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When I was a child all the houses on Seven Sisters Road were privately owned and that was the height of my ambition to live in one of those when I grew up – they had croquet lawns and tennis courts in their gardens.

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It was always my father who brought me here when I was young. He’d have his pipe. I was very big on the putting green was I was 13 or 14. There was a little wooded hut where there was a uniformed park attendant and he dished out the balls and the putting sticks; you paid sixpence for a round of putting and I rather think you paid another sixpence deposit for your putting stick - which was a problem, to get a whole shilling in one go. That was in the ‘40s – you had them in all the parks and recreation grounds. It was for adults as well – you saw people of middle age – not just for children, and we did that on Sunday and that was very big, to meet your boy and girl friends.  You see, the girls brought their brothers and the brothers came because their sisters smiled, but we were all 13, 14 and 15.

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I used to come up to watch the boys play cricket. The policemen played the firemen and the matchbox factory played. All the men played in immaculate white, spanking white. I suppose they were in greasy overalls all week, so they were glad to be out of them.

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When I moved back here in 1954 I was having babies and we practically lived here. And what the LCC used to do during the long summer holidays, they had a kind of caravan fitted out up for entertaining the children and the back doors opened like an ambulance and a screen came down and they used to see Laurel and Hardy films. This was about 10 o’clock in the morning, and - I don’t know if I was innocent or ignorant, probably a bit of both – I would let the older children, who were probably eight and ten, come up on their own… and I had absolutely no qualms at all, and there would be puppets and it was were the bandstand was.

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The fairy village [the model village] – there was a little plaque set in wood saying that this model of an English village was made and donated by mister somebody or other from the architect’s office of the LCC. And this was a whole village set out: a pilgrim’s rest, and the forge, and the thatched houses, and the church, and the vicarage and the old school house - impeccably kept all through the war, it wasn’t damaged. There were no figures or cows, they had the little tiny railing, and right in front there was the watermill and the forge and there was a little tiny pond by the watermill not much bigger than a dinner plate. And what absolutely delighted the children – me, and then my children – was that invariably a duck would fly over and settle in this pond and would settle in this pool and would flap about and all the children would cry out and all the fathers would take pictures and there would always be a crowd.​

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There was this big area fenced in where the grass is flat and even, down towards Seven Sisters Road, about the size of a tennis court and stone- and weed-free and that was for the under-fives and their carers, and there was just a little wicket gate and no dogs and you could let babies crawl around, and no hard toys. And it was always these girls of 13 or 14 or grandmothers in charge. Somewhere along the line that has gone - they have the festivals and funfairs there now.

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Just along by the lake there was just a little kiosk, a wooden hut that sold ice creams. There was nothing resembling a decent café. You used to have a ride around the lake for two pence – 2d, not 2p – and it would be on a motorboat that went round twice. It was a huge boat, and that was the big treat for the children – there were rowing boats, but with all the children a rowing boat was out of the question. Down by the Finsbury Park gate there was a lovely children’s play area with a sandpit and toilets and a full-time attendant.

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These formal gardens used to be magnificently kept – exotic, up to Kew Gardens standards. Winter and summer there was always something to look at when you came and pushed the pram through. Every bed was different and symmetrical – they matched across and there were benches all the way along. And all the old people came – it was a meeting place. And they used to feed the squirrels. We practically lived here, we’d be here three or four times a week – it was practically our back garden. This, in the spring, was a maze of bluebells and snowdrops and crocus and every kind of spring flower, but it was much more secluded.

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The road was a race track – there was constant traffic from cars bypassing Manor House and it was an improvement when they closed it down… There was the children’s playground. They had brick-built lavatories for the children and a lady with the brick building – she had her kitchen and electric kettle, and she was quick off the mark, and no adults could go into the lavatories. It was a beautifully kept park.

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I was born in Lime Grove Road. We used to come up to Finsbury Park Road to Finsbury Park. The park was a gun site with barrage balloons during the war. My father came out in ’45 when the war ended and we used to come here on Sunday mornings and it was just like Hyde Park Corner. I was only seven or eight and this was ’48, ’49, ’50. Our school football matches were on the red ochre [now the basketball courts] with proper goals and everything. We used to play our school cricket matches on the cricket ground… You know where the American gardens are? Well, when we were at school, all the kids would say, ‘let’s go up to the American gardens and see the prozzies’.

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Then along Seven Sisters Road there were permit football pitches as an alternative to Hackney marshes. I played for Bennet Court – we used to play [in the park] along Seven Sisters Road. There were four permit pitches – this was ’52-’53. We changed in the bandstand. We used to use the same facilities as the bands for the concerts. There weren’t any showers; you used to go home in the state you were in… There were grass tennis courts, and I remember the conservatory, but it was gone by the ‘50s. My two lads used to go to the train spotting platform [in the ‘60s this used to be packed with young men train spotting].







I moved into the area in 1948 and my daughter was born in 1949, and I know the pathway that ambles up to the lake had on the right hand side a nice children’s play area fenced off where the babies could toddle around and where dogs were not allowed – it disappeared over the years.



The carriageway up to Manor House was quite nice. It had lots of trees – a bit like the Champs Elysees. When you went up to the lake there was a café much nearer to the water and there was a bandstand with seats in front. They used to have concert parties for the kids in the summer vacation. There were many, many more people fishing in the fishing area. The flowers were absolutely fabulous, and opposite the little houses was a wonderful field of crocuses and daffodils… There was a croquet lawn in the middle, and there were an awful lot of very well dressed men – brown suits, brown fedora hats.