Late-breaking news from 110 years ago…
Via Google Alerts, this posting yesterday by contributor Hugh to the Harringay Online community website (in North London):
(#1)
Swiss Engineer Jean Zwicky designed and hand-built this bleeding edge fire engine at the Tottenham Council works department in 1907. It cost, what was for the time an eye-watering £3,200.
Zwicky lived at 66 Chester Road in West Green [a neighborhood within Harringay].
Another view of the excellent engine:
(#2)
This is all I know at the moment about Jean Zwicky.
About Harringay, from Wikipedia:
(#3)
Harringay is a district of north London, England, within the London Borough of Haringey. Harringay’s main shopping street, Green Lanes, is a busy, cosmopolitan high street. Some shops have a long established presence, like Disney’s furniture store, which has traded there since 1913. Others reflect the more cosmopolitan nature of Green Lanes and include a large number of Kurdish & Turkish bakeries, grocers, cafes and a growing cluster of restaurants. [Almost a quarter of the district is open space; Finsbury Park (the green area at the bottom of the map) is officially part of Harringay.]
Alas, there is no gay in Harringay (nor any herring, for that matter); from Wikipedia:
The name Harringay has its origin in the Saxon period and is derived from the name of a Saxon chieftain called Haering. Haering’s Hege meant Haering’s enclosure.
The engine was built in Tottenham, a district also within the borough of Haringey — northwest of Harringay on the map, with its town centre on White Hart Lane — now famous as the home of the Tottenham Hotspurs football team.
On the borough of Haringey, from Wikipedia:
The London Borough of Haringey is a London borough in North London, classified by some definitions as part of Inner London, and by others as part of Outer London. It was created in 1965 [the UK is given to perpetual redrawing and renaming of administrative / governmental areas] by the amalgamation of three former boroughs [Hornsey, Wood Green, Tottenham]. It shares borders with six other London boroughs. Clockwise from the north, they are: Enfield, Waltham Forest, Hackney, Islington, Camden, and Barnet.
Haringey covers an area of more than 11 square miles (28.5 km2). Some of the more familiar local landmarks include Alexandra Palace, Bruce Castle, Jacksons Lane, Highpoint I and II, and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. The borough has extreme contrasts: areas in the west, such as Highgate, Muswell Hill and Crouch End are among the most prosperous in the country; in the east of the borough, some wards are classified as being among the most deprived 10% in the country. Haringey is also a borough of contrasts geographically. From the wooded high ground around Highgate and Muswell Hill, at 426.5 feet (130.0 m), the land falls sharply away to the flat, open low-lying land beside the River Lea in the east. The borough includes large areas of green space, which make up more than 25% of its total area.
Leave a Reply