Books

Matthew Eccleston's book Enfield - Portrait of a London Borough (Matthew Eccleston, 1996, ISBN 0-9528699-0-X) includes a good chapter on the history of Edmonton in its modern sense of Lower and Upper Edmonton. It includes plenty of freely expressed opinions which is refreshing to see and he has an interesting eye for photography. It is a nice big book too although mine now has a strange herby smell! I suspect it may be out of print now as I haven't seen it around for a while.

I'd have liked the title reversed being an Edmontonian, but Graham Dalling's Southgate And Edmonton Past (Historical Publications Ltd, 1996, ISBN 0-948667-34-6) is a history of the parish of Edmonton. The subtitle "A Study In Divergence" on an inner front page hints at the particular focus in the book which is to compare the history of the two sides of the old parish. Much of what I know of local history started with this book.

There is also a companion book in the series called Enfield Past that may be of interest, if not so relevant to Edmonton.

Enfield Preservation Society's Treasures Of Enfield (Enfield Preservation Society Ltd, 2000, ISBN 0-907318-16-9), edited Valerie Carter, is a book of well captioned photographs of much of the more interesting architecture of the borough of Enfield and includes several buildings in Lower Edmonton. It is looking at the buildings of today, not those that have been lost. The photos are all contemporary black and white shots taken specially for the book.

I "borrowed" some photos from Ernest Ryman's Glimpses Of Old Edmonton (Dyke Publications, 1992, ISBN 0-9509756-4-8) which is a small book of captioned old photographs. As far as I know this is out of print now so may be hard to track down.

A real treasure is Graham Dalling's Lower Edmonton In Pictures (1994) which is probably about as good a collection of old pictures of Lower Edmonton as you are likely to see and has some useful and informative captioning. It includes many of the pictures found in the other books (the council's collection seems to be the best source so there is much duplication) and I wish I had found it earlier! For some reason they have given all the pictures an unfortunate browny tint and used creamy coloured paper (perhaps they thought they would look sepia tinted). There isn't an ISBN for the book or its companion Upper Edmonton In Pictures (1998) which loses the silly tinting.

The two books are produced by the London Borough Of Enfield and were available for £2.75 each from the libraries last time I looked (well Edmonton Green Library anyway so I assume others may have them) and I'd be particularly pleased if the Lower Edmonton one were to be purchased as I have found myself scanning rather too many pictures from it for comfort and that doesn't include those I found elsewhere first. Just goes to show what a good collection it is!

David Pam's The New Enfield - Stories of Enfield, Edmonton and Southgate (1977) which was a booklet produced for the Queen's Silver Jubilee year by the council. I can't remember where one got it from at the time. It has 29 old pictures which are mostly the usual suspects found in the other books though I dug out a couple of useful ones to use on this site that I hadn't seen elsewhere at the time. David Pam was the then Local History Officer for the council and is a very well known name in the local history literature. The text is a collection of short and concise pieces neatly summarising much of the history of the borough of Enfield (then only twelve years old!). Quite why it is called "The New Enfield" isn't really clear to me.

Alan Dumayne's Britain In Old Photographs: The London Borough Of Enfield (Sutton Publishing, 1996, ISBN 0-7509-1027-5) is a selection of captioned photographs from the council collection that has suddenly popped up again in 2003. Some of the photos are the familiar ones from several other books but there are a few different ones.

There are plenty of books on "Enfield" around but mostly concerned with the old parish of that name rather than the borough of Enfield. So the chances are they won't have much to say about the area that is Edmonton today. There are others that claim to be about the borough as a whole but Edmonton doesn't really get its share of the attention. This is not a criticism as perhaps there just isn't much archive material around and not a lot still to see.

Stephen Sellick's compilation from his own picture collection (Tempus Publishing Ltd, 2000, ISBN 0-7524-2267-7) which is in the Images Of England series. It is a collection of old photos from his own collection with very informative captions.

Stephen Sellick also edited a curious book called The Borough Of Enfield: Memories (True North, 2000, ISBN 1-903204-14-3) which is mostly related to the 1940-1960s period. Fifty per cent of the book is photos and commentary about the companies sponsoring the production of the book.

There are also books around with a tighter brief covering such things as trams and pubs.

Robert J. Harley's Waltham Cross and Edmonton Tramways including Tottenham (Middleton Press, 1998, ISBN 1-901706-07-9) is a small hardback book containing 120 well captioned photographs related to the tramways through Lower Edmonton. Only a dozen or so are taken in Lower Edmonton.

An interesting little publication is Graham Dalling's little booklet called Southgate and Edmonton Street Names (Edmonton Hundred Historical Society, 1990, ISBN 0-902922-49-1). This attempts to list all the roads in Edmonton and Southgate that existed by 1914 and gives notes on when they might have been built or demolished and also notes any names changes. If you are interested in that sort of thing it saves you the work of trawling through maps, directories and census data yourself.

Gary Boudier's A-Z of Enfield Pubs Part Two is a well researched local history book that has entries for all the familiar pubs in Lower Edmonton as well as the rest of the former parish of Edmonton and there is a companion volume for the old parish of Enfield.

This is one of a number of self-published local history books by Gary that he produced to raise funds for treatments for his son Tony. They used to be available in bookshops in Enfield Town and from local libraries but I imagine that these days they are only going to be available direct from Gary and perhaps the best option is Gary's shop on eBay.

Gary Boudier has also produced The History Of The North Middlesex University Hospital which was published in April 2003. I understand profits from this one go to the Friends of the hospital. Gary's style is a little relentlessly factual for my taste but you can't fault the research. The large selection of photos also includes some more general views of Upper and Lower Edmonton which includes some of the usual suspects plus a few I haven't seen before.