Tottenham is renowned for its
multicultural, ethnically diverse population. Following an influx of an
Afro-Caribbean population during the
Windrush era in the mid-20th century, it became one of the most ethnically diverse areas in Britain. It has more recently become home to an increased population from Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. At the 2011 census, the population of Tottenham was 129,237.
History
Toponymy
Tottenham is believed to have been named after Tota, a farmer, whose hamlet was mentioned in the
Domesday Book. 'Tota's hamlet', it is thought, developed into 'Tottenham'. The settlement was recorded in the Domesday Book as Toteham, in the ancient
hundred of
Edmonton.[5][6] It is not related to
Tottenham Court Road in Central London, though the two names share a similar-sounding root.[7]
Early history
There has been a settlement at Tottenham for over a thousand years. It grew up along the old
Roman road,
Ermine Street (some of which is part of the present
A10 road), and between
High Cross and
Tottenham Hale, the present Monument Way.
When the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, about 70 families lived within the area of the manor, mostly labourers working for the
Lord of the Manor. A humorous poem entitled the
Tournament of Tottenham, written around 1400, describes a mock-battle between peasants vying for the
reeve's daughter.
The
River Lea (or Lee) was the eastern boundary between the Municipal Boroughs of Tottenham and
Walthamstow. It is the ancient boundary between
Middlesex and
Essex and also formed the western boundary of the Viking controlled
Danelaw. Today it is the boundary between the London Boroughs of Haringey and
Waltham Forest. A major tributary of the
Lea, the
River Moselle, also crosses the borough from west to east, and often caused serious flooding until it was mostly covered in the 19th century.
From the
Tudor period onwards, Tottenham became a popular recreation and leisure destination for wealthy Londoners.
Henry VIII is known to have visited
Bruce Castle[8] and also hunted in Tottenham Wood. A rural Tottenham also featured in
Izaak Walton's book The Compleat Angler, published in 1653.[9] The area became noted for its large
Quaker population[10] and its schools (including
Rowland Hill[11] at Bruce Castle[12]). Tottenham remained a semi-rural and upper middle class area until the 1870s.
Modern era
In late 1870s, the
Great Eastern Railway introduced special workman's trains and fares on its newly opened
Enfield and
Walthamstow branch lines. Tottenham's low-lying fields and market gardens were then rapidly transformed into cheap housing for the lower middle and working classes, who were able to commute cheaply to inner London. The workman's fare policy stimulated the relatively early development of the area into a London suburb.
An incident occurred on 23 January 1909, which was at the time known as the
Tottenham Outrage.[13] Two armed robbers, Latvian Jews of
Russian extraction, held up the wages clerk of rubber works in Chestnut Road. They made their getaway via
Tottenham Marshes and fled across the Lea. On the opposite bank of the river, they hijacked a
Walthamstow Corporation tramcar, hotly pursued by the police on another tram. The hijacked tram was stopped but the robbers continued their flight on foot. After firing their weapons and killing two people, Ralph Joscelyne, aged 10, and PC William Tyler, they were eventually cornered by the police and shot themselves rather than be captured. Fourteen other people were wounded during the chase. The incident later became the subject of a
silent film.[14]
During the
Second World War Tottenham was one of the many targets of the
German air offensive against Britain. Bombs fell in the borough (Elmar Road) during the first
air raid on London on 24 August 1940. The borough also received
V-1 (four incidents) and
V-2 hits, the last of which occurred on 15 March 1945. Wartime shortages led to the creation of Tottenham Pudding, a mixture of household waste food which was converted into feeding stuff for pigs and poultry.[15] The "pudding" was named by
Queen Mary on a visit to Tottenham Refuse Works. Production continued into the
post-war period, its demise coinciding with the merging of the borough into the new London Borough of Haringey.
Riots
The
Broadwater Farm riot occurred around the Broadwater Farm Estate on 6 October 1985 following the death of Cynthia Jarrett. Jarrett was a resident of Tottenham who lived about one mile (two kilometres) from the estate, who died of heart failure during a police search of her home. The tension between local black youths and the largely white
Metropolitan Police had been high due to a combination of local issues and the aftermath of
riots in Brixton which had occurred in the previous week. The response of some of the black community in Tottenham and surrounding areas culminated in a riot beginning on Tottenham High Road and ending in Broadwater Farm Estate. One police officer,
Keith Blakelock, was
murdered; 58 policemen and 24 other people were injured in the fighting. Two of the policemen were injured by gunshots during the riot, the first time that firearms had been used in that type of confrontation.[16]
The
2011 Tottenham riots were a series of riots precipitated by
the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old man in Tottenham, by officers of the
Metropolitan Police Service on 4 August 2011.[17][18][19][clarification needed] Attacks were carried out on two police cars, a bus, a Post Office and several local shops from 8:00 pm onwards on 6 August 2011. Riot police vans attended the scene of disturbances on Tottenham High Road. Later in the evening, the riot spread, with an
Aldi supermarket and a branch of
Allied Carpets also destroyed by fire, and widespread looting in nearby
Wood Green shopping centre and the retail park at Tottenham Hale. Several flats above shops on Tottenham High Road collapsed due to the fires. 26 shared ownership flats in the Union Point development above the Carpetright store – built in the landmark Cooperative department store building – were also destroyed by fire. The triggering event was when a group of over one hundred local Tottenham residents set out to undertake a protest march against the
killing of Mark Duggan, who was shot by police officers assigned to
Operation Trident earlier in the week. The crowd made up of Duggan's family and local community leaders, gathered outside Tottenham police station on 6 August 2011 to protest the failure of the police to provide family members with a formal notice of the killing.[20] The circumstances surrounding Duggan's death were not entirely clear at the time of the riot. On 17 August 2011, the
Prince of Wales and his wife
Duchess of Cornwall visited an emergency center to meet victims of the riots.[21]
The
Palace Gates Line opened in Tottenham on 1 January 1878 with stations at
Seven Sisters and
West Green. Passenger services ceased in 1963 with the line finally closing on 7 February 1965.
The first section of the London Underground's
Victoria line opened on 1 September 1968.
Governance
Parliament
Tottenham is the biggest part of the
parliamentary constituency of
Tottenham. The constituency was created in 1885 when the first MP was
Joseph Howard of the
Conservative Party. The boundaries were redrawn in 1918, and Tottenham was divided into two separate constituencies:
Tottenham North and
Tottenham South. Since being reinstated in 1950, it has been predominantly represented by MPs from the
Labour Party, with the exception of
Alan Brown who defected to the Conservatives due to disagreement with the Labour Party's defence policy at the time. The current MP is
David Lammy who won a by-election in 2000 following the death of
Bernie Grant.
Local government
Tottenham was at the center of a local administrative area from the medieval period until 1965. The administrative area developed from a parish in Middlesex into an
Urban sanitary district in 1875, after a local board of health had been established in 1850. It was then divided in 1888 and
Wood Green became a separate authority.[22] In 1894, Tottenham was reconstituted first as an
urban district, based at
Tottenham Town Hall, then as a
municipal borough in 1934.[23] Under the
Local Government Act 1963, it became part of the larger
London Borough of Haringey. The Tottenham neighbourhood is now one of twenty neighbourhoods in
Haringey.
Geography
Its
elevation is approximately 33 ft (10 m) above sea level.
Sub-districts
Because of Tottenham's long history as a borough, the Tottenham name is used by some to this day to describe the whole of the area formerly covered by the old borough, incorporating the N17
postcode area and part of N15.[24] However, there are differing views as to what constitutes the Tottenham neighbourhood in the present day. Many think of Tottenham today as most of the area covered by the N17 post code, sometimes using the phrase 'Tottenham Proper' to describe it and to distinguish it from the other parts of the old borough.[25]
Central: Continuing along the high road, the central area includes
Bruce Grove,
Tottenham Green and
Tottenham Hale wards, as well as Tottenham Hale station and retail park.
A claim made by MP
David Lammy in 2011, indicated that at that time Tottenham had the highest unemployment rate in London and the eighth highest in the United Kingdom, and it had some of the highest poverty rates within the country.[26]
Ethnic composition
Tottenham has a multicultural population, with many ethnic groups inhabiting the area. It contains one of the largest and most significant populations of
Afro-Caribbean people. These were among the earliest groups of immigrants to settle in the area, starting from the UK's
Windrush era. The Seven Sisters ward has the largest proportion of Jewish residents among Haringey wards, at 18.1%.[27]
In the 2011 UK Census, the ethnic composition of the
Tottenham constituency, of which Tottenham is a large part, was as follows:[28]
27.7% Other White
26.7% Black
22.3% White British
10.7% Asian
12.6% Other/Mixed
Crime
Tottenham has been one of the main hotspots for
gangs and gun crime in the United Kingdom during the past three decades. This followed the rise of gangs and drug wars throughout the area, notably those involving the
Tottenham Mandem gang and various gangs from
Hackney and all of the areas surrounding Tottenham, and the emergence of an organised crime ring known as the
Turkish mafia fought other London gangs to allegedly control more than 90% of the UK's
heroin market.[29]
All Hallows Church – This is the oldest surviving building in
Haringey and dates back to
Norman times. For more than 700 years it was the original parish church for Tottenham. Presented in 1802 with a bell from the
Quebec Garrison, which was captured from the French in the
1759 Battle of Quebec, Canada. Adjacent to the church is
Tottenham Cemetery.
Bruce Castle,
Lordship Lane – Grade 1 listed, it was Tottenham's manor house and dates from the sixteenth century, with alterations by subsequent occupants. It was given the name 'Bruce Castle' during the seventeenth century by the
2nd Lord Coleraine, who was Lord of the Manor at the time. He named it after '
Robert the Bruce', whose family had been
lords of the manor during the medieval period. The building was purchased by the Hill family, who turned it into a progressive school.
Sir Rowland Hill was its first headmaster, and he was living there in 1840 when he, as
Postmaster General, introduced the
Uniform Penny Post.[32] Now a
local history museum, Bruce Castle holds the archives of the London Borough of Haringey.
Chapel Place, White Hart Lane: now the Living Word Temple, it was built in 1826 as a Roman Catholic chapel dedicated to
St Francis de Sales, and founded the eponymous school in Brereton Road. Later served as a clothes factory before being restored to use as a place of worship.[33]
Edmanson's Close – Previously known as the Almshouses of the
Drapers' Company, they were built in 1870 and were established through the generosity of three seventeenth-century
benefactors,
Sir John Jolles, John Pemel and John Edmanson.
High Cross – Erected sometime between 1600 and 1609 on the site of an earlier Christian cross, although there is some speculation that the first structure on the site was a
Roman beacon or marker, situated on a low summit on
Ermine Street. Tottenham High Cross is often mistakenly thought to be an
Eleanor cross.
Northumberland Row – Erected circa 1740 on the site of the former Smithson seat, previously that of the Hynningham family. The gate piers are possibly from
Bruce Castle. The wrought iron gate bears the monogram HS for one of the two
Hugh Smithsons, both Tottenham landowners and sometime MPs for Middlesex.
Tottenham Cemetery – A large cemetery, which makes up part of an open access area of land and habitat, along with
Bruce Castle Park and All Hallows Churchyard.[35]
Quietway 2 (Q2) – Q2 skirts around Tottenham's south-eastern edge. Running on towpaths, quiet roads and residential streets, Q2 runs unbroken from
Russell Square to
Walthamstow.[43]
EuroVelo 2 (The Capitals Route) – EuroVelo 2 (EV2) is a long-distance, international cycle route running from
Moscow, Russia to
Galway, Ireland. The route follows the course of NCR 1 through Tottenham.[44]
Tottenham cake is a
sponge cake baked in large metal trays, covered either in pink icing or jam (and occasionally decorated with shredded desiccated coconut). Tottenham cake's origins are unclear. There is reference to "tottenham cakes" as early as 1891 when the
Far Famed Cake Company are credited as the originators of the confection.[47] Another source states the cake "was originally sold by the baker Henry Chalkley from 1901, who was a Friend (or
Quaker), at the price of one old penny, with smaller mis-shaped pieces sold for half an old penny". The pink colouring was derived from
mulberries found growing at the Tottenham Friends burial ground.[48] Originally "a peculiar local invention"[49] of north London, the cake was later mass-produced by bakery chains such as
Percy Ingle and
Greggs.[50][51] The cake featured on
The Great British Bake Off TV programme broadcast Tuesday 17 September 2013 on BBC2.[52]
^Newman, K. [
"Archived copy"(PDF). Archived from
the original(PDF) on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2011.{{
cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (
link)Police-Public Relations: The Pace of Change: Police Foundation Lecture 1986, The
Police Foundation, 1986