 Shrew was the paper of the Women's Liberation Workshop in London and started towards the end of the 1960s - before such titles as Red Rag and Spare Rib. In line with the non-hierarchical spirit of the women's movement, local women's liberation groups took it in turns to produce an issue. And each issue was produced collectively rather than having individual bylines. This is the issue produced in March 1971 by the Tufnell Park WLW - which, with Peckham, was one of the first to be established (and which also happens to be where I currently live). Sixteen local WLW groups across London are listed.  This cartoon gives a flavour of the increasing suspicion with which many in the women's movement regarded male-dominated far left and campaign groups. Jenny Fortune was responsible for many of the cartoons and graphics in early feminist publications - she can't remember whether this is one of hers but thinks it might be:  This issue of Shrew came out exactly a year after the first women's liberation conference at Oxford and a few weeks after the protest which disrupted the Miss World finals (as chronicled, with a little cinematic licence, in the film 'Misbehaving'). A brief item reports on the progress of the trial of the women charged as a result of that protest. The contents of the issue read well half-a-century (exactly!) later: The rear cover was publicity for the first women's liberation demonstration through central London and also promoted the four key demands of the women's liberation movement at this date. 
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 One of the most charming and characterful houses in Tufnell Park is in danger of demolition. 156 Junction Road is beside the rail tracks close to the junction with Wyndham Crescent. It's the one with a small monkey puzzle-type tree amid the dense foliage fronting Junction Road.. It's a lovely detached Victorian property in an area where all three attributes are not exactly common.  The house has been on the market recently for a million. The Zoopla details speak of a detached property with three double bedrooms and 'very spacious front and rear gardens'. But there's a note of caution too: 'Cash buyers only! A truly unique double fronted detached Victorian house requiring extensive modernisation and extensive remedial work due to subsidence.' These two images are courtesy of the Zoopla site:
According to the Islington Gazette - and God bless local papers! - a property investment firm has lodged an application with Islington Council to demolish the building. The firm says that the building has 'serious structural issues' and they want to rebuild in a fashion that provides housing for more than 'a single wealthy family' - hmmm! Happily, both the Islington Society and the Better Archway Forum are taking up cudgels against the demolition. What makes the fate of the building of still greater interest is the suggestion that it was linked to one of London's 'lost' rail stations, and may even have been the station master's house.  This 1912 Ordnance Survey map shows the old station - Junction Road Station - though it doesn't categorically demonstrate that 156 Junction Road was part of the station estate.  Junction Road railway station (originally Junction Road for Tufnell Park) opened in 1872, just as this area was starting to get built-up. Station Road on the east side of Junction Road was laid out to give access to the station. According to the Wikipedia entry, there were two wooden platforms with footbridge and stairs, which also served the Tufnell Park goods depot nearby. When Tufnell Park tube station opened in 1907, the number of passengers using Junction Road station plummeted. John Betjeman wrote a (not very good) poem which referred to Junction Road as 'this lonely station'. It closed in 1943 and was demolished in the early 1950s.  Junction Road station was in between Gospel Oak and Upper Holloway - that's quite a stretch. There's been talk from time-to-time of reopening it but it is just talk. There's nothing left at all of the station structure. Gone!
I had always imagined that two of the buildings at the top of Huddleston Road, now flanking the entrance road to the student halls of residence, were station related. They are certainly in a different style from the neighbouring houses, and they must have had some sort of public purpose.    And the house on Junction Road - whether or not it was the station master's house I do hope it can be saved. If you want to comment on the planning application. here's the link.
LATER: A year after this item was posted, the house on Junction Road was demolished. How very sad!
 The Boston Arms - that gothic monstrosity of a pub opposite Tufnell Park tube station - is having a makeover. And some of the signage from its heyday, engraved on wooden board, has come to light - probably for the last time. The pub was then known as the Boston Hotel, and the grandeur of the signage - not just engraved, but the lettering highlighted in gold paint against a lilac backdrop - p0ints to just how splendid this local landmark once was.  Some of the wood on which the signage is painted seems to be rotten - and I suspect it is being removed as part of the renovation.  The Boston is, these days, a hard drinking, Hibernian, sports-on-big-screen sort of place. It has a leading music venue, The Dome, in premises adjoining which were once the Boston's own music rooms (and much earlier, I believe, were dance rooms known as the Tufnell Park Palais). The pub has been at the heart of Tufnell Park - iconic, in a sense - since it was built well over a century ago. This vintage postcard, showing Junction Road with only cycles and horse-drawn transport - must date from shortly after the Boston Hotel opened in 1899. The Boston Arms is grade 2 listed - and some of the signage has a wonderfully dated feel. Why would anyone advertise 'foreign wines'? Where would punters imagine the wine came from?   For these relics of the past - "time's up, ladies and gentlemen please!" 
Well, who knew! Ethiopia is, I discover, 'one of the most vegan-friendly cuisines in the world'. And Fortess Road, near my NW5 home in north London, now has a newly opened vegan Ethiopian cafe, Engocha, just a few doors down from Tufnell Park's long-running and distinctly non-vegan Lalibela. I popped in this lunchtime with my daughter - we were both well impressed. That's me with the house special among the hot drinks: turmeric and coconut milk. They have, of course, Ethiopian coffees, including a latte with coconut milk. Not bad!   The food is tasty and excellent value - for £4.99 you can have your choice of three 'wots', that's lentil or vegetable stews, with either rice or injera, the wonderful sour and unleavened Ethiopian bread. I'm not vegan but I'll definitely be going back. Engocha used to be a small, and not all that welcoming, Ethiopian food store - selling freshly-made injera (I was told they've been baking injera here for twenty years) and a small selection of meats and similar. Well, the meats have gone - the space has been opened up - and its friendly and welcoming, with good service as well as tasty food. And they do take away too!
And what does 'Engocha' mean? It is - I learn - a small piece of bread the size of a biscuit particularly connected with Ethiopian Jewish cuisine and baked mainly for children, who dip it in honey.
You're welcome! 
Currently at the printers, and in the shops in under a month - Curious Kentish Town, a copiously illustrated 92-page book about thirty or so places in and around NW5 and the unlikely stories attached to them. There's more details here - and the map below indicates the range of locations featured ... and you can get more of a clue from the titles of the various entries posted below the map. There will be a launch - we hope at Owl bookshop on November 10th. Watch this space! 
1: Dust-up in Islip Street
2: "Hey Ho, Cook and Rowe" 3: The Caversham Road Shul 4: A Country Cottage 5: The Poets' Meeting House 6: Rocker's Newspaper Kiosk 7: A Celtic Saint 8: The Smiling Sun of Hargrave Park 9: 'Catering for Beanfeasts' 10: Borough Control 11: The Drapers' Ghost 12: The River in a Rusting Pipe 13: Ghana's Revolutionary President 14: The Great War in College Lane 15: St Martin's - still crazy after all these years 16: At Home with Karl Marx 17: The Secret Horse Tunnels of Camden Lock 18: The Artist Colony in Primrose Hill 19: Ready Money Drinking Fountain 20: Matilda the Absurd 21: A Bridge over Nothing 22: The Antidote to Blue Plaques 23: The Strangest of Poets 24: Two South African Revolutionaries 25: The Elephant House 26: When Baths were Baths 27: Find HOPE 28: Pianos for all the World 29: Protect and Survive 30: The Crimea Commemorated 31: Boris the Cat This is a really nice half-hour documentary done by a group of volunteers about Tufnell Park. It's charming, clever, and absolutely worth thirty minutes of your time. And yes, I appear in it somewhere along the way - and in spite of that, it's worth a watch.
My oh my! Tatty old Tufnell Park really is going places. An up market butchers/delicatessen opened during the week - this is its first Saturday. And it looks good. I have still to taste the traditional sausages and black pudding and the hard sheep's cheese - I'll let you know (I nearly headed out without the cheese, which is why the guy behind the counter is doing an 'O Sole Mio' act above right - happily me and my cheese have been reunited).
Even more striking, a fishmonger's is coming next to Rustique on the other side of Junction Road. That's when we will know that the NW5/N19 fault line has become a fashion line, a place of taste and repute. Once upon a time, Lalibela, the wonderful Ethiopian restaurant, and the Rustique cafe were the only high spots around - along with Gertie's indepensible launderette. Now we have a Sainsbury's with hole-in-the-wall (yup, once we didn't even have one of them) - Fam, a great fruit and veg place - the Cardigan Club, Vietnamese street food - a Costa - a Sardinian place - Ruby Violet ice cream - Violet & Frederick (run by a woman called Pushkin, there must be a story there) selling flowers by the station - the list goes on. All hail, Tufnell Park!  One of the crowning delights of Tufnell Park in recent months - Healthy Planet, a shop which gives away books - is to close on Tuesday.
I've picked up some real gems there, and even more enjoyed the chance to browse. On Tuesday evening from 7.30, according to the posters on the window, there will be a 'bring your own food and drink' party and BBQ. Thanks to all those who brought a bit of sunshine to this corner of NW5.  Lawdy, lawdy! Costa comes to Tufnell Park. It opened on December 18th - and although it feels a touch antiseptic, the store seems to be doing good business.
When we came to this area (alright, it is fifteen years ago), TP was a bit of a wasteland. No mini-supermarket, no cashpoint, no decent coffee ... It did even then have some pluses: Lalibela, the Ethiopian restaurant, was already there; Rustique, the rather curious self-styled 'literary cafe' opened about that time; and the Spaghetti House has been around for ages, though it took us ages to discover it (and to try out the very good Chinese takeaway). Now there's a small Sainsbury's, with cashpoint ... a Sardinian restaurant ... a homemade ice cream store ... a letterpress printers ... the Junction has become a rather good gastro pub ... there's a shop that gives away books (honest! - though it's generosity is constrained by its very limited opening hours) ... and as chocolate sprinkles on top of all that, there's now Costa. So dear old TP, for so many years the backside of Kentish Town, which is in turn the backside of Camden Town, which is in turn ... TP, which doesn't even have a postcode to call its own ... TP is slowly, slowly, getting there. Not that I've yet been in the Boston Arms which I've walked past several thousand times. But if anyone dares me, I'll do it!  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.  Little Green Street 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!
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