Randomness Guide to London Menu

Harringay is an area of North London, within the London Borough of Haringey. It's centred on a fairly long and busy stretch of a street called Green Lanes. As this Google map shows, its shape, a bit like Italy, resembles a boot. The "foot" of the boot, to the south, is occupied by Finsbury Park, with Finsbury Park Station at the "toe" and Manor House Station at the "heel". The northern point of the area is roughly Turnpike Lane Station, where Green Lanes becomes Wood Green High Road for a half mile or so.

Harringay is neither as universally wealthy as Crouch End just to its west, nor does it face the problems of South Tottenham to its east. It's almost a border town between the two very different halves of Haringey; but it's not at all edgy, it's vibrant and perhaps a little unsure of its own identity. Think of Harringay if you don't live there and it's almost certain that you'll think Green Lanes. But behind the hustle and bustle, most of Harringay is made up of residential streets of Victorian terraced houses. The streets leading off to the west are highly rectilinear and bisected by an alleyway called Harringay Passage; they're known as the Harringay Ladder (see this obsessive blog post on the subject, with many photos).

Green Lanes itself is along the lines of a local high street. Deserted by the likes of Woolworths and Joe Soap's Fruit & Veg in the 1960s, it was first peppered with Greek and Greek-Cypriot shops. Today it has a definite Kurdish/Turkish flavour to it with a number of Turkish and Kurdish ocakbasi (barbecue/grill) restaurants/cafes as well as various grocery shops and pound shops. Yet, strangely, relatively few people living in Harringay are either Turkish or Kurdish themselves.

The spelling of Harringay and the reason for the difference from the spelling of the Borough of Haringey has long perplexed locals and non-locals alike. The Wikipedia article on the history of Harringay gives a detailed explanation.

See also:

• harringayonline.com (mainly aimed at local residents)
• Wikipedia entry

Auto-generated list of things in Harringay (view them on a map):

• Ducketts Common
• Finsbury Park
• Harringay Green Lanes Station
• Harringay Station
• Hornsey Station
• Old Ale Emporium, N4 1EU
• Salisbury, N4 1JX
• Steev