw in tasteful opulence. Before many months had passed, Sassoon’s team had started to dig.
Camlet had for some centuries been reputed to have been the home of Sir Geoffrey Mandeville, the first Earl of Essex and Constable of the Tower of London, though some say it was first the home of King Arthur. In ancient times it was right at the centre of the Royal Forest: the moat made it capable of defence, and so Camlet was ideally placed to manage and police the forest. The earliest records show that permission was granted to crenelate an existing house on the site in 1347, but that the house was demolished 100 years later so that the materials could be sold to pay for renovations to Hertford Castle.
Sue Beard 2014
And so, Sassoon drained the moat while the locals watched and waited.
Within a little while, the remains of a huge drawbridge were found, and a long wall, in some places 5 feet thick, plus Roman sandals, ancient daggers and horseshoes. Remarkable though these finds were, press reports soon began to focus not so much on the finds, but of the risk of disturbing the ghost of Sir Geoffrey Mandeville, who, as legend had variously described it, had buried treasure under the paved bottom of a well on the site to keep it from his many enemies or alternatively had fallen in with his treasure and drowned, his spirit lingering to ensure its eternal protection. The remains of an ancient well were indeed found, in the north east corner of the area enclosed by the moat.
Well might the naysayers have worried.
There were no sightings during this excavations, but this may have been because Geoffrey had apparently forgotten about his treasure – perhaps his hard currency was no good in the spirit world – and flounced off. According to a local writer calling himself the Philanderer, he had moved to East Barnet, first to a stable, which was unfortunately then pulled down by the council, and then to the house of Nora O Callahan and her sister, where he set to terrorising them by knocking on the door, thumping around, rattling their letterbox and generally terrifying their normally fearless dog. Next, he was seen by persons unrecorded, in full regalia of red cloak and spurs.
The national press descended, and by all accounts, Barnet became a place of ghost hunting bedlam and police had to be brought in to regulate the traffic. One William Stutters complained of the racket that Sir Geoffrey was making and warned that local building work was waking the dead. Paranormal activity was now also bedeviling the building which is today the Prince of Wales pub. Curiously though, by 1930 the Philanderer was saying that Sir Geoffrey was back stalking around Cockfosters at Christmas time though in December 1932 he was seen in full armour in East Barnet by the members of the local psychic research society, which was lucky, because they just happened to be staking the place out at midnight. By this time, it was being said that Sir Geoffrey made an appearance on Christmas Eve every six years.
Sue Beard 2014
Sightings of Sir Geoffrey have continued intermittently, though they haven’t occurred at 6 year intervals as specified or even in the same place – he has been spotted in Hadley Woods and at East Barnet church. If the legend is correct, he is next due to appear at Christmas in 2016. Who knows where he will have moved to by then?
If your interest is piqued by the story of Sir Geoffrey, do read Jennie Lee Cobban’s brilliant, hilarious and entertaining Geoffrey de Mandeville and London’s Camelot. Currently out of print but available in libraries.*
Truro House, pictured in 2013 by Basil Clarke and reproduced with his kind permission
One of the most frequent enquiries to the Palmers Green Jewel in the North website relates to Truro House, the building which stands on the corner of Oakthorpe Lane and Green Lanes. It seems like Truro House has always invited curiosity and like all good stories, it is shrouded in mystery.
No one seems to know exactly when Truro House was first built, but we do know that in 1673 the triangle of land between Green Lanes, the New River and what is now Oakthorpe Lane was occupied by a public house. Owned by Enfield brewers Beckett and Ostliffe, the pub was at various times known as the Three Nightingales, the Rose, and finally the Kings Arms. The last publican to be granted a licence at the Kings Arms was George Airs in 1817 and in 1828 the property was put up for auction.
Around this time it seems likely that the land came into the possession of Sir Thomas Wilde (1782-1858), the first Baron Truro, who lived at Bowes Manor to the south and was Lord Chancellor 1850 to 1852. (There is a blue plaque to Wilde at 2 Kelvin Avenue marking the location of Bowes Manor). If so, Alderman Thomas Sidney (1805-1899) – Whig politician, tea merchant and Mayor of London from 1853-4 – was the next owner. Sidney was responsible for laying out Palmerston Lane in the 1870s, which at the time was on the western edge of the Bowes Manor estate.
However, even though the building seems to have been named after Baron Truro, there is little or no evidence of either Wilde or Sidney actually living there. The reason? Apart from having perfectly acceptable accommodation at the Manor, Truro Cottage, as it was then, was probably simply too humble an abode for your Big-Whig-about-town.
Records of a Truro Cottage begin appearing in directories and post office books in 1861, when Elizabeth Ward is known to have lived there, followed by Charles Foster in 1867 and William Morris, a stockbroker, who occupied the building for much of the 1870s and early 1880s. The first mention of a Truro House comes with the occupancy of Thomas Reynold Roberts, a draper from Islington who had a shop at 222 Upper Street and is known to have lived at the Palmers Green site from at least 1886. It seems possible that he remodelled the building on a grander scale, resulting in its rebranding from cottage to house.
Sometime in the 1890s the house came into the possession of Frederick Penberthy Colliver who lived there with his wife, three sons, and four servants – a nurse, housemaid, cook and coachman. According to Colliver’s grandson who wrote to us recently, two of the sons may have been born in the house and all three of the Colliver boys went on to be mentioned in dispatches in World War One. They moved to Chaudon house in Hemel Hempstead late in the 1890s and the property was for a short time occupied by George H Frank.
1898 saw the beginning of the most definitive and certainly the most stable period in Truro House’s history, a notable one hundred year occupancy by a single family, the Davises. George Davis was a civil engineer. His wife Marie Henrietta Charlotte Davies was French and Davis’s own middle name was Emile; perhaps this gives us a clue as to why the apparently already ‘French’ appearance of the house appealed to the family and the style of the renovations they undertook in the years that followed. George was a founder of Davis and Timmins screw manufacturers, who continued to trade until the 1960s, with works in Brook and Clarendon Road in Wood Green and premises in Kings Cross and Walthamstow.
Davis died of a stroke in 1922 and when his wife also passed away in 1936, the property passed to their daughter Charlotte Davis. She lived at Truro House in the company of her French housekeeper, Mlle Florence Zanotti until she died in 1995 at the grand old age of 98. In 1973 Charlotte sold the eastern part of the land for the building of Honeysuckle House – up until that point the freehold still spanned the full triangle formed by Green Lanes, Oakthorpe Lane and the New River. In 1975 Truro House was given a Grade 2 listing by English Heritage.
I have heard people say that Miss Davis liked to keep herself to herself. Perhaps there will be people reading this article who remember her? Graham Dalling used to tell the story of how, when the Enfield Local Studies Team were based in Palmers Green Library, he and David Pam went knocking on the door, only to be sent away with a flea in their ear.
In April 1999 the freehold of the house and land was sold to Rainbow Properties. It could have been the end of Truro House, but instead this is where things get particularly interesting.
When in 2000 Rainbow applied to build a number of 3 story villas to replace the stable block, English Heritage investigated the history of the house and gardens. What they found and recorded in their report is remarkable: A sitting hall. A panelled drawing room with hidden drawers and cupboards. Stained glass with chivalric motifs and mottos. A rare early use of concrete mouldings.
The alterations of the 1900s, said English Heritage, “can be compared favourably with other interiors of the Arts and Crafts movement.” There was also a ‘near-unaltered scheme of interior decoration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’ including a Toile de Jouy wall in the north west bedroom (toile is a decorating pattern in which a complex scene, usually with a pastoral theme, is printed on a white or off white linen background)
The original gardens had changed little since the ordnance survey map of 1867. “Traces of curved terrace to the south of the building can still be clearly seen, as can most of the formal paths shown [in 1867].
The most exciting discovery was that “elements of timber framing and brick noggin, more commonly associated with eighteenth century form of construction, have been exposed in the upper floor landing and in the cellar” which may have been part of the old Kings Arms structure from its last rebuilding in 1775. So parts of Truro House are nearly 250 years old. The overall conclusion: Truro House is a building from the 1830s, built in an uncluttered ‘old French’ style, enlarged and remodelled in the 1890s, and modernised in the early part of the twentieth century, since when it has been largely untouched. The interior, say English Heritage, is “a rare and important survival, worthy of further study.”
And so we come to Truro House in 2014. Overgrown, looking a bit sorry for itself. But this week we hear that conditional planning permission has been granted for the restoration of the house as a single dwelling, the development of the old coach house, also as a single dwelling, and the erection of 25 flats in two blocks.
Currently the site is a rare haven of greenery in PG, leading down to the New River, Palmers Green’s other forgotten wonder. I hope that some of the character of that rare amenity can also be preserved in whatever comes next.
Do also read yesterday’s post, featuring Lindsay Barnfield’s account of visiting the house and meeting Miss David
A version of this article appeared in Palmers Green and Southgate Life in January 2014
Poor old soul – Truro House in a state of dilapidation May 2012
News comes this week via the ever hardworking Palmers Green Community website that planning permission has finally been granted for Truro House and grounds. This comes after a long hiatus in which no one seemed to know what was happening, and Palmers Green residents watched in dismay as the building became more and more neglected and surrounded in mystery.
Apparently Truro House is to be saved and restored as a single dwelling and the old coach house will also become a single dwelling. Two blocks of flats will be built, one of two stories and the other of 3 and 4 at various points. There will be lower ground floor and roof level accommodation in the new buildings.
I have not been able to establish whether the formal grounds on the Green Lanes side of the building will be retained – there is a frightening number of documents on Enfield Council’s website – but one of the drawings from 2009 indicates that the intention may be that they could be retained.
Coincidentally, my favourite message in my inbox this week was from the creator of the Finchley website Greenacre Times‘ creator Lindsay Barnfield, who told us about the time she visited Truro House and met the legendary Miss Davie, whose family occupied the building for one hundred years. Incidentally, I wrote a complete article on the history of Truro back in January, but forgot to post it, so stand by for that shortly.
Lindsay says
Like many others, I found Truro House fascinating when I passed y on the bus. I have always liked doors in walls. So you can imagine how pleased I was to being going through that door when I had reason to visit Miss Davies.
This was in 1990 when she was 92. I was greeted by her housekeeper and led in through a kitchen that dated from the early part of the (last) century complete with range, then through another kitchen with more modern appliances then in to the main hall. This was a room in itself, with a grand fireplace. At the top of the stairs there hung a beautiful full length portrait of a gowned Miss Davies, dating I should imagine, around 1920.
She held court in a vast room, that acted as a sitting room and bedroom on the first floor overlooking the garden. There was a fascinating little staircase that led up out of the room – how I wanted to explore! Opposite Miss Davies’ room was another grand panelled room, barely used, looking as if little had changed during Miss Davies’ lifetime (apart from electricity!). How I would have loved a guided tour! She told me she has lived in the house her entire life.
I always felt that this should have been left as a museum – as Miss Davies had no children to inherit her amazing home.
For more information on the plans for the house which have now received conditional approval from Enfield Council, click here.
Palmers Green and Southgate could be better connected to central London following the announcement this week of the preferred route for Crossrail 2.
In previous plans, the terminus of the route would have been Alexandra Palace, but following responses from the public, TfL is now proposing the incorporation of New Southgate into the plans – there is little or no further cost, as it utilises existing railway land.
If it goes ahead, it’ll be possible to travel from Ally Pally and New Southgate across London, to Angel, Tottenham Court Road, Victoria, Chelsea, Clapham and Wimbledon, all without having to change trains. The capacity created would allow for as many as 30 or 40 trains an hour.
So even if you ‘dont want to go to Chelsea’, in the words of Elvis Costello, you know, you could. When it opens in the early 2030s.
