Tottenham High Road, N17

The High Road is the successor to Ermine Street, the Roman road from London to Lincoln and York. A settlement is recorded at Tottenham in the Domesday Survey of 1086, and a manor house existed by 1254, on or near the site of Bruce Castle. Known historically as Tottenham Street, the High Road was an important northern route into London, reflected in the number of inns that existed to service travellers. The linear settlement grew along the High Road and the village centre, as such, was marked by the adjacent Green and the High Cross, commemorating the medieval wayside cross that once stood there.

By the 16th century Tottenham was a favoured rural retreat for city merchants, a number of whom had mansions along the High Road. The High Road’s development over the next two centuries reflects Tottenham’s continuing attraction as a place of residence for wealthy Londoners. It also became noted for its schools, including several private boarding schools, and numerous charitable and religious foundations.

Thomas Clay’s map of Tottenham (1619) for the Earl of Dorset, owner of Tottenham Manor, depicts the High Road with intermittent buildings along its frontage, others set back within enclosed grounds, and concentrations around High Cross and near the northern parish boundary. Farmland or private grounds bordered much of the road, with no buildings between Stamford Hill and Tottenham Green. The main east-west thoroughfares linking Tottenham with Hornsey and Wood Green were established: the present White Hart Lane, Philip Lane, Berry Lane (Lordship Lane); Blackhope Lane (West Green Road) and Chisley Lane (St Ann’s Road). Eastwards, as-yet un-named, Marsh Lane (Park Lane) ran along the course of the Garbell Ditch, and High Cross Lane (Monument Way) and Broad Lane respectively linked High Cross and Page Green with The Hale.

The advent of daily coach services to London in 1823, and omnibuses in 1839, made Tottenham attainable for less-affluent sectors of the middle class. artisans would have lived in proximity to wealthier residents, while the dwellings of the poor, often unmapped, have vanished without record. As Peter Guillery comments in The Small House in Eighteenth Century London (2004) ‘some affluent commuters had very big houses… but there were other kinds of houses here too.

The Northern & Eastern Railway, opened in 1840, promoted some eastward spread from the High Road, most notably Northumberland Park; by 1864 no fields bordered the High Road north of Tottenham Green. The opening of the Liverpool Street-Edmonton branch of the Great Eastern Railway in 1872, with reduced workmen’s fares, instigated a development boom in Tottenham, targeted mainly at the lower-middle and skilled working classes. By 1894 much of the hinterland of the High Road, particularly the west side, was developed with terraced housing, and by 1913 the land between the High Road and Tottenham Hale was extensively developed. In 1894 Tottenham, now separated from Wood Green, became an Urban District, and a new civic hub was created in the Green. Between 1861-1891 the population rose from 13,240 to 97,174; by 1931 (now excluding Wood Green) it had risen to 157,752. The outward spread of housing continued apace in the inter-war years; by the 1930s the fields, orchards and gardens between Tottenham and Wood Green had all but disappeared.

Leave a Reply