Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

This will bring back memories to any 40s or 50s London kids.. It looks about 1958ish to me.. What I especially like, is the complete absence of yellow lines and all the other official graffiti seen on road surfaces these days. It does nothing for the appearance of the street scenes and is just another sign of how the motor car has take over city life and how the nanny state has tried to counter that.

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Fascinating, not least because it's not too far from where I grew up - when living in Kensington wasn't just for multi-millionaires and oligarchs and long before I discovered Harringay….

I've seen this before and wonder if it was originally taken as back-projection footage for a feature film? The first sequence is all facing backwards from a car (not what you'd expect from a tourist, say) and the subsequent two sections mirror each other exactly but show opposite sides of the road. Incidentally, the driver of the white lorry in the middle bit doesn't look too pleased at the camera car getting in his way - he very nearly gives it the finger!

Very interesting - amazed by the number of bad old cars of the types I once owned (at the ends of their lives I hasten to add, so in the next decade).  The junkyard was a familiar place for several reasons.

The white van/truck with the very rude driver at 1:30 appears to be a time traveller, since he may have a G suffix numberplate not popular till the end of the 60s.

Amazing film - very long sequence. Have we identified all the road it runs along? Looking at the cars I am thinking nearer to 1956 than 58 - even maybe 54?

That looks like a Dodge van circa mid 50s but if the number has a C I am with the time travel theory!

First section is Hammersmith Road, from just off the Broadway (the Sacred Heart convent is on the right) to about the corner of Brook Green; the second and third sections start in Kensington High Street and then turn off into Phillimore Gardens (I think). It looks like high summer in all sequences. If my idea that they're background footage for a feature film is right, maybe a film buff on here could identify it - but we'd have to date that lorry! The number plate is pretty hard to read anyway and I'm not really sure it's a suffix at the end, but it's very hard to be sure. 

Richard, I was judging a bit more by the ladies fashion. I suspect you might be right at around 1956, but I certainly think it's later than 1952. I also noticed a Vauxhall Velox. I recall that our neighbours, who lived at 65 Warwick Gardens 1957-60, also had a black one of these, and it certainly was one of the best cars to be seen on Warwick Gardens at that time. Well, it was at least the one that caught my eye and I've remembered it ever since, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall_Velox#Velox_EIP.2FEIPV_.26_E...

PS - shame about the stray apostrophe in the title....

Ah, Richard, we have the eye of a journalist and a transcriber.  Still, what a wonderful video; how clean the streets are and how safe for a girl walking home at night!

Anothr point of interest is the Daimler DE27 Ambulance - they were made up to about 1951; I cannot recall them in use after about 54-55? BMC Commercials followed them in LCC use.

You are right.  On YouTube, the date of the video is given as 1952.

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