Last updated January 2010
History
Left: The Priory 1899 - picture supplied by the Bruce
Castle Museum.
Braddock postcard of Priory Road in the 1880s looking towards cottages and the cattle pound at the bottom of Muswell Hill. Courtesy of Bruce Castle Museum (Haringey Libraries, Archives and Museum Service).
Henry
Reader Williams
After the departure of the Warner family, Henry Reader Williams and
his family lived at The Priory. From humble beginnings, he had become a successful
wine merchant. He devoted much of his time to philanthropic activities for poor
children in the East End (who came on annual visits to The Priory). For
over twenty years he was a member of Hornsey Local Board (and chairman for part
of this time) and he was also on Hornsey School Board. He was a Liberal member
of Middlesex County Council. He played a major role in preserving local open
spaces including Priory Park, Highgate Woods and Alexandra Park. Hornsey
clock tower is dedicated to him.
The Edwardian estate
and John Farrer
In 1898 the contents of The Priory and its stables were put up for auction and
four years later the house was demolished. Plans for the development of roads
on the estate had already been drawn up by John Farrer, an architect and surveyor.
He was active as an architect in Hornsey from the 1880s until the 1920s. He
built in Highgate, Muswell Hill and Hornsey High Street, as well as on the Priory
and Palace View estates.
Most of the road names had local connotations – Priory Avenue, Warner
Road, Redston Road (after Redston Warner), Linzee Road (after the Linzee family),
Farrer Road and Farrer Close (after John Farrer), and Danvers Road (after a
family friend of the Warners). In contrast Baden Road and Clovelly Road were
probably named after popular upper-middle-class resorts of the time.
The first roads to be developed were on the east of the Priory estate - Linzee
Road, Priory Avenue, Clovelly Road, Baden Road, and Park Avenues North and South.
By 1902 Redston Road was laid out, and finally Danvers Road. By 1905 there were
615 houses built or in the process of being built on the estate. By 1909,
890 houses had been built.
In 1905 a new church, St George’s, was built on the corner of Priory Road
and Park Avenue South (this was bombed in the war, then demolished and subsequently
the fire station was built on the site). The Moravian Church was built in 1907.
The Palace Parade shops on Priory Road and Park Road were built in 1906.
Some of the largest houses were on Priory Road. A new house called The Priory
was built in its own grounds between Warner Road and Danvers Road. John Farrer
designed “private carriage ways” (these were originally called West
Drive, Priory Gardens and East Drive) in front of some of the Priory Road houses.
In 1904 he submitted plans for a wall to be built along what is now the northern
edge of Priory Common. A wooden cattle pound at the western end of Priory Common
remained until the early decades of the twentieth century.
The Moravian Church, numbers 30-40 Priory Road (the tiled houses with extensive
wooden features opposite Priory Park) and numbers 84-98 Priory Road (the “Dutch
style” houses to the east of Warner Road) are all locally listed. B Cherry
and N Pevsner, in The Buildings of England (1998), comment: “Priory
Road and the roads off it, with their relaxed terraces of gabled houses with
decorative pargeting and timber work, are quintessential Hornsey housing of
those years.” Unlike most of Muswell Hill and Crouch End, the Priory/Warner
estate of Edwardian houses is not in a conservation area.
At the same time as our roads were being developed, John Farrer was involved
in planning the roads and building some of the pioneering council housing in
North View, South View, Hawthorn and Beechwood Roads on the new Palace View
estate (which is now a conservation area) to the east of our estate.
Subsequent
developments
In the 1920s houses were built in the gaps left in the Edwardian estate
(in Redston Road, Danvers Road, Park Avenue North and Priory Road). During the
1930s a public toilet (now a solicitor’s office) was built on Priory Common
near where the cattle pound had been. During the Second World War some houses
in Warner Road (numbers 1-7) were damaged and after the war the Wolverton council
flats were built on the site. The Priory was purchased by the Council after
the war and opened as a “social centre” in 1949. In the 1980s it
became the centre of a sheltered housing complex.
Sources
Most of the information on the nineteenth
century comes from Alan Aris’s “Personalities and property: the
development of the Priory estate”, in People and Places: Lost Estates
in Highgate, Hornsey and Wood Green, by
Hornsey Historical Society (1996).
The later history comes from council minutes and
various other sources.
The Warner Estate Residents Association is continuing to research the history of the Edwardian estate and would welcome any contributions.
Webmaster Dick Hudson