A huge estate called the Willows used to stretch all along Clissold Crescent from the New River to Clissold Road. This 1891 plan shows the different sale lots coloured and numbered. All this is discussed in detail later in the disk. At the moment it is sufficient to say that the new Burma Estate extends into one corner of the old Willows property.
The estate was sold and houses were built along the north side of Clissold Crescent but the smaller houses on the south side continued to be occupied as before.
This was Clissold Crescent in 1904, an area of solid comfort where the householders had above average incomes and were what Booth called ‘the non-commissioned officers of the industrial army, the foremen, clerks, and under-managers who had moved out of sooty and polluted London to the edges of the built-up area. Beyond was still the county. During the Second World War this part of the road was hardly damaged but the area behind to the left, was badly damaged. After the war the Burma Estate was built.
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