Following the discovery of a manuscript in the Town Hall, we understand that local furniture expert Ralph Hutchings has now also come forward with a storyof an earlier find in Broomfield House thirty years ago during post fire work to recover the Lanscroon murals.
The conservation team uncovered a small box in the remains of Broomfield House’s great staircase, containing a number of objects, including what look like three 17th century witch bottles.
This find isn’t the first witch bottle cache to be unearthed in recent times. Another was found in Newark on Trent last year during to the Old Magnus Buildings and Tudor Hall. Witch bottles are typically filled with hair, fingernails and even urine to stop spells and curses entering homes.
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.
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
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.
For hundreds of years the area round Enfield was notorious for witchcraft, the most famous being Winchmore Hill’s Elizabeth Sawyer, the so called Witch of Edmonton. Sawyer was accused of murdering by mysterious means a neighbour who had stuck her pig, and was hanged at Tyburn.
It wasn’t the first incident. A few years earlier, a group of men were accused of performing rituals in the woods in an area close to present day Hounsden Road. Closer to home, there have been sightings of black dogs reported down the ages, including at Palmers Green’s Deadman’s Bridge where cartsman Gibby Haynes is said to have drowned after his horse was startled by a black creature.
There were woodlands all around Palmers Green before the coming of the diggers inhabited by peasants and country folk, and not a few vagabonds. A document discovered in the Town Hall last week seems to show that the fear of witchcraft was very real in the fields and homesteads of what became Palmers Green.
While there has been no formal investigation as yet, the document is a stunning find which could reframe our whole history. It is believed to have been found in a box when workmen took down a partition wall, and may predate anything we previously knew about the Palmers Green area.
Photos of the script show a barely legible script, part of which, unsettlingly, seems to relate to instructions for an annual ritual to keep the Broomfield area safe from witchcraft. Enfield’s Local Studies and Archive are currently working on a full transcript.
Image with kind permission of Enfield Local Studies and Archive
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.
