The origins of the name Broomfield was one of the subjects tackled by Peter Brown of Broomfield Museum Trust as part of his fascinating talk at Trinity at Bowes last week.
The wife of Sir John Spencer, who owned Broomfield from 1599 to 1610 was born Alice Bromfield, but that doesn’t seem to have been it, he mused.
I mentioned Bromefield as a surname, but how do we explain it in Palmers Green? The answer is, I can’t!
There may have been a family called Broomfield in the area but we don’t know.
In a map from 1600 there are 9 Broomfields in the parish of Edmonton.
Is it to do with brome grass, which grows in woodlands, and has seed heads which bend over at the top? Horses eat brome grass but cows don’t touch it. Broomfield may have been land used for grazing horses.
But it also might be broom, of which there are 70 varieties.
It grows near the round pond. Some years ago, the Friends of Broomfield Park planted six broom bushes with the permission of Enfield Council.
If you sit on the Centenary Seat, you can enjoy the sun and, in the season, the glorious display of broom in front of you.
But I doubt if one person in a thousand thinks “Hmm … Broom … Broomfield!!!”
News is expected this week on the outcome of the four million pound bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore Broomfield House to its former glory.
The bid was submitted in October by Enfield Council, in partnership with the Broomfield House Trust and Friends of Broomfield Park, with the aim of returning the house as faithfully as possible to its nineteenth century appearance, without the mock Tudor facade which was added in the 1930s. Latest indications are that there may be just a few more nail-biting days before we know more on how the bid has been received.
Have you got an hour to spare on Saturday or Sunday?
This weekend people all over the uk will be taking part in the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. To get involved all you need to do is make a note of the largest number of each species you see at one time in the period of one hour, and report your findings to RSPB. Not birds on the wing, we hasten to add– that way madness lies – but just those you spot in your garden.
Secretly we suspect that birds rather look forward to the Birdwatch weekend each January. Maybe a little more bird food gets put out, though its something RSPB advises we should be doing all through the year.
Up in the Northern reaches of Palmers Green, our birds like the usual bread, cake, suet, dried fruit, the odd leftover potato and rice. They turn up their beaks at niger seeds, which we optimistically put out in the home of luring in some finches. And they will only eat apples on sufferance. Maybe they go off them after the autumn glut.
The real mystery is what birds will turn up during the course of a year. In our first year in PG, we didn’t see a single sparrow or starling, only a standard lineup of robins, blackbirds, crows, jays, pigeons and various types of tit. But since then we have seen greater spotted woodpeckers, green woodpeckers, and, once, a redwing. We still haven’t seen any parakeets, though once they arrive we will probably loathe them.
What is the most obscure bird sighting you have had in Palmers Green? And did you take a photo?
Enfield Council is to display a rare pencil drawing by John Constable as part of a new exhibition opening on Saturday.
Enfield Life, at the Dugdale Centre, is a permanent local exhibition about Enfield’s history and will tell the chronological story of people who have lived or worked in the area or shaped its development through a mix of objects, pictures and room sets. Alongside will be an exhibition called People and Places which will include paintings, drawings, photographs and prints featuring places in the borough and people who are linked to the locality.
Though from Suffolk and most famous for his paintings around Dedham Vale, John Constable (1776-1837) had some family connections with the area. We know from his letters that in at the age of 20, in 1796, he stayed at the house of his uncle Thomas Allen, who lived in Church Street Edmonton. This is also possibly when he met painter, engraver and antiquary John Thomas Smith aka Antiquity Smith (1766 to 1833). Smith apparently gave him advice about his career on the lines of ‘dont give up the day job’ (more about Smith, his Life of Nollekins, and his connections with the area coming soon).
The new exhibition will be open daily from 10.00am to 5.00pm Mon-Sat and 10.00am to 1.00pm on Sundays.
The old and purplexing triangle sign image Hugh Humphrey
The electronic sign at the Triangle used to intrigue, with its odd, erratic and gap toothed messages. But then it was removed and it was a while before many of us noticed…..Hugh Humphrey of N21.net did, and he has made this short film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ww_KwM0A8
Following on from her wonderful account of growing up in the Town Hall, we asked Betty Wright (nee Walton) to tell us more about what Palmers Green was like when she was growing up in the 30s and 40s.
Palmers Green was always known as a ‘high class area’ to live.
We had some lovely shops, one of my favourites being Evans and Davies, a large store at the beginning of Alderman’s Hill…it was a general store, selling furniture etc as well as a very good toy department. I remember looking at a china doll in the window for weeks and weeks and wishing I could have it, it cost 8s.11p. (43p) and I was hurt to find my younger sister had been given it for her 6th Birthday, but when I told my mother “I wanted that doll” she said “Oh Betty, you’re far too old for dolls.” (I was 9). It’s funny how things ‘stick’.
All our shops were good class shops, Sainsbury’s (no help service)…Woolworth…during the hot weather some of the workers in the Town Hall would ask me to go over to Woolworth and buy them ice cream cornets (one and a half pence each). I used to have to buy about six and run back before they melted. I never told anyone that I used to have a lick from each on the way back (despite being given one!). My Mother used to shop at the Home and Colonial, for groceries.
Grouts opened in 1914. Here is an image from www.palmersgreenshops.com showing how it looked in around 2004 (site no longer maintained)
Then there was a shop called Grouts (in Green Lanes, opposite Hazelwood Lane)…this shop sold materials, underwear, school uniforms, elastic, ribbons, knitting woods etc. etc. I loved this shop because when you paid, the money was put in a little pot and then it was carried (I expect by electricity) to the top of the shop, where a lady sat in a little cubicle and she took the money and returned your change and receipt in the little pot.
Palmers Green had two cinemas. The Palmadium and the Queens. The Palmadium was the ‘best one’…the Queens never had the good films. There was also a Dance Hall above one of these cinemas, but I can’t remember which one.
We also had the Intimate Theatre which produced some brilliant plays with well known actors.
Then, of course, we were lucky enough to have Broomfield Park. I spent most of my childhood in this park. It was not only a park: it had a boating lake, a really good play area with several swings, slides and roundabouts; a place to be quiet…with a Remembrance Garden (where we children were only allowed to go on a Sunday with our parents); a full size running track and best of all the house, which held a museum as well as a restaurant to buy refreshments on special occasions!
Things changed when war was declared. Broomfield House was taken over by servicemen who had been wounded or suffering an illness. Air raid shelters were appearing everywhere, especially in Broomfield Park. We would still go to the cinema (we called ‘going to the pictures) but many the time the film would stop and the Manager would appear on stage and say “The Air Raid Warning has just sounded; you may leave the cinema if you wish”. Some people would leave but then the film would continue.
I remember running home from being out with my friend and the sirens sounded… I wanted to get home, I didn’t want to go into a shelter because I knew my mother would be worrying. However, the shrapnel from the ack ack guns was falling all around…and someone pulled me into a door way until it was safe to carry on running. It sounds so exaggerated, but believe me, every word is true.
Another amusing (??) story: I used to visit my friends Josephine and Mary Hulme (their Dad was a very famous footballer)…they lived in Riverway. When I left their house in the dark (it was really dark, because of the blackout), I borrowed a carving knife and ran all the way home ‘stabbing at the dark’ in case I met one of these ‘nasty men that my mother was always warning me about). I did this on more than one occasion and when one of my brothers came home on leave he was horrified to hear how I ‘travelled home’, because I could have murdered some poor innocent person. He warned me never to do it again (I was about 13 or 14).
Of course food was rationed, but Mum managed to feed us good meals, lots of steam puddings and she was very clever at making our rations go a long way. It took a long time for me to realise that she often went without to give us children a little more. I remember saying “Don’t you like eggs Mum?” (when we were lucky enough to get some) and she said “No, I never have liked them”. This, I discovered later, was completely untrue.
We then heard that the greengrocers had some bananas – this was towards the end of the war – and we had not had a banana for years. Each family could have four bananas by producing their ration books. We had, at that time, 9 ration books (my grandma was living with us) so Mum said, “Take four ration books to one grocers and get four bananas and then the other 5 books to the other greengrocer and get a further four bananas”. I thought this was cheating, so said to Mum “No, that’s cheating, each family can only have four bananas”. For the very first time that I can remember my Mother slapped me around the face, saying “I am doing for the chance to give you all some fruit, not for me but for YOU”. I could understand her thoughts: “Why should a family of two people get 4 bananas and only four, for a family of 9”.
I often think of this when I buy a bunch of bananas nearly every time I go to a supermarket…
