OS grid reference TQ320876 Ceremonial county Greater London Country England | London borough Hackney Region London Sovereign state United Kingdom | |
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UK parliament constituency Hackney North and Stoke Newington | ||
Manor House is a district of north east London that mainly falls within the London Borough of Hackney, although it is located on the border with the London Borough of Haringey. With the regeneration of the Woodberry Down Estate during the early part of the 21st Century, much of the area, rather than just the housing estate, is now being referred to once again by its nineteenth century name of 'Woodberry Down'.
Contents
Location
Built up during the middle part of the nineteenth century as part of an area called Brownswood Park, Manor House is now a small district without a formal town centre, but distant enough from other town centres that it has come to be recognised as an area in its own right. Taking its name from Manor House tube station on the Piccadilly line, it is centred on the crossroads of Seven Sisters Road and Woodberry Grove. The western border is defined by Finsbury Park in the neighbourhood of Harringay. Its other borders are defined by the New River, which loops around it on three sides. The area consists mainly of the Woodberry Down Estate, but there are also two small shopping areas, a school and a pub.
The Manor House pub
The pub was the source of both the name of the tube station and the area. The first pub on the site was built by Stoke Newington builder Thomas Widdows between 1830 and 1834 next to the turnpike on Green Lanes. Prior to this date a cottage had existed on the site, but in 1829 an Act of Parliament was passed to permit the building of the Seven Sister's Road. Thomas Widdows was both the owner of the house and its occupant. With the building soon to be sited on the junction of the existing Green Lanes turnpike road and the new Seven Sister's Road, Widdows no doubt saw a roadside tavern as an excellent investment.
The new building was within sight of the Hornsey Wood Tavern, which had been formed out of the old Copt Hall, the manor house of the Manor of Brownswood. It is possible that its name was taken from this connection The land itself however was on the demesne of Stoke Newington Manor. At around the time that the pub was first built, on the southern boundary of the demesne, on Church Street, a school called Manor School was operating The school was next door to the trading premises of Thomas Widdows, builder of the pub. So it is equally possible that the 'Manor House' name was just a fashionable name, more related to the connection with Stoke Newington Manor.
Robert Baily, the first of many Manor House Tavern landlords described his establishment as a 'public house and tea-gardens' He placed the following advertisement in the Morning Advertiser on September 13, 1834.
Baily died just three years later and the tavern was taken over by George Stacey who had previously been at the Adelaide Tavern in Hackney Road. Stacey placed a tablet on the pub with the following inscription. However, nothing is known of the incident:
The tavern changed hands again several times after Stacey. In 1851 it was purchased by James Toomer. According to the Morning Post, Toomer was 'well respected in literary and theatrical circles'. The new owner added function rooms including a banqueting hall and ballroom which became known as the Manor House Assembly Rooms. Soon after purchase he obtained licences for both music and dancing and the pub became a regular venue for events of both sorts. In the summer of 1870 Toomer advertised a new ballroom and later that summer sold the pub. The advertisement of sale gave the following description:
The building was bought by John Charles Kay who sold it two years later to Samuel Perrin A further change of ownership in 1878 saw the pub in the hands of Stephen Medcalf. In 1890 it was taken on by James Swinyard who remodelled and modernised it shortly after the sale. Swinyard managed the pub till his death in 1910. Subsequently his widow Amelia took over the licence until the late 1920s. In 1930 the imminent arrival of the Piccadilly Line led to the widening of the road, the demolition of the old tavern and the erection of current building. Behind the new building, offices were built for London Transport To the chagrin of her sons, Amelia Swinyard sold the pub to a buyer who then received the compensation when the pub's land was taken to accommodate these buildings. Amelia died in 1937, aged 90 in a nursing home in Muswell Hill.
In later years the pub was the first employer of Richard Desmond, now the owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star. The building also housed a nightclub that was popular among Goths in the mid-1980s. Two decades earlier it had functioned as a popular music venue for rhythm and blues enthusiasts, called the Bluesville R.& B. Club, hosting artists such as Cream, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Long John Baldry and his Hoochie Coochie Men, Rod Stewart (then nicknamed 'Rod the Mod'), John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Fairport Convention, Fleetwood Mac, Jeff Beck, the Spencer Davis Group, Graham Bond and Zoot Money. The ground floor of the building is now occupied by Evergreen supermarket and Simply Organique cafe.
Early development
Building around Manor House started on Green Lanes with the appearance in 1821 of a large house at the junction with Woodberry Down. Further north on Green Lanes, just to the south of the New River, Northumberland House, a three-storeyed building with a pillared entrance, balustrade, and urns on its roof, was completed in 1822. It was sold for conversion to a 'private lunatic asylum' in 1826 It was then used as a private mental hospital until it was demolished in 1955. One of its most famous patients was Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, first wife of the American poet T.S. Eliot, who lived at the hospital from 1938 until her death in 1947.
A thatched cottage, with Gothic windows, was constructed on the boundary with the borough of Tottenham by 1825. Woodberry Down Cottages, four detached houses on the south side of Woodberry Down, had been built by 1829. With the development of Finsbury Park almost a certainty, the land to the south and east of the present-day park was acquired by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners as ideal for building. The park was laid out between 1857 and 1869 and the adjacent land was sold to builders.
During the 1860s, Thomas John Angell, who appears to have been a speculator rather than a builder, built Finsbury Park Villas. This was a terrace of at least twelve houses, which, starting with the Finsbury Park Tavern, ran northward along Green Lanes from its junction with the new Woodberry Grove.
At around the same time, Angell and a London builder Thomas Oldis were responsible for development that began to spread eastward along the north side of Seven Sisters Road. From 1868 to 1870 large detached houses with gardens running down to the New River were built at the east end of Seven Sisters Road. In 1867 3 acres (12,000 m2) were leased on the southern side of the eastern end of the road, for the building of four detached or nine 'substantial' houses; three detached houses were built by 1871. An architect, William Reddall of Finsbury, was one of those who leased the houses. Woodberry Down was laid out in 1868, when it was extended eastward from Lordship Road, and villas were built on the south side in the late 1860s. The area was the northern section of a district called Brownswood Park (named after Brownswood Manor) and was regarded as a particularly select suburb.
However, with the increasing suburbanisation of the area, mainly for the middle and lower middle classes, many of the original families had moved out by 1895 and others were being replaced by poorer people in 1913. Social decline continued, until in 1954 the district was inhabited mainly by students, foreigners, and the working class, with most houses containing four or five families and all in decay.
Twentieth-century redevelopment
From 1949 through to the 1970s much of the area was redeveloped, the old houses being demolished and replaced with a large council development known locally as Woodberry Down. The LCC compulsorily purchased the area for this purpose in 1934 in order to alleviate chronic housing shortages, but work did not begin till after the Second World War . Construction began in 1949 and the 57 blocks of flats were completed in 1962.
Initially, the estate offered greatly improved living conditions for tenants. However, over time, the estate suffered the problems of comparably idealistic, post-war, social housing projects. By the late 1980s, many of the flats were in a poor state of repair, while many more were empty and boarded up with metal shutters.
1980s squatter community
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the increasing number of abandoned properties on the estate became occupied by a growing squatter community. The squatters at Woodberry Down Estate were predominantly young punks from all over the UK and Ireland. Several had squatted previously in the Noel Park area in Wood Green. The squatters’ relationship with tenants ranged from amicable to antagonistic, but the two communities generally managed to co-exist without too much hostility. The strong community spirit, which existed among residents in the 1950s was still evident to a lesser extent during this time, and the estate managed to avoid the more extreme crime and social problems often associated with inner-city housing projects. The sharp increase in numbers of squatters has clear links to the huge increases in homelessness in London that resulted from Thatcherite policies, such as the Right to Buy scheme (introduced in the Housing Act 1980).
Historic crime and anti-social behaviour
The Woodberry Down estate and surrounding area used to be associated with hard drug abuse, prostitution, anti-social behaviour, violence, and sexual offences.
Manor House in the twenty-first century
Woodberry Down is currently subject to a phased redevelopment that is seeing modern flats built on the site. The plan was initially conceived during a time of economic growth under the New Labour administration in the late 1990s. A structural assessment in 2002 concluded that 31 out of 57 blocks (54%) were beyond economic repair. Following this, Hackney Council struck a deal with Genesis Housing Association, Berkeley Homes for the estate’s demolition and redevelopment. It is among the largest urban regeneration projects in the UK. The first phase of the development produced 117 homes let by Genesis on social rents, and won the top prize for social housing at the Daily Telegraph British Homes Awards 2011. This regeneration has been controversial, with some commentators calling the plans 'state sponsored gentrification'.