Noel Park facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Noel Park |
|
|---|---|
 Fourth-class houses in Darwin Road, built during the initial development of Noel Park in the 1880s |
|
| Population | 5,670 |
| OS grid reference | TQ315902 |
| • Charing Cross | 6.4 mi (10.3 km) SSW |
| London borough | |
| Ceremonial county | Greater London |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | LONDON |
| Postcode district | N22 |
| Dialling code | 020 |
| Police | Metropolitan |
| Fire | London |
| Ambulance | London |
| EU Parliament | London |
| UK Parliament |
|
| London Assembly |
|
Noel Park in north London is a planned community built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries consisting of 2,200 model dwellings, designed by Rowland Plumbe. It was developed as the Noel Park Estate on a tract of land on the edge of north of London as part of the fast growing development of Wood Green. It is one of four developments on the outskirts of London built by the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company (Artizans Company). From 2003 to sometime in 2009, the name was also given to a small park near the southern edge of Noel Park, formerly known – and now known again – as Russell Park.
One of the earliest garden suburbs in the world, the Noel Park Estate was designed to provide affordable housing for working-class families wishing to leave the inner city; every property had both a front and back garden. It was planned from the outset as a self-contained community close enough to the rail network to allow its residents to commute to work. In line with the principles of the Artizans Company's founder, William Austin, no public houses were built within the estate, and there are still none today.
As a result of London's rapid expansion during the early 20th century, and particularly after the area was connected to the London Underground in 1932, Noel Park became completely surrounded by later developments. In 1965 it was incorporated into the newly created London Borough of Haringey, and in 1966 it was bought by the local authority and taken into public ownership.
Despite damage sustained during the Second World War and demolition work during the construction of Wood Green Shopping City in the 1970s, Noel Park today remains largely architecturally intact. In 1982, the majority of the area was granted Conservation Area and Article Four Direction status by the Secretary of State for the Environment, in recognition of its significance in the development of suburban and philanthropic housing and in the history of the modern housing estate.
Contents
Location
Noel Park is a neighbourhood of Wood Green, 6.4 miles (10.3 km) north of Charing Cross, near the centre of the modern London Borough of Haringey, of which it is a ward. The area forms a rough triangle, bordered by the A109 road (Lordship Lane) to the north, A1080 road (Westbury Avenue) to the south-east, and A105 road (Wood Green High Road, formerly part of Green Lanes) to the west.
When construction began, the River Moselle, running parallel to Lordship Lane a short distance south of it, formed the de facto northern boundary of the area. During the development of the area in the 1880s the river was culverted and the land between the river and Lordship Lane built on.
The historic western boundary was the now-defunct Palace Gates Line of the Great Eastern Railway (GER), a short distance to the east of Wood Green High Road. Since the railway's closure in 1964, much of the area between the former railway line and Wood Green High Road has been occupied by the eastern section of the large The Mall Wood Green shopping, cinema and residential complex (commonly known as Shopping City).
20th century
Early 20th-century expansion
In 1905, G. J. Earle, the Artizans Company's Surveyor, drew up plans for the remainder of the site based on the experiences learned from the completed northern half of the estate. Buildings were designed to a modified version of Plumbe's third-class house plan in the Arts and Crafts style, with white-rendered brickwork, regular low gables, and curved ground floor windows. The toilets were now designed with connecting doors to the sculleries, and in some cases the staircases repositioned to the front of the house. They were no longer described or marketed as "third-class" houses.
By October 1906, 1,999 properties were let, including 88 shops and 4 stables. Although the estate was nearing completion by this point, construction work was not entirely completed until 1929.
By this point, the Noel Park development and the growing community of Wood Green were coming to dominate the area. In recognition of this, in 1902 Green Lanes railway station was renamed Noel Park & Wood Green. In 1911 a group of mid-Victorian houses on Wood Green High Road, immediately south of the railway station, were demolished by the Artizans Company to make way for the Cheapside shopping parade, built to serve residents of Noel Park and the growing community of Wood Green.
The centrepiece of the Cheapside development was the Wood Green Empire, a 3,000-capacity theatre designed by Frank Matcham. The Empire soon became one of London's leading entertainment venues, hosting acts such as Marie Lloyd, Frankie Vaughan and Shirley Bassey. The Empire is best known as the theatre in which magician Chung Ling Soo (William Ellsworth Robinson) was fatally shot in the chest on 23 March 1918, when a theatrical pistol used in a bullet catch demonstration malfunctioned.
With the postwar decline of variety and music hall and increased competition from cinema and television, the theatre went into decline and was closed on 31 January 1955. Following its closure it was used by Associated TeleVision as a studio until 1963. The interior was demolished in 1970, but the building remains intact and is now used as a shop and offices.
Piccadilly line
In 1904 the Great Northern & City Railway underground railway had opened, running from the City of London to a terminus at Finsbury Park station, followed in 1906 by the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway (GNP&BR) from the western suburbs through central London to Finsbury Park, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Noel Park; both were prevented from expanding further north by a legal agreement with the Great Northern Railway giving the GNR a veto on any expansion of underground railways into areas within which they would compete with the GNR. This led to serious congestion at Finsbury Park as passengers from the expanding suburbs changed from buses and trams to the GN&CR and GNP&BR, and in June 1923 a petition of 30,000 signatures calling for the extension of one of the underground lines northwards was delivered to the Ministry of Transport.
The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), successor to the GNR, was compelled by the Ministry of Transport to waive the veto or proceed with its own electrification. In November 1925, the LNER abandoned its electrification scheme. In 1929 the incoming Second Labour Government initiated a policy of direct subsidy for major infrastructure projects, and in 1930 the Underground Electric Railways Company of London began work on extending the GNP&BR, now the Piccadilly line. The Piccadilly line extension to Cockfosters opened in stages, with stations at Wood Green and Turnpike Lane – both on the western edge of Noel Park, at the junctions of Wood Green High Road and Lordship Lane, and Wood Green High Road and Westbury Avenue, respectively – opening on 19 September 1932. With the area now connected to west and central London by clean, rapid and frequent electric trains, the population of the surrounding areas began to rise rapidly.
Postwar reconstruction
Although of little strategic value and undamaged during the early stages of World War II, in the final stages of the war a number of V-1 flying bombs and V-2 ballistic missiles struck the area. The worst attack occurred in February 1945, when a V-2 struck Westbeech Road, killing 17 and injuring 68. The bombsites were redeveloped with housing in then-current styles, rather than to Plumbe and Earle's designs.
In 1958, as part of the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the creation of the Wood Green Local Board, the railway goods depot was used for a three-day exhibition of locomotives and other railway rolling stock. The exhibition was a great success, and was visited by around 14,000 spectators. Among locomotives on exhibit were the land speed record holder Mallard and a Class 9F steam locomotive.
However, by this point the Palace Gates Line was in severe decline. Passenger numbers had fallen greatly since the opening of the Piccadilly line, while freight usage dropped throughout the 1950s as a result of improved road haulage and declining demand for coal. The line was closed to passengers on 7 January 1963. With freight usage dwindling to a trickle following the ending of passenger services, the goods yard was closed on 7 December 1964. The site of the goods yard was used for the construction of a large apartment block known as The Sandlings, and Noel Park & Wood Green railway station was converted into commercial premises, before being demolished in the early 1970s to become the site of the eastern section of Wood Green Shopping City.
Transfer to local authority control
In 1952, the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company was renamed the Artizans and General Properties Company Ltd. The combination of a taxation system biased against private property developments and legal restrictions on raising rents made the company's traditional model unprofitable, and it began to divest itself of its original low-rent developments and instead to sell vacant houses on the estates and to reinvest in non low-rent housing and commercial property, especially in the United States and Canada where depreciation before tax was permitted. In 1966, ownership of the four original London estates (Shaftesbury Park, Queen's Park, Noel Park and Leigham Court) was transferred to the respective local authorities as council housing – in the case of Noel Park, the newly created London Borough of Haringey, which purchased the 2,175 properties comprising the Noel Park estate for a total of £2,917,000 (approximately £39.1 million today) – leaving 377 homes at Pinnerwood Park in Pinner as the last residential estate in Greater London owned by the company.
In 1976, the Artizans Company, by then renamed Artagen Properties Ltd, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun Life, and on 3 February 1981 the company was renamed Sun Life Properties Ltd.
Modern Noel Park
Following the transfer to local authority control, much of the property on the estate was found to be in poor condition. In 1971 a report by the London Borough of Haringey found that half the properties on the estate were still lacking basic facilities such as baths, internal toilets and hot water. Houses were systematically extended to the rear to accommodate modern bathrooms.
In the early 1970s, the nine-storey Wood Green Shopping City shopping, cinema and residential complex was built on both sides of Wood Green High Road, and now dominates the area. Although some houses were demolished during construction works, it was intended at the time to divert Wood Green High Road around Shopping City, which would have necessitated the demolition of much of the western section of Noel Park. However, the diversion scheme was abandoned, leading to the current unusual situation in which the road runs directly through the shopping centre; Cherry & Pevsner note that Noel Park was "spared worse damage by the abandonment of the proposed road".
In 1980, the Housing Act 1980 gave council tenants the right to buy their homes. In light of this, a group of 1500 properties in the area was given Conservation Area status, and Plumbe's northern section of the estate was granted Article Four Direction by Michael Heseltine, Secretary of State for the Environment, preventing any alterations to the external appearances of the properties without planning permission, in recognition of its architectural and historic interest. St Mark's Church was meanwhile Grade II listed. However, these measures have not been consistently enforced, and Noel Park has been cited in a report by English Heritage as a prominent example of the failure of conservation areas.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the estate was the home of a large squatter community, mostly made up of young punks from Ireland, Wales, Scotland and outside London, which greatly enlivened the area but also led to many legal and other conflicts with Haringey Council, who ironically had left so many of the properties empty in the first place. Many of these were later to move to the Woodberry Down Estate in Manor House.
In line with the original principles of the Artizans Company, there are still no public houses in Noel Park. In 2008 parts of Wood Green including Noel Park were declared a Controlled Drinking Zone, allowing police to confiscate alcohol from those engaged in anti-social behaviour.
As with much of Haringey, Noel Park is now one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the world. In 2002, 86% of pupils attending Noel Park School were from ethnic minorities.
Derivation of street names
- Ashley Crescent: Evelyn Ashley, MP for Isle of Wight, son of Lord Shaftesbury and Chairman of the Artizans Company
- Buller Road: Redvers Buller, winner of the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Hlobane, 1879
- Darwin Road: Charles Darwin, naturalist and early investor in the Artizans Company
- Dovecote Avenue: On the site of the original Duckett's (Dovecote) Manor, by this time demolished
- Farrant Avenue: Sir Richard Farrant, Deputy Chairman of the Artizans Company 1881–1906
- Gladstone Avenue: William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister at the time of the opening of Noel Park
- Hewitt Avenue: Thomas Hewitt QC, Director of the Artizans Company 1895–1917
- Lymington Avenue: Viscount Lymington, Director of the Artizans Company 1883-1891
- Mark Road: Mark H Judge, Director of the Artizans Company 1878–1922
- Maurice Avenue: Maurice Powell, Director of the Artizans Company 1880–1914
- Morley Avenue: Samuel Morley, MP for Bristol and Director of the Artizans Company 1877–1880
- Moselle Avenue: Runs above the culverted River Moselle
- Pelham Road: T W Pelham, Director of the Artizans Company 1880–1894
- Redvers Road: Redvers Buller (see Buller Road, above)
- Russell Avenue: John Russell, former Liberal Prime Minister
- Salisbury Road: Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, leader of the Conservative Party
- Vincent Road: Unknown; Welch speculates from Rev. Henry Vincent Le Bas, the only member of the Noel Park Committee at the time of opening not known to have had a street named for him
Images for kids
-
Duckett's Manor (the future Noel Park) and the village of Wood Green in 1619
-
Insignia of the Artizans Company on company-built shops, Noel Park
-
Rowland Plumbe in 1890, shortly after the construction of Noel Park
-
Plumbe's original designs for first- and second-class housing
-
Fifth-class houses, Moselle Avenue: the front doors are angled to avoid opening adjacently to their neighbours.
-
Floor plans of the five classes of house built at Noel Park
-
Plumbe-designed cottage flats with their distinctive multiple doors, Gladstone Avenue
-
Ernest Noel MP
-
First-class houses, Gladstone Avenue
-
A corner house
-
Shops at the junction of Vincent Road and Moselle Avenue, built by the Artizans Company in 1884
-
Noel Park School
-
Russell Park (formerly Noel Park)
-
St Mark's Church
-
Shropshire Hall
.JPG){kind=logo}
