Today until 7.
Category: Palmers Green
The gardens of Arnos Park Lodge were open at the weekend as a fundraiser for the Broomfield Park Conservatory.
The creation of Elizabeth Dobbie, the gardens were open earlier than usual this year to give visitors a chance to see it in spring. Elizabeth describes her work as naturalistic and unfussy. It certainly is beautiful, and there was a great turnout despite the weather.
If you missed the gardens, there are more chances on the way to support the work of the conservatory, including a plant swap on Sunday 26 May. The conservatory is open from 2.30 to 4.30 on Wednesdays and Sundays.
The Space Art Gallery is exhibiting works by three artists this month.
German artist Reinhard Stammer grew up on the Baltic coast and had his first exhibition aged just 17 before getting involved in counter-culture art and activism and spending a year in prison. Later, he went through a period of drug addiction before, aged 33, he founded a publishing house. The course of his life continued to be far from smooth however, and he was forced to sell up due to a serious and near fatal illness in 2006. Since then he has thrown himself into creating an art which is born from travelling the rocky road of life. His philosophy, he says, is to ‘stay true and let life and art flow’.
Something rather different comes from 8-year-old artist Marina Gruzer. Born in Moscow, she came to the Uk three years ago, and has been taught by art teacher Veronika Leontyeva, with startling results.
If you prefer photography, there is also work by photography student Jasper Jones, who explores the relationship between photography and 
art forms, and is also interested in portraiture. The result is a wonderful collection of often abstract but very compelling images.
Work by all three is on show throughout May. Visit the Space website for more information about opening times.
Its official – Palmers Green is one of the busiest stations on First Capital Connect’s great Northern Route.
Data published by the Guardian this week revealed that more people got on or off a train at Palmers Green than almost any other station on the route, with the exception of Moorgate and Kings Cross (as these are exit points for other lines, the numbers arriving or joining FCC have not been separately measured).
Palmers Green had 1,662,004 entries or exits in 2011/12, and if you had a suspicion that the station is getting busier, you would be right. Its a 2% increase on 2010/11.
The figures for the route, in descending order, are
- Palmers Green 1,662,004
- Letchworth 1,523,282
- Winchmore Hill 1,423,616
- Old Street 1,336,722
- Hertford North 1,290,728
- Enfield Chase 1,248,758
- Alexandra Palace 1,157,282
- Hornsey 1,129,648
- Gordon Hill 1,088,830
- Haringey 1,062,026
- Bowes Park 814,562
- Cuffley 658,354
- Drayton Park 505,230
- Essex Road 482,764
Completists will be disappointed to see that Crews Hill and Bayford arent listed.
There are hours of fun to be had on the Guardian’s website, where you can search the data using the interactive table http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/may/19/train-stations-listed-rail#data
Huge thanks to Nick Cox who alerted us to this wonderful video of carnival day in Palmers Green in 1931.
Made by Camera Craft, the footage was found in a skip by You Tube user Andyvalve100, who we are trying to contact now. He says of this amazing find
The Southgate featured here is the London Suburb and indeed it was while working in the area a few years back that I found this film amongst things being thrown away in a company clearout.
In fact, as you will see, it is all shot in Palmers Green, and gives a wonderful impression of what it might have been like to walk along Palmers Green’s streets over 80 years ago, when many of the buildings were 20 or 30 years old, the streets bustled and the cinemas were still with us.
It shows a wonderful procession of local trades, businesses and groups: the fire brigade, soldiers, nurses, local hospital groups, marching bands, penny farthing riders, peace campaigners (‘truth is the first casualty of war’), polo players, life savers, and a group of ladies with placards showing the evolution of women’s rights. There also seem to be riders from a local hunt.
Among the businesses are Express Dairy, Stapleton and Sons, Northmet, Clayton Homes, John Eaton, a 1903 Humber car advertising a local garage, and a float from the Cock Forge imagining its own past in 1732. The Easiest Way and Easy Money are showing at the cinema.
The date of the film is September 26 and celebrates the ‘jubilee’ but for the moment I am stumped as to what jubilee this is. George V’s diamond jubilee was in 1935. Does anyone know?
Betty Wright (then Walton) remembers the day well, because it was her fourth birthday – in fact, her birthday often seemed to coincide with annual civic events .
The film taken from there, showing the beginning of Alderman’s Hill…showed where my ‘best friend’ lived…at No 3, above an Estate Agents…her parents were the Care Takers. It’s a pity the Town Hall wasn’t shown….or at least I didn’t see it. I feel certain my elder sister and brothers would have been in the Parade…they would have been 14, 15 and 18.
I do remember each year on my birthday (just a co-incidence) the Southgate Fire Brigade gave a display in Broomfield Park (or may be in the grounds at the rear of the Town Hall where the fire station was). They put on a display of a burning building, and firemen running up ladders to ‘save’ people. They also used hook ladders, which my brother excelled at. Unfortunately, shortly after my son joined the brigade and had set his heart on ‘being as good as Uncle Jack’ with hook ladders…they were banned because of ….yes, you guessed, ‘health and safety’.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSH-R2fgiOk[/youtube]
Please show this film to your friends and relatives – we would love to hear all your memories, of days like these, what life was like then, and Palmers Green’s people, shops and businesses.
One of the most frequent enquiries we get on this website and in search engine referrals is about Truro House. Not everyone knows its name. Sometimes its the ‘old house on the corner’ or ‘old house opposite the Town Hall’. It seems like Truro house has always invited curiosity.
Friend of this website Betty Wright lived in the Town Hall from 1926 to the 1950s and has kindly sent us this press cutting from 1974. Back then Truro House, given that it was built around 1850 or 60, was not much older, relatively speaking, than many of our own houses today – just over 100 years. Even then it seems to have been a bit of a mystery.
![IMG_0065[1]](http://www.palmersgreenn13.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IMG_00651.jpg)
We seem to know the following. It stands on the site of the Kings Arms pub – Oakthorpe Lane was once Kings Arms Lane.
Peter Brown of the Broomfield Museum Trust also tells us in his fascinating leaflet on Truro House that the land was once owned by Thomas Wilde (1782-1858) first Baron Truro who lived at Bowes Manor and was Lord Chancellor from 1850-1852. The estate was then purchased by Alderman Thomas, and there was a Truro Cottage on the site in 1867’s ordnance survey site. However, neither Wilde nor Sidney appear to have lived there and it seems like the house may have been rebuilt or remodeled around 1890 when it was occupied by Frederick Colliver, a stock jobber, and his family.
From 1898 it was owned by the Davis family: Miss Charlotte Davis lived there from 1936 to her death in 1995 with her French housekeeper, Mlle Florence Zanotti. Peter tells us that while she was there, she allowed the Southgate Civic Trust Trees Group to inject the eleven elms which stood in the garden to try and save them from Dutch Elm disease – unfortunately without success. She also sold part of the land for the building of Honeysuckle House.
I have heard people say that Miss Davis liked to keep herself to herself, but I would love to hear from people who knew 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.
The fate and more recent goings on in the house remain a bit of a mystery. Is it occupied? Currently there seems to be a small enclosure and the vegetation seems a bit more under control than usual, but perhaps that’s just the recent bad weather.
Perhaps most interesting is the call from writer of the 1974 article, one ‘Fuimus’ to consider the status of the house in the borough, a call which could have been made yesterday and has so far been unheeded. It and the Town Hall are the only buildings with open space fronting the New River, which celebrates its 400th anniversary this year, but which we hardly seem to make anything of in Palmers Green.
Truro House is a beautiful and sizeable but not large building, with mature trees which have a tree preservation order. The gardens could be a wonderful public space, and the building may have potential as a community meeting place. I am just saying.
