Showing posts with label Harrow Road. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harrow Road. Show all posts

15 September 2016

The Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings company, Noel Park, Wood Green

The Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company was a not-for-profit company that built social housing in areas of London with good rail links to the city, keen to promote good health and well-being in the poorer classes.
Ambling along Wood Green High Street yesterday I spotted one of their monograms above a branch of Subway on the east side of Wood Green High Road just north of the modern shopping mall. The building continues south housing thirteen shops but unlike the terrace on Harrow Road here in Wood Green most of the logos on the dividing columns at street level are now either missing, damaged or indiscernible.

Top left shows the unpainted terracotta relief above Subway. Top right shows another cartouche/monogram further down the terrace. I could find only three dividing columns that retain the complete ALGD monogram (the one not shown here is totally painted black).
Further down the road, on the same side, I found another two terraces bearing the same marks on either side of Dovecote Avenue which, despite its evocative name, these days leads to nowhere.

Top left shows the three monograms on the buildings either side of Dovecote Avenue
These terraces were part of the company's Noel Park estate built between 1883 and 1929.  I have not yet accessed any old maps or archives of the area but it's fair to assume that the company probably had more buildings along the Wood Green Road that may have have been demolished to make way for Wood Green Shopping City in the 1970s.
The Wikipedia info on the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company also lists ALGD sites at Battersea, Queens Park and Streatham – info and pics welcome.

10 November 2015

The Artizans monograms of 431–487 Harrow Road

I am often bemused and confused as to why the owners of shops within a once beautiful terrace have felt the need to paint their half of the dividing columns. After all the shops would all look more distinct if the dividers were the same thus creating a frame. It just beggars belief why some beautiful patterned and glazed tiles or moulded stonework has been covered over – why can't they just leave them as is?!!!
A couple of months ago I was on one of Jen's walking tours and as we passed a long terrace in Harrow Road I noticed that most of the dividers had been painted through the middle of the initials of a company who either originally built it or traded from within.

It's either AL&CD Company Limited or A&LCD. Note the use of LIM where we now use LTD.
On the northern end of the terrace and in a couple of places high up along the front of the terrace a wonderful monogram using the same letters can be seen.
However I cannot identify the L within these entwined letters. So perhaps it's just "A&CD Co Lim"? In which case what's the significance of the L in the rectangles – a strange ampersandy thing I have never seen before perchance?
As regards researching who this company was I have tried a bit of google-woogle and come up with nothing except a South African Kitchenware company (AL&CD) who don't seem to have ever been in London.
Can anyone help?

Update
Aha!... it's not a C; it's G – turns out it's the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings company (interesting that artizans is US spelling but labourers is not)
See the comments for some info/links from Martin