Untitled Document

USE AS THE MASTER

FINDING A SITE FOR THE PROPOSD NEW BETTY LAYWARD PRIMARY SCHOOL Part 2

FROM 1868

KEITH
I THINK THE BEST THING TO DO ABOUT THIS EXTREMELY COMPLICATED SITE IS TO MAKE A SET OF MAPS SHOWING:-

1 THE GLEBE FIELD ON THE 1868 MAP
2 THE WILLOWS ESTATE SALE PLAN
3 THE INDUSTRIAL ESTATE AFTER THE WILLOWS SALE (TINTED IN WITH THE SAME TINT AS THE EXISTING MAP
4 THE ADDITION OF THE BACK GARDENS FOF THE CHURCH STREET HOUSES (THE EXISTING MAP WHICH IS IMMEDIATELY BELOW BUT I CANNOT GET AT)
5 THE EXISTING MAP WITH THE GLEBE FIELD OUTLINED IN PINK AND THE B LAY SITE IN BLACK

If we do these together, the other odd maps can be slotted in to completer the story

DELETE THE FIRST PARAGRAPPH OF THE NEXT PIECE

FINDING A SITE FOR THE PROPOSD NEW BETTY LAYWARD PRIMARY SCHOOL

The Previous section was about the area around Betty Layward School and how it changed over the centuries. This piece is about finding a site for a proposed new Primary School in an already overcrowded area. At other times there had been bomb sites left after the Second World War, so the choice had been easier. By 1998 these had all been built on. A new school had to be built for the extra 400 children who had already been born, or were soon to arrive in the neighbourhood and schools take time to build, so the matter was urgent.

Between the edge of the old Industrial area, Clissold Road and Carysfort Road there was a triangle of land hidden from view. In the1960s the New River Centre was built for partially-sighted pupils had been built on the northern end of it.
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The Industrial Area between Church Street and the back of Carysfort Road by 1936

This Industrial Area had started off with a triangle of land behind Carysfort Road. This had been part of the Alexander Estate (sold in 1891) which ran the length of Clissold Crescent. Some houses in Stoke Newington Church Street with their long back gardens were added to the Carysfort Road land to make the big patch tinted in here on the 1914 map.

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This is the first plan for Betty Layward School I have yet found. It is dated 18th. July 2002, so it cannot be original plan.
SAVED AS Clissold rd new river centre

Over the years there were many plans for the odd patch of land behind Clissold Crescent. It was owned by the Inner London Education Association and always thought of as education land.
A school called New River Centre, for Partially Sighted Children, was built at the northern end. The old Thistleton House garden, which had been looked after carefully for years by generations of gardeners, was by then neglected and became a Lost Garden. Trees sowed themselves and, as they grew, the New River Centre children used it as a Nature Reserve. Today these trees are tall and mature.

The land was owned by the Greater London Council and there were already some schools on it in 1968 on it.

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KEITH CAN YOU PLEASE ADGUST THE PAPER COLOURS?

A Tenants’ Garden
Another proposal for the hidden area of land

The houses in Clissold Road had been renovated and modernised. A proposal for a garden for the tenants of the Clissold Road houses was submitted,. There was to be an entrance between two blocks of houses and some permanent planting, but it was never built.

At another time the tree area of the Betty Layward site was planned as an engineering works. This too had come to nothing.
KEITH Is it possible to remove the horizontal line across the roads please?

This undated site plan shows detail not found elsewhere. It shows how the neighbourhood has changed over the past two centuries. Others may be able, by uses of Local Directories etc. may be able to date the plan and the put more flesh on its bones.

FINDING A SITE FOR THE PROPOSD NEW BETTY LAYWARD PRIMARY SCHOOL

THE MAP ABOVE IS MAP 4

SUBSTITUTE THIS PARA FOR THE ONE ABOVE AND CHECK IF THE WHOLE IS THEN CORRECT

This industrial area started off started on the patch of land behind Carysfort Road which was once the stables and vegetable garden of the Willows estate. It stretched up to the edge of the old Glebe Field. The wealthy people in the old, wealthy houses in Church Street moved out and their back gardens were covered in factories, Sometimes their houses themselves became factories. This left the tinted triangle of the industrial site behind the houses in Clissold Road and Carysfort Road.

The old Glebe Field laid out on a later map
THIS IS MAP 1

THEN THE SAME MAP WITH THE WILLOWS AREA ADDED

The Sale Plan of the Willows Estate.
It was sod when Mr Alexander died in 1891

Map
Lot No 13 (coloured brown on the 1891 Sale Plan) was Thistleton House. This was an early house in Clissold Road , on the site of the modern Mosque, with a narrow passageway to an enormous garden behind. The Thistleton House garden stretched up behind the Clissold Road houses for no fewer than sixteen houses. It was a very large garden indeed and completely secluded. Because of its unusual shape, the first eight Clissold Road houses had to have curious curved gardens, which still persist.
THEN MAP 3
THEN THE THISTLETON ESTATE
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1914 Ordnance Survey
Today the garden is part of the site of Betty Layward Primary School.

Lot 13, Thistleton House on the 1891 Sale plan.
Thistleton House stood at the end of Clissold Road. By this time the long row of Clissold Road houses had been built but they did not go quite to the end. There was an odd triangular piece at the corner because the pink paddock cut off the corner. The corner of this paddock, which had been screened from Albion Road by a dense thicket of trees, would later hold the shops, a cinema and many houses in Clissold Crescent and Carysfort Road.
Nearly a hundred years later, Thistleton House garden and a piece further up, became the site of Betty Layward Primary School. Just as a reminder of where it all started, here is the sale description of Thistleton House and garden.

Photograph of the 1891 Sale Document
It looks as if the stables were established well before 1871, the date on the Stables application. It is probable that the drainage application applied to the end houses in Clissold Road and the stable drawing was just to clarify the position.

THEN THE SAME WITH THE GARDENS OF THE CHURCH STREET HOUSES ADDED
THEN THE SITE OF B LAY SITE

1894 Ordnance Survey map

Saved 1894 Albion Road
KEITH PLEASE FIND A BETTER COPY FROM YOR STORE. NY MAP WILL NOT PHOTOCOPY WITHOUT THE CREASE.

This map was published only three years after the Willows sale and the first houses in Clissold Crescent (Park Lane) had been built, with a gap left for the entrance to the future Carysfort Road.. The old Stables and the Gardener’s Cottage of the Willows Estate can be seen above the b set of labels. The stables/cottage area became the start of the Industrial Site.

1914 Ordnance Survey

The edges of the old Glebe Field have been lined in pink on the 1868 map and the wealthy Church Street houses, which were coloured Yellow in the Booth map of 1889, still have their long gardens. The future site of Betty Layward School is marked in black. The other black area was the Nursery, full of greenhouses, which was to be absorbed into the site of Stoke Newington Secondary School after 1980. Albion Road was lined on both sides with houses like the ones still left on the west side of the road. Some of these would be demolished for the building of Clissold Road about 1960.

1936 Ordnance Survey

By 1936 the Industrial area which had started on the stables and gardener’s cottage, had expanded to take over the wealthy gardens of the old ‘millionaire’s row’ in Church Street. Shelford Place had been built and was full of factories. During the Second World War and up to the First Clean Air Act of 1956, it was an area of great activity.

KEITH

CAN YOU PLEASEFIND A MAP OF THE AREA JUST BEFORE 1956 PLEASE? This would have the New River School on it I think and would be a good start for the NEW RIVER SCHOOL PIECE

THE CLEAN AIR ACT (1956)

The Clean Air Act forbade the use of coal in London so blacksmith’s forges and iron casting were driven into the New Towns or abroad. Gradually factories closed. Those which re-located in the New Town took their workers with young children with them, while many of the older workers tended to take redundancy money and stay in London. Stoke Newington lost so many children so that it became impossible to fill two Secondary Schools. As a result Woodberry Down and Clissold Comprehensive Schools had to be amalgamated to form Stoke Newington School on the expanded Clissold School sites. Woodberry Down site mouldered.

The almost deserted Industrial Area off Church Street was left as a reminder of why Stoke Newington School was formed.

NEXT THE INDUSTRIAL MAP BELOW

KEITH I CANNOT REMOVE THE NEXT MAP. PLEASE EXTRACT IT AND DISCARD THE TEXT.

THEN ADD THE FOLLOWING TEXT BELOW

The Industrial area by 1936 set out on the 1914 map

NEW TEXT TO GO BELOW THE INDUSTRIAL MAP

1914 Ordnance Survey map

The Industrial Area between Church Street and the back of Carysfort Road by 1936, set out on the 1914 map.

This map shows Clissold Road before the Swimming Baths were built and the Church Street houses which were coloured stretching right up to the 1835 Glebe houses. The Swimming Bath must have been under construction by the time this map was published and the blocks of 1936 Flats would soon replace the old Glebe houses.

This left a triangle of land behind Church Street, Clissold Road and Carysfort Road, which seemed to be a no-man’s land. In fact the Education Committee had always claimed the land and later built The River School on it.

Plan 2 showing that New River School had been built

An engineering works with access from both sides (outlined in black) was proposed, but not built.

When I photographed the triangle about 1980, it was a pleasant wilderness, , hidden from the road, with chickens pecking for worms and going back at night to their chicken runs in the local back gardens. It must have been a good haunt for urban foxes at that time.

Betty Layward Primary School site c.1980
Saved B Lay site c.1980.3

About 1980 the site was full of chickens
Saved B Lay site c.1980.2small

Betty Layward site - a friendly wilderness and litter dump.
Saved b.Lay site c,1980.1 small

The Need for a New Primary School.

The Education Committee had been watching the local birth rate and realised that they would soon run out of Primary School places for all the new children who were being born. They always have to plan ahead. One cannot wave a magic wand and conjure up a new school because they take years to plan and build.
First the committee had to find a site in a crowded borough. It could not be too far away from where the children lived, because they would have to walk to school. Immediately after the Second World War there were empty bomb sites, so Grazebrook School could be built on one of these. By the end of the century they ad all been built on. The hidden triangle was ideal. The Education Committee outlined the chosen site and began to think about the school they would like to have.

It is dated 18th. July 2002, so it cannot be original plan.

The small, hatched block was a pavilion when the site was used as tennis courts at the end of the 19th Century.
SAVED AS Clissold rd new river centre
Plan 5.

New River Centre would be demolished and a new school built.
By the time of this plan six houses in Clissold Road had been demolished and Daniel House had been built.

marked with a dark tint.

Between the edge of the old Industrial area, Clissold Road and Carysfort Road there was a triangle of land hidden from view. By 1868 the New River Centre for partially-sighted pupils had been built on the northern end of it.
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THERE WAS A PROPOSAL TO BUILD ‘NEW RIVER CENTRE’ ON PART OF THE PRESENT BETTY LAYWARD SITE

The Industrial Area stretching from Stoke Newington Church Street to the back of Carysfort Road,

Plan 2 of the site

At one time the tree area of the Betty Layward site was planned as an engineering works with access from both sides. This was after River House School was built but is otherwise undated.

KEITH Is it possible to remove the horizontal line across the roads please?