All credit to the residents of College Lane in Kentish Town ... one of London's most intimate war memorials has been decorated with poppies in tribute to the ten local men listed on the plaque. They all fought in the First World War. They all died in northern France and Flanders - or from injuries sustained there. There's more here. All appear to have lived within a hundred yards of the memorial. Lest we forget!
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I've been looking for Hope - big lettered 'HOPE' - across Kentish Town and around. As regular readers of this blog will know, I've found four - faint traces of a fifth - and there are at least a couple more out there. Today I zapped around by train from Upper Holloway to Gospel Oak, Camden Road to Hampstead Heath, to see if there was HOPE to be seen from the tracks - keep reading and you'll find out if I succeeded. And then I walked from Camden Road station to West Kentish Town sticking as close as I could to the rail line, wandering to and fro under bridges - and what a joy! If you don't know the area - and I thought I did, but didn't really - this map may give you a feel for the streetscape (the photo above is Clarence Way, west of the tracks and facing east): First of all - do you know Ivor Street? If you don't, then don't waste time - get there before HS2 changes it out of recognition. At the western end near the junction with Prowse Place are three entirely wonderful early nineteenth century cottages (see for yourself below): I came across one of the residents - these are watercress gatherers' cottages dating from 1836 when the Fleet river ran nearby, I was told. The Fleet certainly flowed very close to here, though I wonder whether watercress workers would have had the status that goes along with these fairly commodious double-fronted cottages. I guess the census records could provide the answer. Prowse Place, still cobbled and with something of the feel of a film set, has one of the most astonishing arches under a railway bridge that I know of in this part of London. Then it's a matter of zigzagging in pursuit of the rail tracks until you chance upon another wonderful backwater. Clarence Way - featured at the top of this posting - takes you along to a modern cul-de-sac, Harmood Grove, memorable for the most eye-catching piece of modern art I've seen on the outside wall of a north London home. I've been able to find out nothing more from the 'net - so if you know anything, details please: Just yards away, on Harmood Street, is one of my favourite second-hand bookshops, Walden Books - the name comes from Thoreau and the stock is in that tradition, so good for politics (particularly libertarian - I've bought lots of great pamphlets here), modern fiction, and above all London. I fell for a Pan edition of Colin Wilson's Adrift in Soho, a book of wartime short stories which includes a piece by John Sommerfield, and a printer's reminiscences about Fleet Street and around in the Victorian era - so that was another £20 or so gone by the time I resurfaced. Heading north, off the east side of Harmood Street, is Powlett Place - not a road but a path with houses on both sides leading to the dead end of the railway line. The buildings date from the 1840s, though the name came a few decades later. It's difficult to do justice to the Place from the ground - you can probably get a better view from the tracks. It is, in the words of the Camden History Society, 'a pleasant backwater, with small, boxy two-storey Victorian cottages and well-tended front gardens.' Weaving back to the eastern side of the tracks, Hadley Street is home to one of the area's best, and least well known, pubs - Tapping the Admiral. The pub hasn't always gone by that name. For its first hundred years or so, it was the Trafalgar. So Tapping the Admiral is a return to the original nautical theme after an unfortunate interlude where this fine and friendly pub was known as the Fuzzcock & Firkin. The '80s have a lot to answer for! Avoiding the temptation of popping in for a quick one, the journey to West Kentish Town was all but done, but there was more temptation in the way. For the arches adjoining the station are now home to the Camden Brewery, and its award winning ales including Hell's Lager - there's a bar there too. From the station platform, you look down directly onto the brewery's loading area: ... but no more 'HOPE' and a denial of HOPE The wanderings - by rail, and on foot - were a great way of spending a sunny Sunday morning. But alas, no 'HOPE' spotted. Indeed the only news to share is a denial. One of my co-detectives in pursuit of 'HOPE' suggested that the neat, petite Hope Chapel on Prince of Wales Road might be behind the inscriptions. This is now part of the Churches of Christ - I sent them an email and with great courtesy they replied, saying no, not them, but they had noticed and rather liked the HOPE 'hallmark' around NW5. 'They would say that, wouldn't they', said my co-conspirator, a touch uncharitably. So, we're still seeking HOPE. Here's another one - a purple burst of HOPE, on the Athlone Street bridge facing west. It's in a very different style to the more emblematic HOPE around the place, detailed here, and I'm still seeking your help in locating more HOPE and finding out what it was all about. Come on, someone must have some of the answers! My favourite HOPE is on the other side of this same bridge - here it is again:
There's an awful lot of hope in Kentish Town. H-O-P-E style hope. In a locality criss-crossed by railway lines, with more rail bridges to the acre than anywhere else on the planet, someone, sometime, has gone round giving us all, well, hope. The lettering style broadly matches - but in all four cases I've come across, there's nothing beyond 'HOPE' to indicate purpose ... is this a name, a brand, an aspiration, an instruction? Somebody out there must know more. Who painted these, when and why? How many more 'hopes' are out there - and how many have been lost to history? This blog has a mission to find out - if you can help, do please comment or email (awkashmir@gmail.com) And then there's at least one case of losing hope in Kentish Town - high on the wall at the site of Kentish Town station overlooking the tracks. There used to be a very prominent 'HOPE' there. For no obvious reason, it's been scrubbed away - but if you look really hard you can just make out the lettering. So there's still, yes, a bit of hope!
It is among the most evocative of war memorials. A plaque on the outside wall of a north London terrace listing the names of ten local men who died in the First World War - the inscription now barely legible. The plaque is on College Lane, which runs parallel to Highgate Road - and which is the longest street I know of in this part of London which doesn't front a road. I've written about the memorial before but new information is to hand - thanks to one of the residents of College Lane - which I am keen to share. The memorial is unique in London - reputed to be the only wall mounted commemoration of the dead of the Great War. And back in 2000 the Camden New Journal published the findings of an amateur historian, Carl Crane, who had done some delving into the stories of those listed on the plaque. All the information here come from Carl Crane's research - and I've posted the article below. The ten men all served in the Borough of St Pancras-based 19th London regiment - and all were killed on the battlefields of France and Belgium or died of wounds suffered there. Several have no war grave. And their names - well, there were nine privates or similar grade: + John Albert Powell Sayers + Fred Britcher + Charles James Manning + William James Cecil Stratton + Douglas Walter Barrett + Henry James + Percy Robert Leahey + Charles Henry Biggs + William Henry Turner And one sergeant - (I think I've located a photograph of him - watch this space!): + Alfred Herbert Stanton Every remembrance day a resident of College Lane places a poppy on the memorial. What a nice touch! It's one of the commanding landmarks of N19 (Upper Holloway to the untutored) - and has a fair claim to be one of north London's most enduring murals. This 'smiley sun' - and doesn't the reference to "Atomic Power" date it - is painted on a gable wall at the junction of Dartmouth Park Hill and Hargrave Park. I've lived nearby for the last sixteen years, and have driven past this mural and seen it as part of my London since I moved to the city more than thirty years ago. Various attempts to find out how this smiley sun came into existence - and more details here - have thrown up two facts: it was all about the squatters' movement so evident in north London in the late '70s, and this particular piece of public art was the handiwork of Kelvin 'the mushroom maniac'. Well, I have now heard directly from Kelvin - it's only taken three years or so to track him down - and here's his account of how this landmark was born: Thanks for your interest ... in that 'smiley'! Well, can't imagine how you ever found out, but you were right, twaz me that scrolled it! How? Well, a lucky combination of circumstance I guess - A copy of that book [John W. Gofman and Arthur R. Tamplin, Poisoned Power: the case against nuclear power plants before and after Three Mile Island, 1971], a flourishing anti-nuclear movement, and me, a young headstrong hothead in thosde days, in love with life and convinced the world could be saved, (and magic mushrooms). When? Well, I can pin that down for you too - It must have been (incredibly) - 1976. How am I so certain? Well, the man who told me of your website (born at the end of '75) was a babe in our arms at the time. Homeless and living on £5 a week we heard of the incredible squatting community that thrived in that area at that time - and with a massive sign of relief we moved into that house! Why'd I graffiti my own house? Hard to say, perhaps having just got back from a nightmare demo at Aldermaston - where I'd experienced the most hideous mushroom induced vision I'd ever had in my life - (before or since) - may have had a little something to do with it! - ... Where? how? Having come across a few tins of old paint while on another blindingly enlightening anti-nuclear trip I was suddenly seized with the absolute necessity to do something about it then and there - so, in the middle of the night, much to the misgivings of my long suffering wife and convinced I'd be getting busted for it in the morning (if not while doing it) I grabbed a ladder from a building site opposite and dashed it off. (If I'd have known it was to last half a lifetime I may just have taken a little more care over it! I was in such as hurry I remember I nearly fell to my probable death in the process! - anyway, There's your story. And it's a great story, Kevin. Thank you!
A re-version of 'Keep Calm and Carry On' on display at a Turkish run grocery in Kentish Town this morning. With violence in Turkey's two main cities, Taksim Square in Istanbul has become the focus of protests against building on a city park, and against the allegedly heavy handed police crackdown on the initial demonstrations. The NW5 shop owner was pleased that I was taking this photo - not always the response when I whip out my iphone - and even more delighted when I said the photo would be posted on my website. 'Thank you', he beamed, and shook my hand. 'We are very worried. There are three dead already in police terrorism in Istanbul.' The news reports don't fully bear out that casualty figure, but Turkey is seeing worse street violence than for a long time - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22740282. If you are wondering what ACAB stands for, so am I - a Google search suggests that it may be that well known acronym 'All Coppers are Bastards' (not that I endorse that sentiment), certainly it seems more likely than an alternative offered, 'Always Carry a Bible'. 'Direngeziparki' comes out in Google Translate, not entirely satisfactorily, as 'Other Park Resistance'. If you put it in Twitter with a hash tag, you will be part of a very lively social media conversation. Another old shop sign uncovered by renovation work - this is on Fortess Road in Kentish Town, about a hundred yards or so from the tube station. There is something bitter sweet about signs re-emerging after decades submerged, and then being covered again by the waters of time. I've been able to find out nothing about the business - can anyone help? LATER: Bill Ellson has been in touch to say: 'Evan J Evans married Jane T Laird in London in 1932. The newsagents in Fortress Road appears in the Telephone Directory from 1933 until 1964. They had two sons. The family lived above the shop.'
LATER STILL: Really good news - it looks like E.J. Evans is going to have an afterlife. The new shop sign doesn't cover the old sign but nicely complements the original. AND DO READ THE COMMENTS (BY HITTING THE COMMENTS TAB AT THE TOP) - SEVERAL ARE FROM DESCENDANTS OF E.J. EVANS! What a great way of spending a sunny Sunday morning - walking around my own backyard in the company of people with a real passion for and commitment to the area. The Kentish Town Neighbourhood Forum - who are seizing on this government's "localism" initiative to develop a neighbourhood plan for much of NW5 - organised this gentle stroll. It took in planning and conservation issues, local history, and - real treats - a quick pop in (entirely impromptu) to a local Ethiopian bakery and (with advance warning) to our star local tailor. College Lane, parallel to Highgate Road, is the longest row of houses I've come across in London fronting a walkway rather than a road. The houses, though small, are now sought after. They were built for railway workers. And - a detail I'd never noticed before - along the row there's a tiny memorial, now barely legible, to railway men who lost their lives in the First World War. The area opposite the houses, which are all on the west side of College Lane, used to be a rail workers' social club. It's due for development with a price tag, we were told, of £7 million for the land alone - but getting access to the site could well devastate about the last Georgian corner of Camden, the wonderful Little Green Street, with is bow-windowed former shops. If anything in this life is worth fighting for, it's the future of spots like Little Green Street. And another NW5 detail that was new to me - at the eastern end of Little Green Street there used to be a gate leading to a farm. One of the sturdy wooden gateposts is still there. You can see it at the bottom left of the photo below. Through the Ingestre estate, we walked up to the double bridge across the rail lines at the back of Acland Burghley School. I knew the Fleet river ran near here, but hadn't appreciated that it too is carried over the rail tracks in a hugh, rusting pipe. So much of the lay-out of the streets around here was shaped by the river - and it still runs, rising on Hampstead Heath, constrained by pipes and sewers, until it spills into the Thames near Blackfriars bridge. On Fortess Road, we popped into the back room at the Ethiopian-run Engocha grocery - just next to the excellent Lalibela restaurant - to see them making injera, the flat, sour, rather spongy bread. If you're tempted, it's a very modest 70p for a piece the size of a large pizza. Then it was back down towards Kentish Town station, lamenting the demolition of the old Methodist chruch, and in to Chris Ruocco's renowned tailoring shop. The man himself was there, to tell us stories of all the stars he has dressed. Madness and Westlife are among his recent clients; he has spangled and sequinned Diana Ross; Ed Miliband and 'pleb' Andrew Mitchell both sport his made-to-measure suits. The back room workshop displays dozens of framed photos of stars who he counts among his customers. In the front shop, amid all the suits awaiting fitting or collection, there's a small electric keyboard, for anyone tempted to belt out a tune. On the way home I drop in to Ruby Violet for a cone of homemade salted caramel ice cream - recommended by a fellow walkabouter. What a lot NW5 has to offer!
I can never walk past Blustons in Kentish Town High Street without having a peek into their commodious window displays. It is simply window shopping. At the moment, it can't be much else. The shop - a wonderful throwback to the inter-war years which I have blogged about before - is currently closed for its annual holidays. I haven't decided whether shutting down in mid-February for your hols is inspired or the opposite.
Walking past this weekend with my camera - which in technical and graphic calibre, is a good match for the photographer - I took a couple of shots which I rather like. Setting Blustons' very keenly priced 'classic ladies' clothing' against the reflections of the high street. See what you think. |
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