St Ann’s Road

By John Hinshelwood and Stephen Rigg

St Ann’s Road is the division between the Harringay New Park and the Harringay Gardens. St Ann’s Road was originally called Hanger Green because it led to Hanger Green, a settlement consisting of Hanger Green House, Hanger Green Farm, and St. John’s Lodge, that took its name from the lands held by St John of Jerusalem in the 17th century. The name changed from Hanger Green when the new St Ann’s church, opposite the end of Hermitage Road was consecrated in 1861.

On the corner of Warwick Gardens, next to the Ambulance station, where Hanger Green House stood, are flats managed by Crabtree Property Management. The Boyd piano works opened a factory here in 1914 but had to move to Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, after a flying bomb hit the factory in 1944.

After the war, Ever Ready used the site for their Central Laboratories, where the company’s research effort was centred. In 1972 the electrical switchgear firm of Crabtree was acquired by Ever Ready, which then became the subject of a hostile takeover by Hanson Trust in 1981. This may have heralded the closure of the Laboratories, leaving the site vacant for development. By some coincidence Crabtree Property Management, formed in 1984, now manage the small housing estate that opened in 1984.

The Crabtree Property Management flats on the site of the Ever Ready Central Laboratories at the corner of St Ann’s Road and Warwick Gardens, where the Boyd Piano Factory stood before the Second World War