Tottenham was a rural area until the 1860s, with farmland providing food for the city of London. There is mention of a flour mill in Tottenham in 1234. In the early 1600s, another mill was built nearby tanning leather from cattle skins.The smell from this process was so bad that King James 1 asked for work at the mill to stop before he travelled past. In the 17th Century, the mills were used to make gunpowder and in the 18th Century, paper. After a fire in 1788, new corn and oil mills were built on the same sites but after another fire in 1852, they were not rebuilt.
The rise and fall
of industry
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, many industries moved from inner
London to areas like Haringey where land was cheaper. Here are the stories
of two of the most important companies to move to Harringey:-
Louis Lebus, a Jewish furniture worker, emigrated to Britain from Germany in the 1840s and set up business in Whitechapel. By the end of the 1890s, after several moves to larger premises, Lebus was the biggest furniture manufacturer in Britain, employing more than 1,000 workers.
A new factory was built
in 1904 by the River Lea at Tottenham Hale. Houses for the workers were built
nearby, contributing to the growth of South Tottenham. By the end of the 1930s,
the factory employed almost 8,000 people. An advertisement from 1947 claimed
that Lebus was the largest furniture factory in the world. By 1969, Lebus
had left Tottenham and the factory was eventually demolished and two new housing
estates built on the cleared land.
back
to top
The
Lebus Ltd Factory in 1958
The Blackman Ventilating Company was set up in 1883, making fans to remove steam from laundries and paper mills and to dry timber, bricks and leather. In 1932, a new factory and head office was built at Mill Mead Road, Tottenham. When war broke out in 1939, the factory was kept busy producing heating and ventilation for other factories and designing and making motors for submarines and searchlights. In the 1950s and 60s, the company continued to grow. The brake coolers for 'Bluebird', the car in which in 1964 Donald Campbell set a new world speed record of 403.12 mph, were made there. In the 1970s and 80s, they were taken over by a bigger company and later stopped trading altogether.
The first factory to make Thermos vacuum flasks opened in Tottenham in 1908. Thermos flasks were invented by scientists working at an electric lamp factory in Ponders End.
There is now little industry
along the river in Haringey. Many of the goods that used to be made in local
factories are now imported from other countries. The remaining industrial
estate, just north of Tottenham Hale, is mainly warehousing where imported
goods such as drinks, clothes and hardware are stored before being delivered
to the shops.