Lissenden Recollections

12A and 15 Lissenden Mansions, 1950s - 1983

“My earliest memories of Lissenden are of going to meet my dad at Gospel Oak Station on his way home from work in the city in the 1950s. On the corner of Lissenden Gardens and Mansfield Road (where the flats are now) was a garage, I guess it sold petrol but the only thing I recall is that it seemed a little daring to cut off the corner by running through the forecourt of the garage. Just a couple of yards, I must have been a very law abiding child to see it as a rule-breaking short cut.

Of course everyone remembers Marine Ices in the little hut by the gate onto Hampstead Heath, probably not dating from that time, maybe a little later.

My mother was living in Parliament Hill Mansions towards the end of the war, sharing a job and childcare with her friend. Peg had a baby boy; mum had a girl, both born early in 1944. Peg was French Canadian; her husband was fighting with the Free French army. Their shared job was as a reporter on the Daily Worker, both were Communist Party members.  Rosalind Bailey mentions in her book ‘a group of people connected with the Unity Theatre’ associated with the flats; my mother was one of them, recalling the actors and retaining friendships . Mum and Peg’s flat was number 12A; no flat was given the unlucky number 13. I don’t know if they were living there when the end row of the block was demolished by a bomb in 1940, probably not as she didn’t share any stories of what would have been a significant memory.

My mother used to put the pram containing my baby sister out onto the front balcony ‘to get some fresh air’, or keep her out of the way for a while. The baby would be held into the pram by her reins, fixed to the side of the pram. One day there was a knock at the front door of number 12A, a stranger had rushed up the stars to inform mum that her baby had unhooked herself, climbed out of the pram and was climbing up the wrought iron railings of the balcony, collecting a small crowd of anxious onlookers in the street below.

By the time my younger brother was born in 1950 our family had moved to a house in Swains Lane. I had little contact with anyone In Lissenden Gardens for a while – though we did have a mother’s help who lived in one of the prefabs in Glenhurst Avenue. My sister had school friends who lived in Lissenden, we both went to Parliament Hill School, she as a grammar schoolgirl and me as the first intake of a comprehensive school. Later, as a teenager, I was a baby sitter for the actor Graham Crowden and his lovely family who lived high up in Parliament Hill Mansions.  

Several years later, living in 1968 in a tiny flat in Muswell Hill with a new baby and a part-time teacher husband, I discovered that flats in Lissenden were to be had at a low rent, providing one handed over £200 to the Armstrong brothers.  We swiftly persuaded my brother to lend us his recent tax rebate, which was then handed on to the landlords. 15 Lissenden Mansions was then ours, a four bedroom flat at a rent that was slightly lower than the Muswell Hill bedsit.

When we moved in the few items left behind by the last tenant indicated a previous occupancy of many years. We quickly threw away Victorian lightshades, a wooden towel rack, an old bread bin, all of which I would have treasured a few years later. My husband built a sofa, I covered it with orange fabric. We had an oval dining table which didn’t fit into the wonderful circular corner space, so we sawed a piece out of the middle to make it a circular dining table. The 1950s fireplace was covered with a homemade ‘wall unit’ containing shelves for TV, tape recorder and record deck.

The kitchen I think had been little altered since the flats were built. It had a very large dresser, with cupboards below and shelves above. There was a coal boiler, heating the water in a tank fixed above the kitchen sink – a butler sink with a foldable wooden draining board, foldable as when in place it blocked the back door onto the balcony. The coal store filled most of the space on the balcony. The coalman delivered sacks of coal carrying it up two flights of stairs, in through the front door, down the narrow L-shaped corridor past every room of the flat, across the kitchen and out of the back door before shooting it into the ‘cellar’. Also on the back balcony was the rubbish lift, little more than a shelf which was hauled up and down by ropes attached to it. I cannot remember who operated the lift, I think at one time a porter of some kind would pull the lift up to each floor for residents to put out their rubbish and blow a whistle when doing so. By the time of our residency maybe we operated it ourselves.

Brown was then fashionable colour; I painted the bathroom entirely dark brown including all the exposed pipework, thought it rather stylish until my dad commented that it looked like a gas chamber. Did I immediately repaint? I can’t remember. 

Prams in those days were large, heavy, ‘coach built’ things, so ours had to be hauled up and down flights of stairs for any outing that included a baby. (Baby slings were almost unknown, and when seen were regarded as primitive, and probably not very good for the baby). On one occasion the pram (without the baby in it) slipped out of my husband’s grip and flew down to crash into the ground floor front door. 

The block of flats must have been unrefurbished when we were approached by a film company. A semi-derelict block of flats was needed for a brief shot and we were asked for our permission to cover the outside of the lowest two floors in rusty old corrugated iron, just for one day which was all it took to film the few seconds activity while the actor ran past the building. I think we were slipped £15 in cash by the film crew.

In 1972 my husband was offered a year’s contract teaching in Warwickshire so we asked our landlord, the Armstrongs, if we could continue our tenancy and sub-let the flat for a year. This was agreed, though our absence extended for a further year, so we were not around when the Tenant’s Association was active, the estate was sold to a developer and then on to Camden.

We moved back and were involved in the Association’s negotiations with Camden about the refurbishment of the estate. I remember still living in our flat on the second floor while the ground floor flat was gutted. Our upstairs artist neighbour was expecting a visit from his Japanese dealer and discovered that the gentleman had had to enter the building through a knocked down window space, walk across dust and tools in what had been the bedroom, down the hallway and out through the front door of the ground floor flat before he could walk up the main stairs to Anthony the artist’s front door.

Before the refurbishment began our neighbour upstairs was curious about the brisk wind that that cooled her when she was sitting in the bath; she peered over the bath taps to discover daylight beneath the windowsill.  Surveys of the building revealed dry rot in all the bathrooms from ground to top floor.  All our bathrooms were ‘removed’, the doors locked so that we could not mistakenly enter the bathroom and fall three floors down. We had no access to a bath, washbasin or – more importantly – toilet, for several weeks! How on earth did we manage? I think the workmen fixing the dry rot had access to an empty ground floor flat for their amenities. We were encouraged to use their toilet, but my husband reported it as being unspeakably dirty, so I don’t think we used it. Our discovery of the public bath house within the Prince of Wales Road swimming baths was a blessing.

We were offered the chance to alter the layout of our flat but its corner situation offered little opportunity for new arrangement. Certainly in our block the front door brasswork was removed, maybe by the workmen for the refurb, and never seen again; which curiously   coincided with the opening of Amazing Grates shop nearby, selling front door brasswork.

The promised few months of relocation stretched to a year at 65 Lissenden, a top floor flat with a wonderful view across nearby rooftops. All our carpets spent the year rolled up, our curtains didn’t fit the windows, and I remember with embarrassment the distress of a long-established elderly resident who had been moved into the flat below.  Our washing machine, which was not plumbed in, leaked, and poured draining water onto the bare boards of kitchen floor, through into flat below.

Moving back after the refurb I was appointed a block rep, I remember visiting newly refurbished flats, where the delighted tenants were comfortably roasting as they had their new central heating on full blast.

We moved out in 1983, but not very far away from Lissenden Gardens  - into a house in Glenhurst Avenue that I had looked down into from the back balcony at No. 65.”

Janet Male