Hornsey fights guidebook 'slur'

nlnews@archant.co.uk
29 October 2009

LOYAL residents have defended Hornsey after it was described as a "forgotten town" overshad-owed by Crouch End and Green Lanes.

The fight back comes after a London guidebook said Hornsey was suffering an identity crisis.

Not For Tourists 2010 writes: "People who live here will probably say they live in Crouch End or Stroud Green, partly because it sounds better and partly because most people have no idea where Hornsey is.

"It's an area bullied on all sides by bigger, brasher neighbourhoods like middle class Crouch End and gritty Green Lanes."

But long-term residents stood up for their home patch, which stretches from Park Road in the west to the Ladder Roads in the east.

Ian Bruce, 45, of Rectory Gardens, Hornsey, site manager at St Mary's Infant School in Church Lane, Hornsey, said: "We're proud of Hornsey. We're proud of the fact we've got our own green, people are proud that our shops have got heritage fronts, we're proud of the fact our church tower is the oldest in the borough at 500 years old.

"To say we've got an identity crisis is not right. I'm slightly offended by that to be honest."

He raved about Hornsey restaurants as a great attraction, saying people came from across the borough to eat in award-winning Italian Tomo Pizzeria and French restaurant La Bistro, both in the High Street.

But some admit the area's boundaries have become blurred since Hornsey Borough was abolished in 1967.

The name is used for the N8 postal district, which includes Crouch End and parts of Harringay, as well as for the area around Hornsey High Street.

Chantelle Moore, 27, a secondary school teacher, of Priory Road, Hornsey, said: "I say Crouch End because I thought I lived in Crouch End! I didn't realise there was much of a difference."

Jon Cross, 42, a photographer, of Park Avenue North, Hornsey - out with his two-year-old daughter Leelou, said: "I think Hornsey is more like a district than a village. That's why I call it Crouch End because Hornsey is too big and there isn't a centre of Hornsey.

"But I personally don't think there's a snobbery about Crouch End except that people associate Crouch End with small and the fact that there's no Tube."

Others laid the blame at the feet of estate agents keen to market properties with maximum pulling power.

Danny Faridi, 47, owner of LaunderAct laundrette in Priory Road, said: "One of the main people who play a major part in the division is estate agents. I've been looking for a property and they don't like to say Hornsey, they say Crouch End.

"I can imagine if I say I live in Hornsey and I live in Crouch End, it would be a big difference in my class."

Some lamented changes in the area, including the creep of the gastropub into Hornsey.

A carpenter and regular at The Priory pub in Priory Road, who has lived in Hornsey for 40 years, said: "We're standing outside the last proper drinking hole in Hornsey [The Priory]. There's nowhere for the working fellows to go to have a night off work because they charge too much money.