The history of WERA

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Last updated July 2008

Dramatic views across North London to the city and West End

History

History of the Warner estate by Joyce Rosser
Links to other historical sites

Ally Pally (Alexandra Palace and Park)
The historical basis for the backsite campaign

History of the Warner estate
The area covered by WERA is part of the Priory estate which in the nineteenth century was owned by the Warner family. The “father of Hornsey”, Henry Reader Williams, lived at The Priory for some years at the end of century. The Edwardian estate was planned by John Farrer with the houses built between 1898 and 1909. Subsequent developments include houses built in the 1920s, the Wolverton council flats in Warner Road and the Priory sheltered housing complex.

The Warner family
Jacob Warner, a wholesale grocer in the City of London, acquired the 18-acre estate in 1796. It spread across Priory Road (then known as Muswell Hill Road or Broad Lane) from Nightingale Lane to Park Road, and from Farrer Road and Park Avenue South to the southern slopes of Alexandra Park. The Moselle Brook ran along Priory Road. He also owned other land in the area, including at one time the Campsbourne estate (which Jacob Warner’s daughter and her husband, the Rev. Edward Linzee, inherited).

In the nineteenth century this part of Middlesex was popular with rich merchants who wanted to live in pleasant rural surroundings. Initially Jacob Warner lived in a three-storey Georgian house referred to simply as “the villa of Jacob Warner”. In the early 1820s he built a larger house which he called “The Priory”. This Gothic-style house was situated on the north side of Priory Road between present-day Warner and Danvers Road. Its name suggests that there was previously a monastic foundation on the site but there is no evidence of this and it is more likely that it was just a fashionable name.

Left: The Priory in 1865 - picture supplied by the Bruce Castle Museum.

Jacob Warner and his descendants played an important part in local affairs. He had four sons (Redston, Charles, George and Henry) and one daughter (Caroline). Jacob Warner was an Overseer of the Poor in Hornsey and one of the Surveyors of the Highways. He was involved in purchasing land near Hornsey Church for a school for girls and on Muswell Hill for cottages for the poor. Two of his sons, George and Henry, lived at The Priory all their lives. Henry Warner was a JP, churchwarden at St Mary’s Church and a treasurer of local charities. He donated the land on which St James’s Church in Muswell Hill was built. As “Colonel Warner”, he was very involved with the Middlesex Rifle Volunteers and often lent the grounds of The Priory for their inspections. Joseph Warner, one of George’s sons, was a barrister and Master of the Grocers’ Company. He was knighted in 1892.

The Warner family left The Priory in 1883 on the death of Henry Warner although they retained ownership of the house and estate. After the building of the Edwardian estate they retained the freehold of the houses and even today the freehold of some houses and the shops on Priory Road and Park Road (originally called “Palace Parade”) remain in the hands of the Warner family.

The Priory in 1899

Left: The Priory 1899 - picture supplied by the Bruce Castle Museum.

Priory Road 1880

Braddock postcard of Priory Road in the 1880s looking towards cottages and the cattle pound at the bottom of Muswell Hill. Courtesy of Bruce Castle Museum (Haringey Libraries, Archives and Museum Service).

Henry Reader Williams
After the departure of the Warner family, Henry Reader Williams and his family lived at The Priory. From humble beginnings, he had become a successful wine merchant. He devoted much of his time to philanthropic activities for poor children in the East End (who came on annual visits to The Priory). For over twenty years he was a member of Hornsey Local Board (and chairman for part of this time) and he was also on Hornsey School Board. He was a Liberal member of Middlesex County Council. He played a major role in preserving local open spaces including Priory Park, Highgate Woods and Alexandra Park. Hornsey clock tower is dedicated to him.

The Edwardian estate and John Farrer
In 1898 the contents of The Priory and its stables were put up for auction and four years later the house was demolished. Plans for the development of roads on the estate had already been drawn up by John Farrer, an architect and surveyor. He was active as an architect in Hornsey from the 1880s until the 1920s. He built in Highgate, Muswell Hill and Hornsey High Street, as well as on the Priory and Palace View estates.

Most of the road names had local connotations – Priory Avenue, Warner Road, Redston Road (after Redston Warner), Linzee Road (after the Linzee family), Farrer Road and Farrer Close (after John Farrer), and Danvers Road (after a family friend of the Warners). In contrast Baden Road and Clovelly Road were probably named after popular upper-middle-class resorts of the time.

The first roads to be developed were on the east of the Priory estate - Linzee Road, Priory Avenue, Clovelly Road, Baden Road, and Park Avenues North and South. By 1902 Redston Road was laid out, and finally Danvers Road. By 1905 there were 615 houses built or in the process of being built on the estate. By 1909, 890 houses had been built.

In 1905 a new church, St George’s, was built on the corner of Priory Road and Park Avenue South (this was bombed in the war, then demolished and subsequently the fire station was built on the site). The Moravian Church was built in 1907. The Palace Parade shops on Priory Road and Park Road were built in 1906.

Some of the largest houses were on Priory Road. A new house called The Priory was built in its own grounds between Warner Road and Danvers Road. John Farrer designed “private carriage ways” (these were originally called West Drive, Priory Gardens and East Drive) in front of some of the Priory Road houses. In 1904 he submitted plans for a wall to be built along what is now the northern edge of Priory Common. A wooden cattle pound at the western end of Priory Common remained until the early decades of the twentieth century.

The Moravian Church, numbers 30-40 Priory Road (the tiled houses with extensive wooden features opposite Priory Park) and numbers 84-98 Priory Road (the “Dutch style” houses to the east of Warner Road) are all locally listed. B Cherry and N Pevsner, in The Buildings of England (1998), comment: “Priory Road and the roads off it, with their relaxed terraces of gabled houses with decorative pargeting and timber work, are quintessential Hornsey housing of those years.” Unlike most of Muswell Hill and Crouch End, the Priory/Warner estate of Edwardian houses is not in a conservation area.

At the same time as our roads were being developed, John Farrer was involved in planning the roads and building some of the pioneering council housing in North View, South View, Hawthorn and Beechwood Roads on the new Palace View estate (which is now a conservation area) to the east of our estate.

Subsequent developments
In the 1920s houses were built in the gaps left in the Edwardian estate (in Redston Road, Danvers Road, Park Avenue North and Priory Road). During the 1930s a public toilet (now a solicitor’s office) was built on Priory Common near where the cattle pound had been. During the Second World War some houses in Warner Road (numbers 1-7) were damaged and after the war the Wolverton council flats were built on the site. The Priory was purchased by the Council after the war and opened as a “social centre” in 1949. In the 1980s it became the centre of a sheltered housing complex.

Sources
Most of the information on the nineteenth century comes from Alan Aris’s “Personalities and property: the development of the Priory estate”, in People and Places: Lost Estates in Highgate, Hornsey and Wood Green, by Hornsey Historical Society (1996).

The later history comes from council minutes and various other sources.

The Warner Estate Residents Association is continuing to research the history of the Edwardian estate and would welcome any contributions.

Webmaster Chris Matthews
chris@matthewsandmatthews.com