Harringay Gardens Estate

By John Hinshelwood and Stephen Rigg

The Harringay Gardens Estate is not to be confused with the road named Harringay Gardens, which is a cul-de-sac off Green Lanes opposite the end of Fairfax Road. The Harringay Gardens Estate started in 1890 as Provident Park and was meant to be a garden suburb for the working classes.

The Provident Association of London Limited offered a life assurance scheme whereby families of weekly wage earners, with little or no capital, could purchase a house after five years of paying into the scheme. In Tottenham the company built one of its few estates to the designs of their own architect and surveyor, Thomas E. Haines. Hence the majority of the houses in the Harringay Gardens estate appear very similar.

This nationwide scheme appeared attractive, but if regular payments were not maintained for whatever reason, or if the wage earner wished to withdraw from the scheme due to unemployment, they discovered it was not possible to redeem the investment. Many people began to feel they had been misled into paying money into the scheme from which they were unable get any benefit. By the 1900s this early example of mis-selling went to court and the Provident Association was reprimanded.

The estate did not turn out as a garden suburb, but tucked away in Doncaster Gardens, off Stanhope Gardens, is a pocket park created in what used to be a back entrance to the site of the Harringay Stadium, and later the Sainsbury’s supermarket. This entrance was closed off and opened by the Gardens Residents’ Association as The Gardens’ Community Garden in 2002 and was awarded a Green Pennant or Community Green Flag, in 2006, and has been a winner ever since. The garden, designed by Andy Newman of the Residents’ Association, is frequently used for community events including out door films shows

Doncaster Gardens, the prize winning Community Garden maintained by the Garden Residents’ Association.