Tag Archives: suburbia

A disused passageway in north London’s Golders Green

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DURING MY CHILDHOOD and teenage years, there used to be two entrances to Golders Green’s tube (Underground) station, which is on the Edgware Branch of the Northern Line. One of these entrances, which is the only one in use today, is from the bus station (bus yard) next to the old Hippodrome Theatre and opposite the clock tower.

The other entrance, which has been closed for several decades, was beneath the bridge that carries the railway tracks over Finchley Road. The canopy at this entrance is still standing. Passengers used to walk beneath this canopy and then along a long walkway covered by a wooden canopy supported by timber pillars with simply ornamented capitals. . This passageway , which still exists, led to a ticket hall. Neither the ticket hall nor the passageway are accessible to the public.

You can discover much more about Golders Green, its past and present, in my book, which is available from Amazon, e.g.:

A tiny stream feeding the River Thames

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NORTH LONDON IS riddled with rivers, rivulets, and streams. Some of them have been covered over and built upon, and others are still visible. One of these is Mutton Brook, which rises near East Finchley, flows through Hampstead Garden Suburb, and then merges with another watercourse – Dollis Brook – to become the River Brent. The Brent flows from near Golders Green through northwest and then west London to its mouth at Brentford, where its waters flow into the Thames.Although I did not know it when I played beside the stream as a child, the tiny Mutton Brook helps feed the mighty Thames with water.Minute as it is, as far as watercourses are concerned, it made a large impression on me in my childhood.

For much of its course, Mutton Brook flows through open spaces, such as Lyttleton Playing Fields, Fletcher’s Gardens, Northway Gardens, and a long stretch of parkland flanking the south side of the North Circular Road. Despite being fringed by suburbia and busy roads, the Brook is well separated from them by nicely planted green spaces along which walkers can enjoy the feeling of being in the country despite being in the heart of northwest London.

Until 1907, Mutton Brook would have flowed through what was then rural Middlesex countryside – fields, meadows, and woods. From then onwards, Hampstead Garden Suburb was established, and its neighbour Golders Green grew from being a small hamlet to become a large, mainly residential urban area. My recent book (see: https://www.amazon.co.uk/GOLDERS-GREEN-HAMPSTEAD-GARDEN-SUBURB/dp/B0BHG873FB/)  describes Mutton Brook in detail. It also as provides an informative description of life in Golders Green and Hampstead Garden Suburb past and present. These are places I know well because I was brought up in them, and lived there until I was thirty. My book also contains reminiscences of my life there as a child and a young man. I still visit the area frequently because some of my friends and family live there.

A rustic ‘utopia’ in London’s suburbia

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MY CHILDHOOD HOME was in the heart of north London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb (‘HGS’). For those of you who are unfamiliar with garden suburbs, here is a definition (from Collins online dictionary) that might begin to help:

“…a suburb of a large established town or city, planned along the lines of a garden city”

And a garden city is (from Collins) is:

“…a planned town of limited size with broad streets and spacious layout, containing trees and open spaces and surrounded by a rural belt”

In Brentham garden suburv

The garden suburb differs from the garden city in two main ways. (1) The former is part of a city, whereas the latter is separated from other cities by countryside (e.g., Welwyn Garden City). (2) The garden city is exclusively or mainly residential, but the garden city can include all that other cities contain.

The first houses in HGS, which was founded by Dame Henrietta Barnett, were completed in 1907. Our house in HGS bore the date 1908.

Brentham Garden Suburb (‘BGS’) was founded earlier than HGS: in 1901. One of its founders was Ebenezer Howard, the who founded The Garden City Movement in 1899. BGS is located close to the River Brent, where it flows through the Borough of Ealing. Its architecture was influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, which was inspired by the philosophy of the social reformer and designer William Morris.

On a recent visit to BGS, the first for me, I was impressed by the similarity of many of its houses to those which I had grown up amongst in the HGS. The similarities are not surprising when you learn that from 1907 onwards for a few years, BGS’s planning was under the supervision of Raymond Unwin, the architect who planned the layout of HGS. Most of the buildings built after 1907 in BGS were designed by Frederic Cavendish Pearson and George Lister Sutcliffe, who were both in sympathy with Unwin’s ideas.

Most of the houses in BGS were built before the 1920s. This was not the case in the larger HGS, where building on a substantial scale continued into the 1930s. So, whereas Art Deco buildings and some other modern designs can be spotted in the HGS, this is not the case in the more architecturally homogenous BGS. A visit to BGS is worthwhile, especially if you are familiar with other garden suburbs and garden cities.

Black and white housing

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WHEN DRIVING HOME after leaving our vacuum cleaner for repair at a small shop in Ealing, we passed a tidy estate consisting of houses and blocks of flats, all decorated with mock half-timbering painted in black and white. Near to West Ealing Underground station, this housing colony is called Hanger Hill Garden Estate.

During the period between the two World Wars, much residential building work was undertaken in London’s suburbs. Often, estates were built with features that mimicked rusticity. The idea was that the commuters, who lived there, might imagine that they were enjoying a village atmosphere, without being far away from the inner city, where many of them worked. To create this illusion, house builders adorned their constructions with decorative features that were supposed to make them seem older and more traditional than they were. The use of mock half-timbering on external walls was a commonly used decorative trick designed to evoke suggestions of ‘ye olde England’.

At Hanger Hill Garden Estate, there is a uniformity of style, which makes the use of half-timbering eye-catching rather than suggestive of rustic traditions. Interestingly, the mock half-timbering does not extend to cover the dull, pebble-dashed rear walls of some of the blocks of flats. These surfaces are less easy to see from the roads than the mock half-timbering. Overall, the result is attractive. When I first saw this well-maintained estate with neat gardens, I thought of early 20th century garden suburbs rather than old country villages, which are often delightful because they lack uniformity in their layouts.

The opening of the branch of the Central Line, which runs from Shepherds Bush to Ealing Broadway, in 1920, and especially the opening of West Acton Station three years later, were the stimuli for the construction of residential estates in the area. In 1925, the first bit of land was acquired by Hanger Hill Garden Estate Ealing Limited. The estate was built between 1928 and about 1932. The buildings, flats and houses, were all designed by the architectural practice of Douglas Smith & Barley. The resulting layout has considerable uniformity, and is attractive without being monotonous. A good feature in the estate’s design is that the blocks of flats stand in spacious lawns.

The Residents Association’s website has a good history of the place (www.hhgera.com). It noted that in the 1930s:

“…times were clearly pleasant and peaceful ones for all the tenants on the Estate. Occupiers of some of the four-bedroomed houses employed a maid, the fourth bedroom having been designed with this in mind. Whilst all the houses and many of the flats had garages, only a small number of people on the Estate owned cars … These were the days when goods were delivered to the home. Tradesmen were not allowed to call at the front doors of the houses or flats, but had to call at back doors using the service roads. Bakers, butchers, fish salesmen and greengrocers all called weekly, some attending earlier in the day or week to take orders. In the parking bays behind the flats, vans from Harrods, Dickens & Jones and the like, were to be seen drawing up.”

However, life on the estate was not free from regulations:

“Tenancies of flats were refused to people who had young children. No animals were allowed to be kept in the flats … House tenants were allowed to hang out washing only on Mondays and Tuesdays; flat tenants were not permitted to hang out washing at all.”

Currently, so two friendly residents informed us, the estate is subject to strict conservation regulations. This is a good thing because it would be a shame to spoil the appearance of this charming and unusual enclave of residential accommodation in this part of west London.

READ more about west London in Adam Yamey’s book “BEYOND MARYLEBONE AND MAYFAIR: EXPLORING WEST LONDON”, which can be bought from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/BEYOND-MARYLEBONE-MAYFAIR-EXPLORING-LONDON/dp/B0B7CR679W/