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Myddelton Road, LONDON, N8 7PW

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Built in 1897, to the designs of architects Shoebridge & Rising.

View of neo-Georgian entrance, with coat of arms of the old Borough of Hornsey above.

This structure which bears the Arms of Hornsey Borough Council is all that remains of the 1930's Hornsey Public Baths and Washhouse demolished for the new housing and Sainsbury's store development. This small remnant was taken down and rebuilt in this position and seems now to house an electricity transformer. The Arms bears the inscription Fortior Quo Paratior, Latin for the better prepared, the stronger. The building stands in the lowest point in the immediate area and is where once the New River flowed as it followed the contours of the landscape until the 1850's when it was rerouted alongside the new railway that is now the east coast mainline.

Construction work on the Smithfield Square development.

The original course of the New River* ran along the southern side of Hornsey High Street from Nightingale Lane, crossing the road in the area shown in the photo, then running under Image and into Image * The New River is neither new (having been built at the beginning of the 17th C) nor a river (it's an aqueduct supplying water to London, taken from the River Lea near Hertford and from Chadwell Spring, Amwell Spring, and other springs and wells along its course). For further info, see the Wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(England) .

With the help of the shopkeeper opposite we decoded the old advert to read, 'J SALMON & SON GROCERS AND HOUSEHOLD STOREKEEPERS' and guessed it must have been from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. He explained that it had until recently been hidden by a modern advertising hoarding, marked out on the wall by a line of white paint. An internet search shows that J Salmon & Son was once a large London based chain of grocery shops.