Palmers Green

A Memory of Palmers Green.

My grandmother lived at 50 Old Park Road, opposite Bloomfield Park, and I went to school at Franklin House School in Palmerston Road from 1955 to 1960, then the Winchmore Hill Collegiate School from 1960 to 1962.

I used to have sausage and chips in the ABC at the Trianagle and often frequented Bloomfield Park and played football there with my school.

Happy memories indeed of Bloomfield House and looking around the stuffed animals and birds inside with the cafe at the rear of the House and watching the bee hive and bees entering a perspex tunnel., to the hive.

Evans and Davies a main Dept store was sighted off the Triangle and the money tubes would whizz around the store much to my intrigue.

The Queens Cinema was further down the high street and my mother would take take me to see the latest films for children.

Wymans was another stationery store in direct competion with WH Smith and I spent time in both . Moving down the High Street circa 1959, and ending at the Fox pub and smelling the stale beer, wafting into the outside and seeing a legion of patrons through the large open windows of the pub, especially at lunch times. Over the road in the high street I would look into Bricks mans shop and a toy shop, and then G Plan furniture shop and Keating Rumans record and electrical shop. Not forgetting Camera Craft in Fox Lane (where my mother bought my first camera).

I lived near Cockfosters in those days and would take a No 29 bus to the Triangle or a 629 0r 641, trolley bus along Green Lanes to Bowes Road and Winchmore Hill and Enfield. Travelling on my own as a boy was a safe practice then, under the watchful eye of the Conductor.

Palmers Green in the 1950s and 60s was the height of suburbia and for me a special place with long hot summers and a tranquil atmosphere and the best park to explore and ducks on landscaped ponds and a sports track, bandstand and play area swings/slide combined. Bloomfield Park is truly magical and the former Broomfield House set in ornate and landscaped gardens and water features.

Latterly, past 1959 to the mid 1960s, I remember the advent of a Wimpey bar past the Triangle and the change into a evoluting society with the old ABC bakery since long gone as with the old shops in the High Street.

As for my schools, Franklin House at Bowes Road was eventually demolished and the Winchmore Hill Collegiate closed down, adjacent to the former Capitol Cinema.

My grandmother and mother have long since passed and then my father and their memories with Palmers Green live on, with me and my experiences handed down to my children and grandchildren and I hope to take some of them to Bloomfield Park one day and tell them of the adventures, interest and fun that I had there as a boy.

Around Bowes Road, does anyone remember Doms Cafe, Pughs Library in Green Lanes and Norfolk Park, then travelling on to Wood Green, Sellars mens shop, N. Berg mans shop, Kevans outfitters, and the Express Diary at Turnpike Lane. etc? And Oliver Elmers at the end of Wood Green which was a Aladdin's Cave of a shop, selling jokes, collectors stamps, false beards and wigs, musical instruments and sheet music. etc, Broadmeads record shop next to the Wellington public house, the man selling horse meat on stall next to J Sainsbury's store in Wood Green High Street...

I must end here.

Kind Regards
Chris Liddle (age 64 years)
Godmanchester, Cambs.