The neighbourhood that’s situated on both sides of the stretch of Green Lanes between Finsbury Park and Turnpike Lane has a name that confuses many. Is it Harringay or Haringey? It’s a long story that goes back half a millennium, but the nub of it is that the longer spelling, Harringay, refers to the neighbourhood in the south of the borough, whilst Haringey is used to refer to the whole borough.

As part of the Harringay neighbourhood, the Harringay Warehouse District uses the longer version. It’s an area with a long history and an industrial heritage that goes back for more than a century.

In the early medieval period, the area now occupied by Harringay Warehouse District was agricultural land owned by the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, as wealthy Londoners accelerated their purchase of land on the outskirts for ‘country’ retreats, Hermitage Road was developed as a private road. In 1869 there were just four large houses on the road.

By the mid-1890’s, the western part of the area had been built up as far as Vale Road and, to the east, the area between Tiverton Road and Seven Sisters Road had been built up. The development of much of the land in between was delayed by ownership or because it was in use for other purposes. This delay apparently paved the way for a commercial rather than residential future.

North of Hermitage Road, next to Green Lanes, the potteries still stood where Sainsbury’s and the Arena Shopping Mall are today. South of St Ann’s Hospital, the area now occupied by the Crusader Estate and the Arena Design Centre had been acquired by the hospital. Accessed via a tunnel under the railway line, it was used as a recreation ground for hospital patients.

In the south east of the area, north of where Eade Road now meets Seven Sisters Road was a large brickfield.  Finally, a large part of the area had been part of The Hermitage estate and that was still occupied until 1890.

Whilst the site of the potteries was to remain vacant until the 1920s and 30s when the Harringay Stadium and Arena were built, the sale of the Hermitage in the 1890s, meant that by the first decade of the twentieth the Ashfield triangle and the rest of the southern side of Hermitage Road had been built-up. In the east of the area, the first four factories were in place by 1913.

The first factories arrived just before and after 1905. Wine gum maker Maynards opened in 1906 and paper manufacturer F Bender just before.

By 1922 Courtney Pope moved growing shop-fitting business to Eade Road, with their Amhurst Works covering most of area now occupied by New River Studios, Catwalk Place and the Ex-Fed building. In the Second World War the firm’s subsidiary, Courtney Pope Aircraft Ltd, manufactured aircraft parts, mainly propellers at 318 Green Lanes behind the old Manor House pub. It is likely that the facilities at the Harringay works were given over to the war effort.